Telescope Reviews: Astronomical Sketching values & Monthly Contest

To all

A very interesting discussion- I am impressed to see all the conjecture here from many others and I would encourage it, especially to those who say they do not do sketching although with due respect to the rules set by Erika to comply with posting artworks in the “Sketching Forum” as she is most generous and fair about this. I am especially interested as to what Les Cowley is addressing here and would refer to Les' quoted words below here as it would welcome artists such as myself who defy the categorical description >

“And with regards to the contest, clearly impressionism would be just as valid as realism if it were an observation sketch and is the object as seen through the observer's eyes.”

“So with this in mind, validity for a sketcher's work should be on their work alone”

I am glad to see that Les is accepting that impressionistic art can validate the scientific method. These comments seemed to have created a stir with the perceived process of the scientist and the scientific methods they lay down as “laws”. One can see from the discussion that others are questioning art vs science here. I can see that the two mediums are not in reciprocating concurrence as several expressed their disdain for art.

As many know that I am now complying with the forums and placing my art work into the Astro Art Forum rather than the Sketching Forum as I want to comply with Erika's set rules here but which I was not originally aware of. I merely saw the Forum labeled “Sketching” one day about a month ago and thought I could send my images in because several people that I am acquainted with suggested that I send them to the “Sketching” forum. As many know now, I crashed into that sketching forum by plastering several of my “accurate” solar sketches into the daily bulletins strewn along randomly in answer to several others posts albeit with my hand in the sketch doing the sketch and some of them contained ambient abstract images on the side- ie; a wild prominence emanating from a sunspot that I evoked a passionate impressionistic abstract image of below the actual accurate full disk image of the sun that Erika praised as one of the best full disk renderings sketched of the sun that she has seen yet. I don’t mean to brag here, but as many know these have been featured many times in two of the most highly respected daily NASA reporting sites of current sky imaging. Astronomy Picture of the Day once (Nov 17th, 2006) and that is once enough as I believe I am the only artist to have ever been featured there at that time. I am most honored about that as they usually run only Hubble Space Telescope Photos, NASA space probe images and occasionally an amateur astronomers photograph but never hand sketched art. I am now told that photography has oversaturated the internet and art (and scientific art) is once again respected. I would like to think that I helped a little to inspire others to the artistic process.

Then since October 14th 2006 perhaps a dozen times to Spaceweather.com to their front page and that started as many know, because I was influenced by seeing Erika’s sketch that day in that site. As I also told later, it was Les’ sketch I saw first that day, but Erika’s did something for me- It was the useful scratched side-notes that she placed at the bottom of her sketch that caught my attention. Herein lies the irony of all this. Yes I know my hand in the sketch bothers some people but I have found that it gets the attention of the ones who are least likely to do “art” and that I am told now inspires them to possibly “try their hand” at it for the first time. “Artistic process can teach the scientific method” as they say. I am not telling artists anything here because they already know this. Artists have been begged to entertain the masses for millenniums. And so they do. And so, as it goes, life imitates art, as they say.

But let me not stray from the issue at hand here, so to speak. I was not originally aware of the rules in the “Sketching Forum” until Erika and Charlie Hien wrote to me personally. I was at first perplexed about this as I was honestly and truly making dire efforts to record the solar prominences and surface features as accurately as possible as an observational astronomer. I did not understand until I was told that “re-sketching them later into lavish pastel images” or copying my own work from preliminary pencil sketches was not allowed as it risks embellishing onto the original scientifically accurate sketch. I understand that now and let me tell you, artists do have a passion for, [read obsession for] embellishing subliminal imagery. *Read about Da Vinci (also refer to the book: Art & Physics below as the historians concur now that Isaac Newton was influenced in his science from Da Vinci’s art.) I now understand that these scientific sketches must be done real time and simultaneously from the EP (eyepiece) and not later reworked as that first impressionistic abstract that I did hours later to be shown in Spaceweather.com in October 14th ~ 16th 2006. Hence, I did not read the rules before originally posting here. But in Les’ words quoted above he seems to be reconciling with impressionistic artists now. I felt good about that but realize that Erika moderates the site and we must respect her for that.

I further made the mistake of “bad timing”, literally in my recent work of that large solar prominence on May 14th as I miss-figured my UT time recorded on the page of the work (see in my gallery.) Erika straightened my clock out on that one and I thank her respectively for that. I also copied Les Cowley’s Tilting Sun into the sketch for the first time; by hand drawing it to what I thought was accurate. As I rushed the first time to do this, I made the mistake of setting the horizons flipped from east to west in the program to comply with the reverse image in my Coronado SolarMax refractor but I sketched the arrows indicating rotation in the wrong direction on the globe of the sun. A scientific error on my part? The casual observer of this art piece, I was later told could have cared less as one noted to me, “Mark, your works are so appreciated because they look better than real photographs of the sun or even others reported real live observations! Another said expounding further, “When I look at your art of the sun Mark, I feel that I am looking at the real thing through the telescope”. I guess many artists would take that as a compliment. Yet I tell everyone that I want to get away from “realism”. Serious artists really want to become abstract expressionists. But as an astronomer, I want to report the facts too, so I try to appease all sides. Unfortunately in this recent rendering, I very accurately depicted the large solar prominence on May 14th 2008 to the way it actually appeared in the eyepiece, but worked it later from copying it from my pencil sketch albeit near an exact copy, it was a second generation done later and not done at the time of actual observation. Yet I added so much in other ambient art (the largest hand I ever sketched into my work) and mistaken text info (wrong UT time and mistakenly reversed arrows on the Tilting Sun graphic) that I may have lost the scientific worlds respect for my accurate scientific artwork of the solar image at the center of the work.

Do I understand this right in what Les reiterates above in his quotes? Les [is] saying that impressionism should now be allowed as technically valid scientific documentation art as impressionistic artwork is understood as accurate because it is the way the artist "feels" it to be at the time he or she creates the work from direct observation? Sounds very democratic to me, but I made the mistake of not reading or understanding the rules and I now understand that my works are strictly and only “art” according to this sketching forum even though I made the solar images very accurate to what I observed by later copying them in color pastels from my own original preliminary pencil sketches. Erika has explained this to me and I understand what she is saying now. Every time we duplicate something from the original it is at risk for degradation or embellishment, as would sketching from a dated photo of the sun opposed to live real time observation as the sun is so dynamic, that it changes constantly. This applies to many things in life; even photographs recopied become blurred and degraded in resolution with repeated generation of production. Go to a Xerox copier right now and make a copy from your best photographic prints. You’ll see that they are terribly lacking of integrity in the new Xerox copy. This varies of course with the medium and equipment used. However, as stated further in Les’ post above and I believe Stephen Ames concurs with this below, “artists eyes can capture things that the camera cannot at that moment of observation. Many people do not understand this statement and especially some astro photo imaging astronomers who would say “why waste your time drawing when you could easily just take an accurate picture?” We are now talking about apples and oranges. Some photographers do not understand the artistic process as they have never been through it and especially at the eyepiece of a telescope. *Please refer to Ferris’ Seeing in the Dark film aired on PBS last Sept 2007 which shows Stephen J O’Meara sketching at the EP and his delicately rendered images he sketched as discovered about Saturn’s rings before the Voyager photographs captured these images.

In turn much of the general public thinks that all pictures are worth a thousand words. These cliché phrases have always concerned me as to how we perceive what is real and what is merely an implied emotion in life or may I say, “further blurred in the use of and the laws of the language”. But do you see “pictures or rather photographs” being auctioned for a hundred million dollars at Christy’s or Sotheby’s? There is a relative reason for this. Les mentioned “emotive feelings” that are rendered in the artists work. I would like to address that but it is a difficult area to discuss when we talk of “art” (artistic process) vs. “science” (scientific method). I could go on here all day because I have been through this repeatedly with respect to local astronomers in my region in the Portland area. I have also just won another photography award that I do not have much regard for. It is a photograph that I took of a tree in the Oregon desert in 1994 (see my gallery)>
http://www.cloudynights.com/photopost/showgallery.php?ppuser=37924&cat=500

with circumpolar star trials turning in time exposure overhead that appeared in the December 1994 Astronomy magazine as full page. I only wish now that I had painted the picture rather than taken it as a photograph. In actuality another unknown bystander literally “painted the tree with red light” while I was away from the camera. The photo teaches something as much as it evokes a passionate artistic feel. Someone once told me that they thought it would be what Van Gogh would do with a camera, were he alive today.

And speaking of cameras, I did not know that the work which was removed from the sketching contest was Les’ multiple images that included photographs at the bottom taken by another astronomer to compare accuracy of images with. I knew what Les was doing here and I truly appreciated that work that he submitted it with the photographs. Is this in fact the work that was removed? Again, I could go on here forever about comparing art and photography. This is possibly yet another discussion for another forum as I am disappointed with some of the use of photography these days. I am talking of course of the overuse of Photoshop to the point of rendering images as falsely manipulated. As an astronomer, I get tired of friends who want to discuss supposed UFO sightings later shown in Internet screens with fuzzy artificial photo images who have never observed the sky at all for themselves. They cannot even find Ursa Major in the northern hemisphere, yet alone Ursa Minor. How would they expect to find in the sky a false image of an alien ship that they believe is real on an internet or TV screen? Hence I will coin a new line- Image was everything at one time- “Today, image is anything” – M 2008

Finally I wanted to address the final artistic product as I have been likely to place my superfluous left hand into the sketch as my “signature”. Is that wrong? Some friends tell me that it is “too heavy handed”.

I like to reflect on a historical story about art: A similar argument that occurred when Claude Monet painted his inception of the impressionistic movement with the work that he titled "Impression Sunrise". The French art world came apart and they were livid not only with his title but also implied style of "sketchy painting" that did not comply with the conventional and more traditionally excepted school of thought in the art world then; to become known as a style called impressionism.

Now with that said could I ask that my hand in the lower part of the sketch be known as my "signature" and thus understood as not part of the sketch of the solar activity that I render as accurate? It is difficult to get a 20” X 24” sheet of pastel paper filled in outside as a finished work at the eyepiece, so this also comes down to a matter of trust from my contemporaries in the amateur and professional astronomy world alike. Can I request this privilege?

Where do we draw the line here, and what is really at hand, so to speak? Is it art or is it science or is it all of the above?

Respectfully,
Mark (*I edited/corrected my mispells today - June 9 '08)

PS; I would highly recommend to all to see this review of a respected book written by a doctor, titled Art & Physics – Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light - by Leonard Shlain>
(Erika- I debated on posting that entire book review, so thanks for editing it out- I have just replaced it with the address link which was not hyperlinked before but is now, I believe)>
http://www.rheingold.com/texts/reviews/artphysics.html

Edited by markseibold (06/10/08 12:50 AM)