Telescope Reviews: LunarTerminator: ClosingIn On Manilius & Boscovich

Frank and Carlos

Thanks for your encouraging and praising words. This work was not really done but my time was up at 3AM as I get up at 6AM to go off to work on two hours sleep Friday morning. Astronomy art is for sleep walkers!

Frank; thanks for identifying the craters and region as I decided to rename the post. Aside from maybe knowing only the lunar feature names of the popular Tycho, Aristotle, Mare Crisium, The Sea of Tranquility, Aristarchus and perhaps a couple other lunar features, I never really gave the moon much thought in the eyepiece after observing it and mostly avoiding it for many years, like many astronomers, as a natural source of light pollution. Until I found the Cloudy Nights Forums and several of you, my vision on the moon has since been changed. The rest is now history.

Carlos is hitting right on the term of my intention here as I struggled early today for words to describe my process. I am taking the ‘you are here’ > approach to my art and a sequential representation or schematic reference. As I learn from others in CN, I must give thanks to their teaching me also. It is to be a “sequence” as Carlos coined it. As you saw in the work that I placed with in the monthly sketching contest poll for July, an exploded close-up of four craters with indicated lines showing magnification from the whole moon image. I am expounding on a variation of that theme again here. I like to create an aesthetic initial image of the whole object, then move onto a detailed rendering within the same work. I knew that I was asking for allot of myself last night when I attempted to work on three at once, although it was also a sequence in process from right to left. Hence the fact that I am not really finishing some of these works. As here in this one, I am nowhere near what I would consider a finished artwork but that it is merely a quick study that I intend for a later work. This is more a rough quick impression of what I observed. It is dificult for me to just make a close up of one crater or a smaller area as some of you do. Again why I try to cover so much, the opening feeling of the sky and the whole moon is what is first observed when we all walk out to look up and take initial account of the overall seeing conditions. That is something that we know as astronomers, much of the general public never experience; or they only look up to see when an astronomer suggests that they do. I want those people to see a large sketch like this hanging in a gallery window and possibly learn what they are missing. If it means a step process to slowing down and getting to a telescope for the first time, then I have accomplished what I intended.

I originally intended the idea of the whole three but not sure that I would get the total clearing and clouds breaking before too late as the weather changed. Here again lies my inside intention: To display in sequential movement, the dynamic change as observed over time. *Refer to my original solar prominence sketch after seeing Erika Rix and Les Cowley’s in Spaceweather.com on Oct 12th 2006. Mine appears I think on Oct 14th ~ 16th as an abstract in motion and over some time. The element of change is somewhat rendered in that first solar sketch. I later learned that Picasso and the early 20th century cubists were copying in still life painting what the cinematographers-movie makers were showing in film. Artists were trying to keep up with photographers and film makers then, if only in a still painting.

At the risk of over-exploiting what I intend to do, initially, I nearly disqualified myself from the sketching forum here as we all ensued in a discussion of the required sketches entered here being that from live observation. So this process of difficulty that I create for myself has become my own heuristic method finally realized. I am working up to a technical multiple image schematic that allows several images as reference to one-another as a ‘sequential' allegory as Carlos indicated. Or simply, story telling as some might see it. But time is fleeting at the eyepiece, so we are forced to sketch quickly and it becomes a test of how accurate you get the proportions- As the veterans will notice here right away, that I probably have some lunar featur proportions a little incorrect.

I hope it inspires others to possibly attempt a similar study,

Mark

Edited by markseibold (08/23/08 01:11 PM)