Telescope Reviews: Moon In Twilight 6.5 Days Old- New Scanned Image

Jim

Thanks for your kind compliments. I reread what I thought I wrote earlier and fogot to finally spellcheck.

The capturing of the highlights as “glistening” was possibly accidental and one of those things that artists in desperation of the passion to create will render in the process at the moment. I really did not know that I had grabbed the snow white chalk pencil when I scratched some of those terminator edge lit lines. I had intended to use only the cream white for an even appearance of the total disc overall. I am working in near dark now at the end of the sketch when the ambient twilight at my table has caused me to strain to see the paper as the moon is also going to be totally obscured by trees at the horizon within the next 10 minutes so I scrambled to quickly get in as much detail as I could. The light is changing fast. I had to move the entire table and the 10 inch Dob several times as the moon was now behind trees at my not so low horizon. The neighbors probably wondered why I had all my equipment scattered across the front yard. This guy is sitting at a folding card table and desk lamp with electric cord dangling out of the house with what some passersby asked is a cannon. What am I going to shoot at? was a question one night from a young kid at the sidewalk. I allow others to look briefly through the scope as I am strained for time.

The sky is going from a darker daylight blue to a gradual night sky within minutes now. This is the time of the twilight zone in art when things change very fast in relation to trying to capture a still image in art. It is also a fascinating few moments when an astro-photograph of the sky will still show a daylight- like sky blue yet it is seemingly full of stars in the final photo- See my Hale-Bopp photo in the gallery that shows this (It is two- One at just after sunset with a daylight blue sky and the one to the right is in a night sky just 30 minutes later.)

http://s10.photobucket.com/albums/a109/markseibold/?action=view&current=_____Comet-Hale-Bopp-OverKaNeTa.jpg

But let me not stray into my past life of photography as that is for another forum.

As others have asked me to write a tutorial, this would take awhile for me to assemble something formidable and formal for the CN site here as I am temporarily not at home at his time. I really work with very little or no methodical approach. I allow to happen whatever will as I allow my senses and rules and laws to escape the moment. I throw wild abandon to the moonlight and the atmosphere seems to take over. Something other than what a few call talent may enter the picture on some nights. I later found these same words spoken by Picasso and Pollock. So it may be an acquired sense of many artists. Some of my friends refer to it as nonsense.

Also remember that the moons appearance although intrinsically static and appearing itself as unchanging; our view through the atmosphere is changing as it rides so low on the ecliptic this time of year. You have only a short time to capture it before it sets. The low horizon is full of volcanic pollution now, the local city air is gritty, the moon begins to turn a warmer yellow since you started sketching in daylight an hour ago. You may want to render that but the changing effect cannot really be recorded in time as it would in a slow time lapse motion film, so I want to add that at the risk of what some may call embellishment. I would ask them, are we embellishing a desire for the reality of life?

So the artist is at once revered for what he or she may do that creates a surreal and desirable and yet possibly realistic image in art, then suddenly rejected for being too aesthetic and possibly misconstrued as unscientific. I have seen artists diminished to nothing more than emotional beings and berated and labeled as “professionals.” Yet without emotion, would we be here doing these sketches at all?

What are you going to do tonight? Sketch again and again till you have so many of what some would call the same thing, yet every single sketch has some individuality of its own because the atmosphere and every moment from night to night changes constantly.

Practice makes perfect? I would say, practice makes more practice. Perfection is in the eye of the beholder.

Never give up!

Mark

“An artists work is never done; only abandoned.” -A telegram from Arthur C Clarke to Stanley Kubrick while n the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Edited by markseibold (09/07/08 06:41 PM)