Sagittarius

Oil on masonite, 6x6"

The instructor of my Renaissance Painting class has said several times that it's a great technique for painting night skies. Intrigued, I thought I'd give it a try. First I looked up the constellation Sagittarius online to find a star pattern (it's my birth sign). From there, the painting started out in the same way as others: A layer of transparent earth red with white egg tempera in the lightest areas. Then a layer of yellow ochre went over the whole painting, with more tempera for the stars and astral clouds. Over this layer, patches of red and green were painted in thinly, with more tempera in the brightest stars and lightest parts of the nebula clouds. At this point, the painting looked like some crazy galactic Christmas story. Finally, two layers of ultramarine blue with more tempera went on. And that's when it really started to look like a night sky. Even though the "distant" stars are only behind a fraction of a millimeter of paint, they do appear to recede by light years. The tempera got a little too thick in the middle section, but the overall effect came out pretty neat and now I have a funky new (but very old) approach to painting a night sky!