Hello folks,
Back in November I made a post regarding working on very
large scale pieces. The post was
concerned with preparations being made for a commission sketch of the Large
Magellanic Cloud (LMC).
One thing that was very much apparent to me about this
sketch is it wasn’t going to be a piece that would be completed in just one
session. Having just been able to make a
start on the actual piece, the way this start experience panned out, that this
piece would be a multiple night work became very much evident.
With this being the case, I thought that I could make a
journal of the development of this commission piece, beginning with my post
from back in November last year, which I have now re-titled as LMC, sketch (pt1) and the follow up post as LMC sketch, pt 2.
From where I finished off part 2, I had made preparations
for a practice sketch of the LMC using a found image from the internet. As the view through the telescope would be of
a narrower field of view than what the found image was of the LMC, I made a
mask from dark cardboard that approximated the field of view provided by the
telescope/eyepiece combination that also approximated the scale of the image on
the screen. This was an attempt to
familiarise myself with the sort of technical complications I would encounter
out in the field sketching such a massive object.
Below is a picture of that experimental sketch. It is immediately obvious that the scale of
the sketch is too small for the size of paper I am using. At first I was annoyed by this, but it then
became apparent that it was actually a blessing in disguise! Now having some experience with trying to
depict the sheer size of the LMC, I saw not only the restriction that this
masked image presented to my eye in terms of the depiction on the paper, but
that I needed to make a conscious decision from where I would start the actual
piece, and the liberty/freedom of movement to give myself at the page – it is
such a large sheet that I do not need to be so precious with the depiction.
A few weeks ago I was able to make a start on the actual
piece. As mentioned in pt 1, I am using
a 100mm f/5 achromatic refractor with a 30mm 82° eyepiece. The transparency of the night was fabulous,
with the Tarantula Nebula in the LMC being not only very easy to see, but I
could also make out some detail. But I
also knew I had limited time to work as cloud cover was expected to roll in
late in the evening.
I decided to use the spur where the Tarantula Nebula is as
my starting point. What the test sketch
showed me was the massive extensions of this dwarf barred spiral galaxy
has. So starting at one end of the
dominant Bar, laying down its position and size, I then had the skeleton of the
LMC to not only develop the rest of the structure, but when I was able to
continue with the sketch out in the field, I had the necessary scale,
structures and luminosity to continue.
With the sketch, I followed the normal way I start all my
pieces while using the Mellish Technique.
I started with a soft spot of the Tarantula and then continued with a
soft depiction of the bar. Then I
continued by giving the Tarantula some depth and detail and also the Bar. Once I had the nebulosity of the Tarantula
and the Bar, I continued with the soft extensions of the disk. Above you can see the result of the first two
hours of work. It might not seem like
much, but the scale of the piece fits really nicely with the size of the page. The nebulous extensions are actually quite
detailed even without the stars being noted.
And so much of the structure of the LMC can be traced out when compared
to photographs of it.
Those two hours also showed me that much of the brilliance
comes from the multitude of individual star clusters. It is these clusters that give the LMC its
telescopic brilliance. There are
literally thousands of individual deep sky objects within the LMC: open and globular clusters, supernova
remnants, planetary nebulae, emission nebula, dark nebulae, all pushing their
own stories.
Incidentally, both of the above photos were taken at the
same scale. The sketches were mounted on
the sketch platform that I made which explains the shadows on the top part of
the photos.
I am hoping to have an opportunity to sketch some more of
the LMC in late May. Otherwise the
window of opportunity will be closed until later in the year when it once again
comes into more favourable timing at night.
Alex.
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