Northward

 

February sunsets

3/9/23 sunrise

It’s time to catch up on my skyscapitos from the past couple of months. The only sunrise here is from early March (at right) before we set the clocks ahead. Now the sun comes up too early for me to catch – which is more than OK with me! I love and appreciate this time of year when the days grow only longer.

Meanwhile, I’ve caught several good sundowns, which literally illustrate for me a principle that I understand intellectually, but sketching drives home the point like no science book can: As we get closer to the summer Solstice, the sun moves further and further north (relative to our Earth-centric view). When I sketch, I always look for the spot where the colors are most intense around the sun. Since my tiny skyscapitos cover a narrow area, different things get in my way as the year goes on – first a power pole, then part of a tree, and now it’s the rooftop of a house to our west. Until I began sketching sunsets at periodic intervals, I was not visibly aware of its movement across the sky.

As always, sketching teaches me things that I didn’t know I wasn’t aware of until I became aware.

February and March sunsets

3/29/23 Sunset