Directions for Painting a Starry Night
- 1). Prime a stretched canvas with acrylic gesso for an oil or acrylic painting of a starry night. Tone the gesso to a darker value by mixing in some black, or Payne's gray for a darker background. Stir up the gesso and paint in a container. Brush on a thick coat, let it dry and sand it smooth. Apply several successively thinner layers of gesso by adding a little more water to each coat. Sand between each coat.
- 2). Visit the spot you wish to paint during the daytime. Pick a place with an open view of the sky. Sketch compositions for the overall design of the starry night painting. Draw details and make thumbnail sketches of the surrounding landscape elements. Come back on a clear night to observe the stars and work them into the picture's composition. Notice how the colors look at night, and make tonal sketches of the scene.
- 3). Use your reference drawings to compose and draw the painting's design on the canvas. Go to the scene after dark and set up an easel. Use a battery-powered light to illuminate the canvas and palette. Cover the entire canvas with a coat of dark blue or purple toned colors. Block in the landscape elements with patches of dark colors. Establish the picture's light and dark tonal structure with the first layers of paint.
- 4). Brush on cool blue tones such as Prussian and Phthalo blue to emphasize the feeling of darkness. Work from dark to light on the painting. Establish the dominance of darkness, then paint the stars and their emitted light as highlights. Intensify the contrast between the light stars and the dark sky by using complementary colors. Paint the stars with strokes of light orange and yellow against a purplish-blue night sky.
- 5). Use heavy, descriptive brush strokes to paint the sky with textures and impasto effects. Silhouette dark shapes and forms, such as trees, people, hills or buildings against the lighter sky. Paint the sky in graded tones progressing from dark to light. Work up a contrasting relationship between the sky and ground tones for a convincing night-time look. Incorporate some water into the painting and brush in reflections of light from the stars.