Night Strands

The other day I was pondering how to paint the night sky at various stages. When the sun goes down the sky is a pale cyan with pale orange or salmon hues on the horizon and the clouds can be bright orange or magenta. About thirty minutes later, the sky is dark blue, dark cyan, and a rusty red/violet that I can mix with indo blue (PB60) and pyrol orange (PO73). After that it gets more difficult, the sky is a very dark almost greenish magenta, and dark blue, almost black when looking up. the closest I got to capturing that effect was in the painting called Night with Table Tennis. There was also Dépanneur Yo Yo, where I wrote that the sky was a darkened cyan (PB15 blue plus some PBk6 black) blended with pure indo blue (PB60) to the top of the painting. Clouds at night can be silvery, or in Montreal they can reflect the green-yellow lights of the city. Whatever the time of day, the sky will be more blue the higher up you look. In the abstract painting above, I was experimenting with various combinations of paint to determine which might work for the night sky. The main theme was turquoise, mixed with phthalo green (PG7) and phthalo blue (PB15). I also mixed indo blue with phthalo blue but its chroma was too high. Adding black makes it dry dull and neutral. So I did not figure it out, but next time I paint a night sky I have few extra ideas to try out.  

Night Strands, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, October 2023 (No. 3650b)