March 25th 2007 200mm/6.3mm/F6 To the left is the bright crater Bessel which forms a triangle with the larger Menelaus and the wonderfully named Sulpicius Gallus. Sketched using pastel and conte on black paper with a needle.
I wanted to explore the lunar surface using something different. My usual tools are soft pastels, conte sticks, my fingers, brushes and other instruments. My aim was to achieve greater detail while experimenting. Wooden toothpicks and cocktail sticks are useful, however, they lose their points very quickly. Metal tools might give me a better more durable range of lunar sketching implements.
On the hunt for teeny tiny metal devices, I came across a set of quilling tools. They are something to do with curling paper and card, anyway in the pagkage was a quilling needle. This is a very sharp long needle with a wooden handle, so yes it offered possibilities for use in lunar sketching.
The area close to the terminator near the South West region of Mare Serenitiatis looked like it had a lot of linear features and subtle shading mixed in with some well defined craters like Manilius, Agrippa and Godin, ( Mare Tranquillitatis region) and one not so clear crater named Boscovich which looked broken and messed up toward it’s western wall.
Well defined linear fissures were only visible now and then when the atmosphere allowed. Occasional clear moments rare that night, in the all too murky unstable blanket around our planet. It is always torturous to attempt a sketch when you know the atmosphere is not playing the game along with you. However I was keen to find out what a quilling needle and pastels could do together.
On the terminator, lovely black finger like shadows held onto the lunar surface clawing for a grip on the daytime moon. Fine wispy shadows lengthened on barely visible higher areas and subtle diverse greys told a tale of undefined lunar features hiding and waiting for some other sketch.
A wander into Mare Serenitatis around Menelaus led me to pick out the smaller but brighter Bessel within the mare. These two craters formed a triangle with the wonderfully named Sulpicius Gallus on the SW edge of the Mare. My needle even picked out the minute craterlet Bobbillier in the center of the triangle.
Over the years I continued to experiment with various tools, textures, and materials. The moon you see is a very complex body to capture in a drawing. It’s surface features mesmerize and challenge with every view.
