Sunsets, Stars, West, Wind
The first snow and winter storm of Winter 2019 finally arrive the second Saturday of January. In my experience, that’s a delay of nearly ten days from when we usually have snow or a winter storm or if nothing else bitter cold below zero temperatures and wind chills. The snow we received was wet and heavy, perfect for making a snowman but not so great for my back when I went out to shovel the driveway.
I spied a wonderful ‘postcard’ from Varages in southeastern France via the Astronomy Sketch of the Day this morning:
I especially like the foreground sketches. The sun was ‘quiet’ on Sunday.
Beautiful sketch work in this Astronomy Sketch of the Day posting from this past Sunday:
Moon; full moon facing, two views of dark side.
Sketch was made in my studio.
2009; published on album cover for jazz band Four, 2009
Graphite on archival paper.
Visit the Astronomy Sketch of the Day website for more great astronomical sketches.
This wonderful drawing of the Moon popped up on ASOD a couple of days ago. I thought it worth share here.
Enjoy, Jon
Click image for full article at ASOD.
M3 (or my blog cubed) menu update: I decided to include a couple of cool links on my Astronomy menu.
I added the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), which I follow via NASA‘s RSS feed, as well as the Astronomy Sketch of the Day (ASOD) (also available via RSS). I especially liked today’s offering:
I started following ASOD a couple of weeks ago to inspire my own nascent sketching abilities. Many of the observing awards I want to complete require that astronomical sketches be submitted as part of the log entries to support the required observations.
To help expand my artistic horizons, I ordered a highly recommend book, aptly titled Astronomical Sketching: A Step-By-Step Introduction from BookDepository.com (free shipping worldwide). I received two books in the mail yesterday, one of which was the sketching book shown at right. I skimmed through a couple of the chapters over breakfast this morning. I will need to assemble a supply list before I take a lunch hour trip to the closest art supply store (just north of me on Main Street in Kansas City, Missouri). And per advice from my artist son, I should just start sketching daily to hone my observation skills and to get familiar with the media (pencils, papers, erasers, smudgers, etc.). I would like to start sketching double stars initially, but will have to experiment and practice quite a lot before I will feel confident in sharing any of my sketches here at my blog.