Gassendi is my favourite crater due to its many varied features. This
crater has it all, with central peaks, craterlets, internal rilles,
and a breached crater wall where the Sea of Moisture has flooded in.
It also borders onto a rough highland region. You can spend a lot of
time just taking in the whole view let alone trying to sketch it. In
fact the biggest problem that one faces when doing lunar sketches has to
be deciding on the level of detail to include. Sketch was done April
30/2004 using graphite pencils, black ink and whiteout on white
paper. Telescope was a 6″ Maksutov Newtonian with binoviewer 20mm
eyepieces and 2x barlow.
Gerry Smerchanski
Teulon, Manitoba, Canada
Gerry,
Magnificent sketch of a famous lunar crater.
And let me take this opportunity to say to you Frank, how much I enjoyed you sketch of the crater Kepler on Cloudy Nights. Gassendi and Kepler have similar longitudes and I find myself spending too much time with the former and not enough time with the latter. Hopefully I will attempt a sketch of it in the near future. I see you are are of the white on black school of sketching–what do you consider its agvantages over black on white? I have been tempted to give in to the ‘dark side’ myself but I have yet to go over.
Gerry, Thanks. I haven’t been on the ‘dark side’ for very long. I had difficulty at first, then suddenly I got it. I find the white on black easier to control, modify, erase. I feel I’m drawing what is illuminated more than what is in darkness.
If you make a sketch of Kepler in any manner it will be a great success you are an excellent artist.