AUGUST SUPERMOON WITH OPERA PINK

On the Sunday night (August 11th 2014) of the Charfest (see previous post) we were sitting around the camp fire when the largest full moon of the year slowly climbed through the beech and conifer woodland curtain. Light crept along the nearby forest ride and trees lit up as if with candles. On August 11, the moon approached within 221,800 miles of Earth. It is a perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system (perigee: closest point of an elliptical orbit; syzygy: straight line made of three bodies in a gravitational system). The moon did appear larger although apparently the difference is small to a casual observer. I chose not to paint the moon- I was called out to the way its light draped the woods with an enchantment. I worked with gouache and earth from beneath in the kind of conditions that make it difficult to see which tubes of paint one is opening...hence Opera Pink.