How to Paint Awesome Night Time Cityscapes With Watercolor

Achieving realism in painting is always challenging. It needs a lot of patience and discipline. This painting was very tedious to paint, but it was one of my first paintings. So, I can paint this as a beginner, you definitely can too!

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• soft drawing pencil and eraser
• watercolor paper
• watercolor paints
• watercolor brushes
• a wooden board for support
• hair dryer (optional)
• a lot of patience.

1. 
   Step 1.

   Make a detailed drawing of the image with a soft pencil.

2. 
   Step 2.

   Paint one block at a time. If you are right-handed, start from the left, if you are left handed, start from the right. Dilute the paints heavily paint in thin layers.

3. 
   Step 3

   Observe how I start to paint a building with the lightest colors first. Paint thin washes of yellow, carefully leaving the whites untouched. As the layer dries, add another thin layer of yellow, then burnt sienna, then ultramarine.

4. 
   Step 4

   Paint more buildings. Thin layers over layers.

5. 
   Step 5.

   See how the building colors intensify.

6. 
   Step 6.

   Paint the highlights of the water. Start with the lightest colors, and intensify as you go along.

7. 
   Step 7.

   Paint the ripples and the little boats. This is the fun part :)

8. 
   Step 8

   Start painting the sky. Notice the light red under-painting. I added thin layers of red, then burnt sienna, and ultra marine to get the color of the night sky. By the way, the picture is not wrong. This is to remind you that I painted the sky with the painting upside-down.

9. 
   Step 9

   Intensify the sky, and you're done. The worst thing that can possibly happen now is to have water splashed onto it. Luckily I had it framed behind glass before anything thing can happen!

Tips & Warnings

• Paint thinly as possible.
• Allow each layer of paint to dry completely before adding the next.
• Use few colors to get the maximum cohesiveness in the color.
• Before painting, note the areas that are white. Keep these areas paint free. The white in the painting is the white of the paper. There is no need for white paint. To achieve a "glow" effect, add a puddle of clean water on the spot an paint around the spot, allowing the pigments to diffuse around the white area.
• For shadows, try not to use black. Paint layers of complementary colors to get the darks.
• Be free to make changes. Don't be bound by your reference photo.

Resources

• See more of my other works.

[Hapworth]

on 8/2/2008 This is really impressive!