Earthshine

Best seen during Crescent Moon phases (the one to five day period before or after a New Moon), Earthshine is caused by direct sunlight on the earth that reflects onto the Moon which creates the smoky glow of the shadowed portion of the moon.

After sunset tonight, take a peek at the sky to see Venus, the Crescent Moon and Earthshine for your very own. Venus will be to the lower left tonight.  Happy viewing and hopefully journaling!!

Water containers for journaling on the spot...

I've been experimenting with our friend Richard Sheppard's great idea of using palette cups for travel sketching.  (If you haven't seen his Flickr, it's here--have fun!)

Richard is the author of The Artist on the Road: Impressions of Greece and if you love travel journals AND bright fresh watercolors, you'll enjoy this one as much as I did!  It's in my permanent collection now...

You can see that the cups, either single metal ones or double plastic, here, will clip to several types of palettes...

An added advantage here is that the clip itself raises the mixing area so that it's much flatter, when laid on a firm, flat surface (you still need to watch spilling if you're holding this in your hand by the loop on the back though...)

It will fit on my old folding plastic palette, too...very versatile!  Of course these don't hold much water, even the double ones, so if you're painting larger than, say, 7" x 10" you're going to want a source of more.  I like the doubles because I have a source for mixing and a source for rinsing my brush...if I remember which one to dip into!

I used the single metal cup and my small palette when doing this double spread in my current journal, and it worked great!  (Too bad I didn't remember to shoot my painting setup!)

Here's Richard's own kit, beautifully done in his signature style:

Thanks for the inspiration, Richard!