[Paddy (Patrick)]

I've often heard about people sketching at the telescope and this has seemd a worthy way of increasing one's observational skills. I've always shied away from it due to a long standing deficiency of skill with a pencil and paper. Finally bit the bullet the other night, drawing some OC/nebulae in LMC and some of the Arp peculiar galaxies. I was pretty chuffed when I compared the faint galaxy that I'd been drawing to the phot in "The Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies" and saw how much detail I'd picked up. So I'd like to keep doing this.

But I wonder about how others go about this. It was a windy night, which compicated things a tad, but even on a still night, it seems a lot of farting around getting the image in one's mind, turning from the eyepiece to a pad balanced on a knee, putting on the reading glasses, turning on the red headlamp, finding which pencil is the B vs HBsketching a bit and then turning off the light, taking off the glasses etc etc etc.

Do those of you who sketch a lot have some special tricks that you'd like to share, either in set up, what pencils to use for what, or how to actually compose sketches etc? Are there old IIS threads on the subject?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.