New Drawing Template

Not too long back I started making an effort to sketch what I was seeing when observing. The point of the sketches wasn't really to produce any sort of work of art &mdash it was more about trying to get me to slow down at the eyepiece and actually observe what I was looking at. Also, if I was unsure of what I was looking at, a sketch was a good way of recording the view for later checking (as has happened here and here).

Because I used a lined notebook for keeping notes I needed to provide something blank on which to draw so, when I started out, I simply created an A4 template in the drawing program in OpenOffice, printed a couple of sheets out and cut them up. When I've made a drawing I simply stick it into the appropriate place in my notebook. The template was nothing more than six circles on an A4 sheet of paper.

However, having seen the efforts of Jeff Stevens this morning I was inspired to make something that looked a little nicer and which would be easier to scan and crop. So, again, using the drawing tool in OpenOffice I've now created a new set of templates. It'll be interesting to try them out and see how I get on with them.

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Astronomy, drawing, templates, OpenOffice