Painting a Starry Night Sky and Mountains in 5 Simple and Easy Steps

Painting a Starry Night Sky and Mountains is another interesting way of painting galaxies. The island-mountains in this painting gives an emphasis to the vastness of space, and the reflection of the night sky in the water gives a nice feel and depth to the composition. In this blog besides the step-by-step painting process, I’ll also explain briefly how I decide on the colours when I paint galaxies.

Steps in Painting a Starry Night Sky and Mountains

1. Painting the galaxy using wet-on-wet technique. Wet the paper and start painting the night sky.

There’s no definite way of painting a night sky, or galaxies, but I’ve set a rule for myself when I paint a galaxy. I always start with the brightest areas where the stars are mostly concentrated. I paint that in yellow or warm and bright colour, following the colour wheel sequence of orange, to red, purple and blues to dark grays being the coldest and darkest part of the space.

In this painting I started with yellow, then I added orange, and blue to mark where the dark and bright areas are. Then I intensified the colours using red as a transition colour from the bright to the cooler areas – thus, the purple and orange.



2. Painting the dark area of the sky. For the dark areas, with blue, I added in a bit of Payne’s Grey until I get the desired result.



To add more texture to the galaxy, I sprinkled water for starry effect before letting the painting completely dry for the next step.



3. Painting the Islands with wet-on-dry technique. I mixed a saturated dark blueish grey and started painting the mountain-islands with a flat brush. After that, I blend the bottom with the same colour to make the reflections on water.



4. Painting the foreground foliage.
After letting the painting dry, I started with the foliage below using a small round brush, doing straight stroke where I flick the ends to create the grass blades.



5. Finish the painting with the stars.
After letting the painting dry, I used white gouache and sprinkle in the stars across the night sky, and some in the water for the reflection.

Painting a starry night sky and mountains really is simple! Galaxies are fun to being an expressive subject to paint. No matter how many times you paint a galaxy with the same color, you’ll surely make something new every time! How do you find the steps? Do let me know by commenting on the youtube video, or better yet – tagging me with your painting on Instagram so that I can see your painting too!

Painting a Starry Night Sky: The Finished Piece

10″ x 14″ Watercolor on Cotton Rough Paper (300gsm)