Flowering Tree In Pastels

Flowering Tree in Pastels

went onto my liked posts to find something specific but ill be damned if i dont post 20 other things from there lol

Really makes you think about how we perceive history and historical places especially. Because in truth a LOT of places like this that are centuries or even thousands of years old have had restorations sometime in the last 200 years or so. But in a way yeah that is just another layer of history to learn about (and from).

Even if u leave the places alone completely they’ll still decay and rust. They will never look exactly like they did in their time and that’s part of their charm! Like the history of the building or site itself is well… history of course.

American archaeologists, in cooperation with the Mexican government, reconstructed Chichen Itza according to the standards of the 1920s, which were not as painstaking as today's standards. Perhaps the biggest excavation job was the Temple of the Warrior, which was an overgrown mound when the archaeologists began. Here it is mid-excavation in 1925:

Over the next few years, masons worked to rebuild the temple as the archaeologists thought it should look:

By 1928, it looked like this:

Two sides of the famous "El Castillo" were similarly rebuilt.

The other half of it was left mostly unrestored:

Some observers think that Chichen Itza is a sham, a pseudo-historical confection constructed more to wow the tourists than to honor history (this website sums up the “it’s a fake!” argument pretty well).

But, like every site, Chichen Itza probably doesn’t have a “pure” or “authentic” state. It changed repeatedly over the years when it was one of the most important cities in Mesoamerica. It’s still changing today. The reconstruction in the 1920s certainly didn’t follow modern standards of archaeological precision. But now the changes of the 1920s are just another layer of history, laid on top of centuries more.

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}

“What was I made for?”

Went on a bike ride yesterday through the countryside with my bf. Not before I spent over an hour putting the wheel back in place on his bike (that I was borrowing) lol. It was definitely worth it tho going outside in the sunny weather, surrounded by nature, and seeing stunning views of the fields and the river. We went past some apple orchards at one point and my boyfriend ate one lmao 🍎😨

Recently he bought some oil pastels which I’ve been wanting to try out, and today I did! I drew this tree in his sketchbook from a photo he took, which I would show for comparison but it’s on his phone. The tree’s flowers were actually purple and pink (dont tell anyone), but we didn’t have those pastels lol! So I had to make do with red flowers instead - I did try adding blue and white to them but it didn’t really work.

All in all tho I’m very happy with how it turned out. This style of art is very different to what I’ve posted, I know, but it’s actually more similar to some of my recent stuff. So look forward to seeing more like this in the future :)

Flowering Tree in Pastels

Ada Limón, “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa”

The poem will be engraved on the Clipper, along with participants' names that will be etched onto microchips mounted on the spacecraft. Together, the poem and participant’s names will travel 1.8 billion miles on Europa Clipper’s voyage to the Jupiter system.

If you would like to have your name engraved on the Clipper, you can sign up at NASA.