How to Draw a Twilight Sky

Many people don’t get a chance to see stars as telescopes and NASA astronauts see stars; there is too much ambient light. However, when people get to see stars as they’re meant to be seen—Alaska, Montana, and parts of Florida—it feels like the universe can go on forever and it can really make you feel small and insignificant. In five steps, however, anyone can create a night sky using any sort of digital medium.

Things You'll Need

• Photoshop
• Tablet

Instructions

1. 

   Choose a dark blue color (but not too dark) that will serve as the base color. Use the paint can tool to color the whole image that color.

2. 

   Choose the burn tool (the folded hand) from the tool menu and pick the leaf brush from the default brush menu of the tool bar. Set the opacity to 15 on the tool menu and make the leaf brush between the sizes of 70 and 74; try using the default of 74. Use the burn tool and darken portions of the image, leaving unburned portions that will be attended to in the next step. Make sure you darken some portions that will appear almost black.

3. 

   Take the dodge tool (right click the burn tool, pick the tool that looks like a round thumbtack) and use the same leaf brush that was used in Step 2.

4. 

   Create a new layer and title it “Stars.” Take the paintbrush tool and use brush sizes 5-14, and vary the stars.

5. 

   After you finish the stars, add a third layer called “Star Bright” and put the brush tool on fade brush, using sizes that correspond with the star sizes you used in Step 4. Pick few and random stars, preferably in the star belts, and lightly tap over the stars once to make them glow. This is the night sky.

Tips & Warnings

• You may keep the brush size between 70 to 75, but any sized brush between 60 to 75 will do just fine. Now in the light areas you left in step two, use the dodge tool to create light white to bright white sections in the sky. These white sections are like “Milky Ways,” indicating star belts.

• Where the white parts are, add more stars. Where it’s black, add very few.