Painting Evening and Night Skies

Original oil painting by Jean 2017

I have just finished teaching a four week course on painting evening and night skies.  The class was packed and the atmosphere was both boisterous at times and also silent with avid concentration at other times. 

Firstly we looked at colour mixes for night skies with each student mixing up their own variations and then we moved onto to warmer and brighter evening sky mixes.  For the actual paintings themselves the students used their own photographs which I always recommend as you invest more into the subject matter. 

As always there was a mix of beginners and intermediates. The painting above is Jean's fifth painting and her very first painting in oils.  I am sure you will agree that it is a fantastic painting as are the rest of the group's wonderful work.  Please take a moment to look at their wonderful paintings below:

Original oil painting by Simonne 2017

Original oil painting by Kevin 2017

Original pastel painting by Mandy 2017

Original oil painting by Cathy 2017

Original acrylic painting by Julie 2017

Original oil painting by Diana 2017

Original pastel painting by Mandy 2017

Original oil painting by Meryel 2017

Unfinished painting by Maria 2017

Original watercolour painting by Tere 2017

Original watercolour painting by Tere 2017

Original acrylic painting by Julie 2017

Unfinished oil painting by John 2017

Original oil painting by Meryel 2017

Original oil painting by Liz 2017

Thank you to all the students who made the course successful and for allowing me to share their work on my blog.  As you can see all the paintings are very good in their own right even those that are still unfinished.  A special mention goes to Geoff whose work is not shown here.  

If you would like to join one of my art classes please use the contact form on this blog and I will get back to you asap.  New courses coming up will be starting in January/February 2018! I will post the details of upcoming courses next month.

Happy Painting!!

Lee 🎨

Painting Night Skies - May 2017



Laraine painting her night sky composition

This was the first time I had run a course on painting night skies.  As research beforehand i took photographs of coloured pieces of card at different times on a sunny day starting at 10am and ending at 9.30pm.  The pieces of card were the primary colours of yellow, blue and red. This was to determine the effect of diminishing light on the coloured card.  Through the series of photographs it was clear to see that as the day drew to a close the coloured card became cooler in colour. Most interestingly at 9.30pm the yellow card was only just visible, the red card had completely disappeared and the even stranger was that the blue card was still visible.

On the next night I took photographs of the scene which we were going to paint in class.  I took these photographs as before at various times of the day - from 2pm, 5pm, 7pm and 9pm.  The results were as expected that as there was less light there was less colour. The one taken at 5pm especially had become washed out as if devoid of colour, but in contrast the one taken last of all at 9pm had taken on an atmospheric appeal of muted purples, indigo blues, highlighted by pinpricks of light from the pier.

The paintings created by the students are shown here.  These were on the whole successful and were a very good lesson in mixing extremely subtle shades and tones of the same colour.

Original painting by Laraine 2017

Original painting by Andrew 2017

Original painting by Kate 2017

Original painting by Liz 2017

Original painting by Rosemary 2017

Original painting by Peter 2017

Original painting by Doreen 2017

Original painting by Sandra 2017

Thank you to all the students who took on the challenge painting night skies and for allowing me to share their work on my blog.  This was an amazing class to teach and I am sure you will agree the paintings are very accomplished.

If you would like to join one of my courses or have one-to-one classes please contact me using the blog contact form below.

Happy Painting!

Lee 🎨