CN FORUMS ARCHIVE Telescope Reviews: New Monthly Target

Mini Tutorial 10 Day Old Moon Sketch

Before I began this sketch on Wednesday evening of August 22nd I did 3 things. I checked the weather maps at NOAA. I re-read Chapter 1 in the book Astronomical Sketching by R. Handy et. al.. I gathered my needed materials and brought them outside.
The drawing materials I used are kept in a box in my garage near my scopes. I have included a photo of these materials. Above and to the right of the clipboard are: a red geek light, a mini maglight on a neck band, 2 erasers, a black / blue pencil sharpener, clip on lamp, Conte’ crayons and pencils, a sharpened eraser, blending stump, brush, and eraser shield. The circular protractor was used to draw the semicircular arc of the moon’s limb onto the Strathmore 400 Artagain paper (see second drawing). I should add that the pictures were taken today not while I made the sketch. I only spent a few minutes making these rough drawings but I spent 2 hours at the eyepiece making the actual drawing. Next I lightly drew in the borders between the dark and light areas (mare and highland) I also carefully positioned craters along the terminator before shading in with the Conte’ sticks and pencils to create the medium light areas around the mare ( third and forth photos). In the actual drawing I spent much time making sure I had features where I wanted them. Even with this care, many are incorrectly placed but I can live with that in a drawing of the moon. If this were a sketch of a planet I would need much better precision. I used both the blending stump and my index finger to get these medium areas the way I wanted them. I often returned to the eraser to re-blacken the mare. Now I wanted this drawing to look like the eyepiece view overall. I carefully worked the mare and the large shadowed craters near the terminator such as Copernicus, Reinhold, Bullialdus, Plato etc. I also did a few away from the terminator such as: Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina. I did not allow myself to get too carried away doing this because this always gets me into trouble by poor placement of features. I would like to point out that at any time you can actually erase everything completely. I completely erased this demo drawing in seconds (see fifth image). In the actual drawing (image 6), I probably touched the white pencil to every part of the highlands at least 4 times or more. The last part of the drawing included shading the mare and putting in crater shadows with the black Conte’. I left the limb a little fuzzy because the seeing in the telescope presented it that way. If the clouds didn’t stop me I would have curved the terminator better; the eyepiece view had much better curvature than my drawing. The last photo shows the set-up of the telescope and drive platform as I sat on the curved bench with the clipboard on my lap.
For most of my sketches with larger scopes I am usually standing on the ground or on a ladder holding the clipboard. Oh and yes I am left handed and right eye dominant.

Frank McCabe

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