Valentina Tereshkova orbited the Earth 48 times during her three day spaceflight in Vostok 6 in 1963. First woman in space!

A friend pointed me to these excellent and quirky sketches of the first 14 women in space. Actually, to be precise, the first 13 women in space, and a sweet sketch of Christa McAuliffe. In the artist’s words:

Working for months at a time just penciling a comic book I started these portraits to get a bit of inking and colouring out of my system. I shouldn’t say ‘portraits’, I’m not going for much of a likeness. Usually I’ll glance at a couple of photographs and then go off and draw a vague impression. Margaret Seddon is blonde, Judith Resnik is a bit barmy looking, that sort of thing.

I started with Valentina Tereshkova in January 2009 thinking if I drew one every week I’d finish the series around the end of the year. See how well that worked out.

Regardless of how fast or slow the series is coming, I think they’re very unique — Valentina Tereshkova is my favorite, but I also really like his Judith Resnik.

Svetlana Savitskaya

Sally Ride

Judith Resnik

Anna Fisher