Pastel over Ink : What I Saw in the Moonlight landscape drawing

 

first time playing with pastel in a good long time, used this paper, Canson Dry Mixed Media Sand Grain natural sand colored paper.   I was trying to catch an effect I saw in the moonlight last night with the shadows of the trees that I couldn't 'see' in plain ink or colored pencil.. it felt 'smudgy'.. which to me meant pastel.

I started out with a bluish-green ink brush to get started washing in shadows - then went over with pastel

 

This is what I wish it had stayed looking like, but the pastel fixative darkens the colors and mattes out the blacks... so I went back with a little bit of brush technical pen ink and darkened back up the blacks

 

finished:

'What I Saw in the Moonlight' - Marie Lamb - November 19, 2021

Pink April Moon drawing

It was supposed to be a pink supermoon last night, the pink moon of April.  I went out to take a good look, and knew that everything I was seeing was not going to be captured on a camera.  But, as I watched the orange fireflies rise and blink, and the clouds race across the moon, turning white to grey to indigo blue in places, I said : 'My eyes are my camera right now.'

I looked at what was the most important to capture.  The feathery way the dark black trees appeared in the light.  The blue permeating through the sky beneath and between the branches.. the bits of pink and blue in the sky around the moon and the clear halo of light with edges of yellow permeating out in circles.

Then I tried to capture it with my pencils and pen.

I know not everyone sees all the colors in the first place, or the way the light shimmers and effects.  Some of it is probably my synesthesia.  But, as much as I have tried to capture visually does bring back the scene to me 'physically'... so even if the drawing is just for myself, I like it.

Newspaper, moon, and singing

A bit nearsighted...


So, find any cars yet?

She doesn't know a lot of words yet, so this is mostly pretend. Notice the newspaper is upside-down? Ha. She does like to pick out the letters, though, and make comments about the pictures. Daddy says watch out, she'll want to buy the Ford.

Notes:
I am still constantly amazed by the fact that Esme knows the moon no matter what phase it is in. When we are out in the garden sometimes, she also takes care to see if she can see the moon and/or the sun in the sky and tell me where they are. Whether it is a small thumbnail of a crescent or a full circle, she has always known that it is not something different, just the same thing looking a little different. She understands it is the moon even in the daytime. She has not *yet* asked me why it changes - or why it moves, but she knows that it does and spends time observing it.

To think back, she has almost always been able to see it from our windows - as we have windows all around the main room of our house. She has been able to see it from her bed at night and has woken me in the middle of the night in recent memory to talk to me about it.

I am reminded of all of this by something she did at Grandma's today. She had Grandma's flashlight (which I told her was for Grandma to watch out for big brown bears outside at night) and put it on the floor switched on and so the light was facing the floor. It 'glowed' and Esme called it the moon. She had a toy sheep and told it and us to come look at the moon. She had been playing that game the other day with the real moon. She was showing her toys that they could see the moon out the window near the door. Each toy would say 'oh I see it - it is so pretty' or something similar. Then the toy would go get another toy and show the moon to the next toy.. and so on, and so on. Then the next morning she still wanted to play the game - but it was daylight. She held up a silver round button out of her button collection to her baby mouse toy and played again that he was looking at the moon. After that she found a round white translucent button and told the mouse that it was the sun, so hot, be careful. It may just be coincidence but she was also holding the 'moon' on one side of the desk and the 'sun' on the other side. How much is coincidence, and how much is just instinctual observation? She surprises me so often.

//The other day I was in the post office for a LONG time. I mean long. I was trying to do international registered mail, and there is a lot that they require for that. Mark was singing the 'Go down to the river' from the soundtrack of O Brother Where art Thou, which was playing on our CD system. Esme was telling him 'no no no' and would not sing with him at all. I did not know what she was complaining about - what song had been playing etc.. Mark just said she didn't feel like singing. Later on (same day or not, can't remember) we were out in the garden and picking tomatoes and I hear Esme singing something and am trying to make out the words 'go don ta'da'ribber to play, stubbying about that ga'da way, and wear rose and crown and down to the ribber to play...oh sidders, let's go don..' I had to focus in and really think - because she was missing every other word and getting softer as she realized I was listening. Now we are working on the words and she is proud she knows some of the song ;) Other songs she is working on: 'I'm a sweet little bird in a gilden cage' (Tweety) and George of the Jungle (which she thinks is about Curious George) and Jingle Bells, which I hear almost daily. Farmer in the Dell is still a daily occurrence and I'm hearing more Happy Birthday, mostly sung to toys.

//also before I forget - a few weeks before that we were also picking tomatoes and she was singing 'I wish I had a robot friend' from South Park. *roll eyes* She made me pretend to be Awesome-o the robot while she was Butters. We have no reception on our TV, only a DVD collection, which she has mostly memorized. Match that with her telling me I can't 'take her beer' when I took a drink of the Sprite can we were sharing at the flea market. You might tell we have a huge Simpsons collection to get that one. Neither Mark nor I drink canned beer at ALL... and she often tells me she is Homer Simpson, or Bart, or Maggie, or rarely Lisa. She said she was Homer when she was floating in her green pool ring and that she was eating donuts. And she now calls her red baseball cap her 'lucky red cap' and says she is Bart when she wears it. I'm not complaining - there is much much worse she could be watching, and considering the amount of 'real world' interaction she gets otherwise, she has to learn some of that somewhere... or she'll not realize that some people ARE mean to each other, like last year when she let a younger child smack her right in the face and didn't even think to defend herself. She never imagined someone would ever do that to her. :( poor girl. Daddy and I have had to put up with a little of 'I don't love you' and 'I'm going away' from her lately, too.. but she always shows she is just trying it out and seeing what we are going to say about it. She is overall an extremely sweet and compassionate child with a lot of patience and focus when she wants to have them. Moreso, I think, than many her age.

//Grandma had some sproutable wheat berries in her freezer from 2008. I made an educated guess it was hard red winter wheat. Grandma gave us some, thank you! I tried out a small amount in a plot square in the garden. I have some coming in the mail in a bit and will decide what to do with that when it comes, based on what this does. Also, the knitted blanket reached 'halfway' last night. It is now half the size of the Indian patterned blanket I always wear around my shoulders when it is cold.