sketching advice.

[rory]

calling all sketching dudes, im wanting to get a couple of pens for doing the field stars, but dont know what to order ? any suggestions from the sketching community would be gratefully recieved. ive seen pens mentioned before but cant find the posts now.

im an artist newbie and have no clue.

[Capricorn]

I cannot draw a straight line with a ruler, however much better chance if this was duplicated in the section:

Imaging - Sketches and Unconventional

Say duplicated as most will possibly read here then the sketching section.

[Mike73]

Must be loads of options for black ink pens but keep away from the Pilot pens which put a dirty great blob of ink on the paper when you press too hard!!

[rory]

yeah, i didnt want to post questions on the imaging and sketching , i thought it was more for the actual posting of sketch results.

mike, im unsure what to order, i was looking at 0.5mm artist pen, but wanted some input before ordering the wrong gear.

if the mod's think it might benefit moving to another section, i dont mind.

[Mike73]

Cant really help as I use this white pen but anything similar with a nice fine nib should do, 0.5 sounds good.

[brantuk]

Have a read of Carol Lakomiaks regular sketching column in SaN. She puts a lot of detail in to how to draw stuff including choice of pens/pencils and gradings. I'm not a sketch artist myself but her advice is really very good and thorough

[LukeSkywatcher]

Carols sketching skill really are amazing.

[scarp15]

I haven't tried this yet myself, but if (when) I did I would favour pen and ink, combined with acrylic titanium white or tipex.

[Qualia]

I usually spend about ten to twenty minutes just looking at the object and I try averted vision, telescope tapping and just letting the object drift. I often find that most detail is captured when the object slides into upper left field.

I have experimented with many different drawing implements: chalk, brushes, pastels, charcoal and when out in the field, I find that fine black or blue fiber tip pens are the best. They work nicely and show up better in my dim red light.

To create the eyepiece circle, I use the plastic CD that comes with packs of blank CDs.

When plotting stars, for example, you’ll need some kind of way to capture limiting magnitude and colour at the eyepiece. You can try doing big stars for bright and small stars for faint, but often, when you’re actually outside in the dark, that is easier said than done.

Here, I have found a code to be useful. I put a little f next to the faintest stars, a y if I see it yellow, a g if it has a golden hue to it, etc.

You may also find yourself making notes at this stage and that is excellent, my rough sketches are covered in arrows, thoughts, little observations, shorthand scribbles.

These sketches and notes I leave in my ring-binder but if I fancy doing one of my ‘blogs’ for SGL I will trace the positions of the stars onto another sheet of paper and I do this with soft and hard pencils. The image is then scanned and tidied or coloured (if necessary) with a free software program.

I hope this kind of gives an idea to work on.

[rory]

thanks Qualia, i'll check me out some fibre tip pens. i like your idea of notes by stars,trouble is im doing my finished sketches at the telescope there and then,im not doing a rough copy first. but imight change this now.

cheers and clear skies...

[rory]

bit of practice with a plain old biro and pencils.

[Mike73]

Yep that looks spot on Rory, really good.

[Tyr]

Have a read of Carol Lakomiaks regular sketching column in SaN. She puts a lot of detail in to how to draw stuff including choice of pens/pencils and gradings. I'm not a sketch artist myself but her advice is really very good and thorough

I was doing a little searching online for basic sketching advice myself recently and discovered some of her tutorials are hosted here by the Royal Canadian Astronomical Soc http://rasc.ca/news/...ketching-rascca might be worth a look for you Rory.

I've been trying to do a few sketches recently but I'm have trouble with judging proportion, so things come out bigger on the paper than they appear in the EP. I think there's a reason I was only ever able to get a C in art back at school.

I might get the tracking mount out again to see if it's easier when I don't need to manually track the objects too.

Tyr

[rory]

thanks tyr. i admit i tend to over size objects abit too.

[ronnietucker]

I usually use coloured paper with a charcoal pencil (for black to grey) and a white pastel pencil (for white to grey) with either my finger or a piece of kitchen roll for blending. One of my sketches, with a link to the video of me drawing it, is here: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/150950-the-moon-charcoal-and-white-pastel/

[rory]

i like the idea of sketching white on to black paper simlar to mike73's set up. my converting to neg image from pencil sketch always comes out poor. i think ive got a xmas list now , i think a black artist pad and some pastels is more realistic than asking for a 14"dob and a fistful of televue's

[darrenbushnalluk]

I have always used the pilot pens and they have always been perfect.