Telescope Reviews: Where to post astro abstract art? Not quite tech

Erika and all

Thanks for your compliments- I will address the materials here which are quite basic- Also, I never use fixatives as I am told that they can dull or slightly change the pastel colors over time.

Actually, I was going to respond favorably to your sketching tutorial that Les Cowley added to. I saw that you suggested others to contribute responses for information there about sketching. I wasn't sure if others were welcomed to respond to that tutorial as I only saw Les Cowley respond so far. Yours and his responses are very professional. I was thinking that maybe others might be intimidated to clutter that beautiful tutorial page that you produced so far.

I would like to address this to any others that may have questions here as I have not as yet written to answer many others questions about my work as a whole. I will attempt to write a formal tutorial eventually as time allows- However, I will include this (long) expansive philosophical entry here today in hopes that it answers many random inquiries and questions that others have had about my work. I hope I am not appearing as too broad in perspective as I have so much to reflect on here today.

I know that I have written some long rambling emails here initially in CN so I apologize for my rambling. I will edit down, use brevity and make future efforts to be concise.

I would concur with much of the same that Erika and Les spoke of techniques and materials in her recent tutorial in the sketching forum. I wanted to also ask others why they seem to forget to state the actual format size of their works. I know that those new to sketching may think that everyone might just sketch in a similar small spiral notebook of say
8 ½ X 11”. I wonder if others are working up to 20 X 24 inch format, such as mine are. These would be considered as relatively large as exhibited works in a metropolitan art gallery. For example, the image you see here; my left hand is at almost twice actual life-size. The large solar prominence to the right is about 5 inches in length. The Tilting Sun graphic is about 3 ¾ inches in diameter.

I will tell you why I work in this size. As I believe Les Cowley mentioned, you must work large enough to capture the finer details. I would refer to the great artist’s works here. World renowned artists have worked on canvases as large as 9 X 12 feet! That is as large as some average rooms in homes! Look at the painting sizes that Jackson Pollock produced for example- See any web site in a search. Some of his works are mural sized up to 20 feet or more!

We realize as astronomers that we can get completely absorbed in the observational astronomy and forget that laymen and average viewers of a web site might wonder what they are actually seeing in our rendered artworks on the Web. eg; How big is that sketch or painting? How long did it take? How expensive are the materials? I have had friends make the excuse that they cannot afford materials, thus they cannot do art, yet they are driving cars that cost as much as a home. I believe it says something about commitment vs. patience vs price.

Believe me, as I have worked in many mediums over the years, ie; photography since I was a child, working up to award winning and internationally published photography of the night sky, Warhol style photo-silkscreen, intense realism in graphite pencil as an 18 year old in art school 37 years ago (see halfway down the left column in myspace.com/marksolarprophet site), charcoal, water color, oil painting for several hundred hours since starting oils about 17 years ago, that I have only exhibited a couple of oil paintings so far in galleries; I have only recently delved seriously into pastel chalks that landed me more often in the NASA web sites Spaceweather.com about a dozen times and several to their front page and once in Astronomy Picture of the Day since October 2006.

I wanted to encourage others who have never attempted an artwork to try this. Pastels are very easy to work with. The worst mess you’ll ever make is getting permanent chalk colors onto your hands that can be washed off with soap and water in a minute. Do not wear your expensive dress clothes while working in pastels as some colors will not wash out.

And I would especially like to appeal to those who think that they cannot draw. We are all born artists and that’s a fact. Whether you know it or not. We all want to do something creative in life. Art is not a product; It is a process. If you are curious enough and can imagine it, then it is possible to do it. I believe this is a general Einstein quote. . . or is it mine?

As for other artworks in the site here; for example I saw a nice sketch with white chalk on black paper as one of the recent months contest entries, I believe it was. It appeared as a dim circular fuzzy DSO (Deep Space Object) surrounded by stars. A beautiful realistic work but I could not see anywhere in the text to explain what exactly that it was. Then I noticed the text at top >
c/2007 . . . I believe it is a comet designation. But the artist does not have the word comet or the name of the comet anywhere in the text unless I am going blind? Please inform me if you se this post.

I have observed possibly over 20 comets since my first at age 3 in 1957. I have photographed successfully perhaps 4 or 5 starting with Comet West in 1976. I observed a comet last summer that broke into several parts, one passing very near to the Ring Nebula; I cannot remember the name or designation now. Can you? Was it Schwassman- Watchman 1 & 2? I did a quick pastel of its two main parts. I will look in my photo hosting site and transfer it to my CN gallery here soon.

But to get back to address Erika’s questions. My style is very old-world conventional as Van Gogh’s yet at times somewhat unconventional in my approach. I am kind of a hack. I play like a kid when I draw. I lose consciousness of the real world around me and I become absorbed by the work; some might say obsessed. Those who are accomplished artist here may know exactly what I am talking about. To really execute a great work one must immerse oneself into it. Become a part of it. It could be thought of as a kind of Zen philosophy. Some days it is not there. Other days everything just clicks into place as if you could do it blind and effortlessly. The time of day seems to help some people; The background music can have an effect on some artists.

Although I am not officially prepared, I'll share a little of a pre- tutorial here today as you have asked about materials-

I have arrived on either of two favorite papers. Canson brand 'Mi Tientes' in basic black and I do not know the ‘model number’ of the paper today as my former works on this paper are all in storage. But this is the standard Canson paper that is usually available at all good art material stores. It has a medium toothed texture. I have done a couple works on dark cobalt blue paper (refer to my gallery on the last page 3- A sketch of the moon and Saturn.) Twice on grey paper- See the Mercury Transit of the sun with large orange left hand sketching that was featured in Astronomy Picture of the Day on November 17th 2006. Sunset and fog over Larch Mountain trees with Jupiter high overhead on grey paper.

The sketch you see here above of the solar prominence on May 14th 2008 is on Strathmore 500 Series- Charcoal Black. This Strathmore paper has a softer and less toothy texture; almost smooth. I am not sure why but that was the same paper I found a ‘wrinkled scrap’ of that I had available in 11” X 14” when I executed that first work n October 13th 2006, after being inspired by Erika’s and Les Cowley’s white conte crayon sketches that day in Spaceweather.com. I had just come in from observing the sun through my h-alpha telescope. An amazing prominence twisted and changed so rapidly, I wanted to sketch it but procrastinated. I had no sizable pastel paper so I scribbled the preliminary image twice onto a ruled sheet of spiral notebook paper from direct observation in real time. I had no intention to send it to anywhere online. I tried to record an impressionistic feel to convey the motion of the prominence changing in time. I had done still accurate prominence images once before as part of a solar observing at the Oregon Star Party in 2002 but have misplaced these. As I find them I will transfer the images to the gallery here.

I favor orange and burnt sienna hues in soft dry chalk sticks. Occasionally you’ll see what looks like white in my works. I never use pure white or black chalks. What appears as such is actually a very pale pink and the darkest colors seen in the shadows of the hand are dark cobalt blue and sometimes a dark purple.

I started that first wild pastel seen in Spaceweather.com on Oct 14th 2006 with old antique chalks that my mother-in-law gave me some years ago. Several boxes were a range of Eagle PrismaPastels brand, Grumbacher, and a small box of Sergeant pastels I believe from the early 1950’s. I still have several of these. I have added some new small square thin sticks made by

I’ll reflect the story a little here for those who missed it before as I think it may serve to inspire others:

Late that night after observing and doing only the preliminary pencil sketch from observation and seeing Erika’s

and Les’

in Spaceweather.com on that Friday afternoon , I found a scrap of black Strathmore pastel paper around midnight tucked into a closet folder of art materials from an era gone by. It was crinkled but I was intent to do something, [read desperate!] still thinking about seing Erika’s and Les Cowley’s works I saw in Spaceweather.com that afternoon.

I submitted the abstract solar prominence sketch after completing it in under 45 minutes, to the Spaceweather.com site on a Friday night at 3:30 AM, actually Saturday morning? I slept for only a couple hours and awoke dreaming or hallucinating in color in a subconscious dream state about the piece. When I went to my email Saturday morning about 9 am, I found that I received a personal message from an unknown recipient. It was Dr Tony Phillips, the NASA physicist at Spaceweather.com. “Mark, if ever there was an award for solar art, you should get it. This is fantastic! Take a look at our front page today. –Tony Phillips. Of course I was elated. I have had my photography win awards before but never my art. Then within an hour, I was receiving emails from all over the world with commending messages. Some rambled on longer than I do! Titles ranged from- Your Art! That pastel! . WOW ! Where can we see more of this! Where do you live? Wow, the world needs more art like this in a science site!

I thanked all of them but asked in a mass email to all- It’s no big deal. It’s just a childish scribble on my part that I did in 45 minutes, I thought. Can someone explain what I did here?

Apparently one lady in Sedona Arizona explained; Mark- Everyone goes to the web every day now, and they see the same sterile and perfect photography, the Hubble space images, whatever; and we are desensitized by the over-saturation of digital photographic images from the web now.

Today when we go there we are stunned to see that an artist has captured something which imparts the direct element of the human hand and tells the actual experience within a split second of viewing this about the metaphysics of the universe. This is the work of an artist that may be missing from our lives in this over-digitized new world of electronic imagery.

So the technical stuff: Fixatives, as Erika asked. I have never used them. I am told that they can dull the colors. Friends ask me, aren’t you afraid that your finished works will smear? I just keep them stored vertical and in between other blank pages so as not to rub, smear or transfer the chalk dust to other works.

I have only mounted two so far. Two others were portraits of a girl friend that she had expensively and professionally mounted with double thick matting boards and framed with glass cover. Those are not in my gallery for personal reasons. If you would like to see them, inquire in personal email please.

I use much of the same techniques as all general artists use in pastel work such as Erika and Les have mentioned. Blending is done with cotton balls, Q-Tip swabs, sometimes just ones finger will work. I haven no particular starting point in the general surface area. I usually start with what I perceive to be the most difficult image within the work as I figure I want to get the entire piece done within one sitting so I avoid becoming fatigued to do the easy parts toward the end and some final touch–up. I find that photographing the art work can be as intense as the actual sketching. Lighting is very important. My photography of my art is done with a simple Sony Cybershot set at 5 mgpxl. I shoot the work occasionally by bright daylight window light. If the lighting is a little off at night, then under white halogen track lights, I adjust it to accurate in Photoshop later and add brightness and contrast to render it as natural to the original work. I usually do not shoot it with flash as this can reflect on the paper and result in inaccurate textures in the image thus appearing unnatural.

That is all for now. Please feel free to question, comment and criticize. Please be specific. I welcome any constructive, courteous or even harsh criticism.

Again as some have asked to see more, I would refer you to my gallery here>

http://www.cloudynights.com/photopost/showgallery.php?ppuser=37924&cat=500
or also see this site >
www.myspace.com/marksolarprophet

Respectfully,
Mark
PS: I have included a scale image to reveal the actual size of my pastel sketches- Note that after this one appeared in Spaceweather.com (larg inset image here) for three days on Dec 14th ~ 16th 2006, that I changed the central figure of the 'flare' [prominence] emanating from the sunspot in the forground. -M

Edited by markseibold (06/04/08 09:09 PM)