Moon Light

Having just passed the Spring Equinox (March 20th), the Sun and Moon vie for dominance in the evening sky. On this day, the last of the Sun’s rays were glowing in the upper atmosphere reflecting a dull eerie light. A crescent Moon cast shadows and distant street lighting sparkled through the gloom.

Its amazing how differently we perceive a ‘Moon scape’ when compared to how the camera captures it. The photograph never records what we think we see. For example, to the unaided eye the Moon near the horizon is huge and as it rises appears to shrink in size. A multi-exposure photograph shows the Moon does not appear smaller as it rises into the sky. In fact without a bit of photographic expertise the Moon will appear no bigger than a star.

Also, in low light levels, we don’t see colour. Our eyes trade off colour vision in favour of a sharp monochrome image. A ‘Moon scape’ is very much a work of the imagination. The artist, painter or photographer, must manipulate the image to match what we think we see in a Moon-lit landscape. To a greater or lesser extent, every ‘realistic’ landscape, day or night, has to be manipulated to fit the way we ‘think’ the world is.

4 colours used this time. The 3 primaries, red, yellow, blue are Burnt Sienna, Winsor Lemon Yellow, Cerulean Blue. In this painting I needed a good purple. Purple is a red/blue mix. My red/blue mix from Burnt Sienna and Cerulean Blue is a bad purple, so Dioxazine Purple is used.

Here’s the video of the painting process. See you soon.