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 "Moon Thoughts" Not much to add here, the sketch says it all. I guess I was feeling down because my back was still hurting a lot and there’s just something about looking at the glowing moon at night when I’m alone that sort of depresses me. But doing a little poem and sketch really changes my mood, can’t help but think about good things when you start to paint.
A fun thing to do in your journal is sketch the moon and clouds then add colors. I added these colors the next day after studying how the darks and lights looked. Sometimes it’s nice to paint (color) something later, you can be more expressive with color or design.
Here’s the small poem in case it’s hard for you to read:
“The moon rises up
through the black fingers
of clouds,
stretched across the frozen
Deep
Night sky.”
Mary McAndrew
ps. I keep trying to do my physical therapy exercises everyday, sometimes I miss a day but I do try to get out for walks with Ginger and she really likes that! I believe you just have to keep moving!
 It was a full moon a few nights before, so tonight as I saw the glow of the moon trying to come to fruition behind the clouds…I was hopeful of some good moon gazing. Hmmm….no such luck. It started to show promise as I saw a curious yellow glow in the clouds, so I grabbed my tiny Altoids watercolor kit, my reading light and very small watercolor field kit.
I set up in my bathroom where it’s extra dark when the door is closed and tried to paint quickly in the dark. I didn’t have anything to put my piece of paper on, so I held the little thing in my hand and the watercolor kit also; it was not a great set up but I was in a hurry!
Yes, it was quite dark, I could hardly see the colors I was using but I wanted to really see the moon and didn’t want the distraction of the light. So as it slipped quickly away behind a dark veil of clouds, I just painted from memory and it was ok. It’s only after when you turn on the lights and let the colors and wetness finish their ‘melding’ that you’ll see what you’ve got. It’s kind of fun! This one is only 3.5″x2.5″ on watercolor paper.
Sometimes it’s hard to be an artist. Let me explain, I have been thinking about how much I want to try to paint the moon at night, in the dark using a tiny light. I’ve never done it before so the other night when the moon was streaming through my window, I had to get back out of bed and go to the studio to get my paints!! Yes…it’s difficult to be an artist, but fun!!  For the above painting I used liquid mask to block the moon, which I don’t use much but wanted to play with. Then I worked wet into wet with the colors. Now keep in mind I said before I wanted to work in the dark so I could see the moon still, so I took a tiny reading light and clipped it onto my neck collar of my t-shirt. (Um…did anyone ever tell you artists were kind of nuts? haha) I pointed the light down at my painting, it was a neat experiment.
 Above you can see my tiny watercolor kit I put together. On the left is a pack of assorted brushes that I cut the handles down on so they are smaller and fit in my field bag, above that is the reading light. In the center is my field kit of watercolors that I have tucked into a tiny Altoids tin, I use the lid for mixing my colors. Above the kit is a plastic vitamin bottle that I use for water; I like this container because I can get my brushes down into it for swishing around, but it also fits in my waterbottle holder that I can put around my waist for field work. And next to all that, on the far right is a new little invention of mine, it’s a tiny cigar case my friend Mark gave me. I told him I like little containers to play around with for field stuff….I know, I sound like a little kid! Well….if you don’t think creatively and play, you don’t think of great ideas!
 I cut up little squares of watercolor paper to fit inside the cigar case, it holds about 14 sheets of paper, I also put in some bristol board to play with. The sheets measure only 3 1/2″ x 3″….kind of fun to work on if you keep it simple. I then took two paper clips and bent them so they go over the edge and hold down the paper while you work. You can see how tiny the kit is as it fits right into my hand! Below is the tiny moon painting I did, I like it!! For this one I didn’t use liquid mask and it show the moon for how it really was, it wasn’t full like I showed above. I hope you enjoyed my post about my experimental moon painting! Remember I did it in the dark, it was fun! I will bring this kit with me when I travel to England and Ireland and play around with it. Please let me know what you think and leave me a comment!
 Last night I went out at 10pm to catch the Lunar Eclipse. I bundled up as warm as I could, I brought my Canon 20D on a tripod, my tiny Olympus FE230 in my pocket and so I could see what I was doing with settings on my camera, I little reading light that I clipped to my coat near my neck. Um…yeah, I looked like a total photo geek~haha.
The sky had clouds coming and going, passing over the moon then totally clear for long ranges of time. I just couldn’t get over the beauty, solitude and peace the stars, moon, clouds and trees gave. I stood ‘night’ dreaming about how it would be to watch these same stars in Ireland or England; are my friends there looking at them too? Then I wondered if I could go there and longed to be there…as these feelings were on me, I saw a huge shooting star, right where I was looking to the North!! It went right into the cup of the Big Dipper, no kidding! I was so excited. This was between taking pictures of the moon and trees, I couldn’t believe how bright and starry it was. Then as the excitement ebbed, I felt another emotion of loneliness. Sometimes when I look at a vast night sky with gorgeous stars, such a special moon and clouds, I have a feeling of infinite aloneness. These same stars have had countless people not unlike myself, over thousands of years, gazing up in wonder, perhaps feeling lonely too. My warrior “Orian” stands above my house waiting to follow me on my journeys.
 Today I talked to my very talented photographer friend Gene Witkowski, who is also an avid Astronomy buff. I told Gene that the moon looked like it was part of a big S, he told me it is in the lower part of Leo. Leo being the ‘backwards question mark’. In my first large picture you can see a star directly over the moon, that’s ‘Regularus’ (in Leo) and the bright star to the lower left is not a star at all but Saturn! Saturn moves so slow that it takes 2 years to go around the sun, so it will be a part of a constellation for awhile.
 Gene told me an interesting story about Christopher Columbus and a Lunar Eclipse. I guess when Columbus and his crew landed here in the Americas, they started to run out of food. This was a serious problem obviously, they were in dire straights. He had seen in his star charts that there would be a Lunar Eclipse. So he told the local Indians that he would make the moon disappear if they didn’t feed him and his men. They didn’t believe him until the moon disappeared!! So they gave them food and it is what saved their lives.
Moral of the story I guess is be learned, be aware of the changes of nature around you, it could save your life! Hmmm…I wish more people would pay attention to nature and what’s going on with it.
 
 Last night when I went into my upstairs bedroom, it was very dark but for the tremendous light coming in from the window! The moon was so bright. I always look out my bathroom window at the moon at night because it’s very dark if I close the door, and I can open the top of my window and take pictures without a screen in the way. I ran and got my camera and took these pictures, all handheld. It looks as bright as day. The first photo, (horizontal) shows a great glow from the town below, reflected, bounced light. If you look close at the right you can see a light spectrum from the ground going up towards the moon, purple at the bottom and going through the spectrum like a rainbow. Very cool!
The second photo is interesting because the clouds were moving, which gave great depth to the picture. I think it looks like a wolf on the left, looking up at the moon and his paw stretched out. On the right it looks like a woman figure, angel?, witch? her arm is bent and the moon looks like her face, she’s looking down at the wolf. What do you think?
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