Thoughts on night painting, revisions

As scientists, we are constantly having to revise documents, starting in graduate school with the supervisor making edits, then as we submit manuscripts to journals and get long lists of changes to make. On occasion a manuscript is completely rejected and we go back to the drawing board or find another journal to send it to. I only sent my paintings to one art competition, about twenty years ago, and never hear back from them! So with my art, I seldom make revisions unless its the winter and I can not finish the scene on location or its dried strangely. For these night paintings, which I completed last night, I was thinking about how to improve them and tried a few things. This one was the easiest to fix, I used a combination of green umber (PBr7) with orange (PO62) to apply a dilute wash around the moon and blend into the sky a bit. Now the moon has almost the correct glow around it. Next time I will use that combination. In the original version, the scan is still on the previous blog, I used yellow ochre but it dried too pale.  

Circus tent with moon b, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025

 

In this one, the central building was a little too black so in this version I lifted some of the paint from that section to give a better sense of shape and moon-glow effect. In reality, the sky was lighter than the building, but the trees were darker than the building. Its a neat painting, and the success of the small sign in the bottom right gives me hope I can do a bigger and better version one day. 

 Moon and Farine Five Roses b, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025

  

This was one of my favorites and Cilei liked it too. I just lifted some of the green-black from the trees to make the glow better, and made sure to keep the river water in the scan which got cut off in the scan from yesterday. Revising these paintings was a useful exercise, it was mostly a way to trouble-shoot the paintings and see if I can bring my night paintings to the next level. After thousands of paintings over 35 years my day paintings and sunsets have really improved, and so have my night paintings, however, painting at night is a magnitude harder then anything else. Especially when its snowing! One successful night painting, and it was surely a cold and snowy night was Skating Rink Cyan.  

 Expo 67 dome and moon b, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025