moon

I See the Moon

The other night I went out toward sunset – checked the electronic almanac called my phone – taking a beautiful old lens, the Vivitar Series 1 24-48mm, and the Df. I set everything up manually and shot a number of pictures to make a panorama of the crescent moon and oak tree silhouetted against the remaining daylight. I was in the golden hour, moving into the blue hour. The first image below is the pano, uncropped but reduced in size, and the following are variations in cropping and post processing. Click on the pictures to see them full size. This lens is beautifully sharp.

Retrospective Introspection

Admittedly I have been feeling rather sorry for myself. I get like this when I have no time to sit down and think about life and what I want to do with it. Thursday I walked into my office at work and was just unable to make choices as to what to pursue next. Oh, there were a lot of things to be done, but it seemed just so overwhelming and the mere act of choosing what to do was impossible. The best thing to do in these circumstances – for me, at least – is to sit down with paper and pen and begin to write. Five pages later, the world was in order once more.

Writing is therapeutic. It’s like the pensieve of the Harry Potter stories. I pull out thoughts and ideas and frustrations, and when they are all placed onto paper, there is structure found amidst the chaos.

Painting is much the same process as writing; however, I often feel pulled into different directions. I never focus on one style. The consistent factor is my use of water-soluble media and paper, but other than that, I don’t have a particular style. Consequently, I am not as accomplished as I would like to be in watercolor. I like many of my ink paintings and the simpler watercolors that are based on sumi-e. Traditional watercolors are often disastrous failures. Acrylic paints are not my favorite medium, but there are times when I have used them to create more graphic pictures.

Today, I went through my hard drive to look at some of the paintings I have scanned or photographed over the past year or two, and pulled out some which appealed to me for whatever reason – sort of a retrospective of the work of the last few years. Here they are, not in any particular order, but just for me and anyone who wants to look at them to see and consider.

The Moon in Ink Painting

In most western paintings, the moon is painted full, large and overwhelming. In Japanese scrolls, the moon is shown in all its phases. Waxing. Waning. Gibbous. Full. Crescent. Quarter. In fog. Alone in the sky. Through the trees.

The fact is, to paint the moon full is very simple! Catching its other shapes and moods is not so easy. I’ve tried to paint the moon over the years, attempting to catch a quality or mood in a few strokes. I’ll leave it to you to judge.