I had been looking forward to the 2024-04-08 eclipse for a very long time and had an outstanding time chasing a gap in the clouds to observe totality. Although I'd seen totality in 2017, this eclipse was almost more surreal and profound for me. The way the naked-eye prominences blazed against the brilliant corona was shocking and not something I'd expected. My immediate impression was the sheer immensity of the eclipse looming in the sky.
Today, I decided to try my hand at capturing what I saw with a sketch of the eclipse at the moment of third contact, before the diamond ring overwhelms the corona. This was done with a pencil and blending stump on paper. I scanned, then inverted and colorized in GIMP. I'm not much of an artist, but I occasionally do astronomy sketches because they capture what you see so much better than any photo does. There's a lot I can improve here, but I'm reasonably satisfied with the way this captures that final moment of totality.
I definitely enjoyed trying my hand at this! Working entirely from memory several days later like this was such an interesting challenge in comparison to sketching at the eyepiece like I'm used to.
