Painting a solar filament

I haven't done much painting since moving back to Hawaii. I'm not sure why, other than that I just haven't felt very motivated to do it; perhaps because it started as something of a social activity in Australia and I haven't replicated that feeling here. However, back in May, the Astronomy Picture of the Day website had an image of the Sun from the Solar Dynamics Observatory which really inspired me. It showed the limb of the Sun with a filament stretching out from behind it towards the foreground, which gave it a strong sense of three-dimensionality – something often lacking in astronomical images. I thought I'd take a shot at painting something like it, leading to the painting below:

Solar Filament, 12"×18", acrylic on canvas.

I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out – especially when comparing to the infinitely more dynamic and vibrant inspiration – but I've learned that sometimes it's best just to draw a line under something, take the lessons learned, and move on, rather than striving in vain for perfection. Though for being the first moderately intricate thing I've painted in a few years now, I'm also not too unhappy with it. I learned (and relearned!) multiple things about painting while working on it, which I'm sure will come in handy the next time I feel like painting a star.

I tried to replicate the colors from the reference images somewhat, such as having the hottest parts of the surface be white. It didn't quite come out like I'd hoped, which actually characterizes a fair amount of my color-mixing experiments over the course of this painting – but in the process I remembered how much fun it is mix colors, to arrange them as I like, and the physical application of paint on a surface. Speaking of surfaces, that's one thing I think did go well: before coloring the Sun, I laid down a thin layer of flexible modeling past, then lightly tapped all over it with my finger to create an appropriately fractal, rough surface. (I later realized I should've done something similar where the filament goes beyond the solar limb and had to improvise with some stiff paint, but that's part of the learning process!)

In-progress image showing the texture on the Sun's surface.

I thought about using glass beads like some of my previous stars, but it didn't quite feel right for this painting, and I think that was right call in the end. Overall, I'm happy enough with it to share it here, and it has reminded me of the simple joy of painting. I don't know what I'll paint next, or when, but I do have a few ideas rattling around in my head, so we'll see where things go. A hui hou!

Windy wet weather

This weekend was wet and windy as the center of tropical storm/hurricane Hone passed just to the south of the island. (It upgraded in status a short while before its closest approach.) According to the 48-hour rainfall map I saw Hilo got about 8-10 inches, so the rivers have been running high. After work yesterday I drove up to Waiʻale Falls, and found the lighting rather evocative above the raging river:

Waiʻale Falls, swollen with recent rain.

Thankfully, damage was fairly minor within Hilo from what I've seen. Around 5,000 people lost power according to HECO, but that seems to have been mostly outside Hilo in more rural areas, and all but about 400 had it restored by this morning. I heard a transformer blow not too far away (it made a tremendous noise), but never lost power. We've got another storm (Gilma) projected to pass by north of this island later this week (perhaps hitting the rest of the chain more square-on), but it was just downgraded from a hurricane in the last day or so and is expected to get weaker and not cause any significant effects here. All just part of hurricane season in Hawaii!

In other news, I found out last week that I didn't get the Gemini telescope operator job; from the message I got they went with someone currently working as a telescope operator, which certainly makes a lot of sense. That's pretty much the last nail in the coffin for me sticking on with Gemini, so I've been adjusting to that. I'm still waiting to hear back from the other two interviews I had, despite sending some gently querying emails about a week ago. I know things can move slowly, and no news can be good news at this stage, but I'm a bit surprised not to have heard anything. Still, not much to do for it except wait (and maybe see about putting in some more applications…). A hui hou!