Painting Watercolour Galaxies

Orion’s Belt Commission Piece - A3

I have fallen in love with painting watercolour galaxies. They are free, fun and have an element of being unpredictable. There’s a lot of play in painting each of these, and watercolour paint lends itself really nicely to creating galactic shapes and cosmic affects.

To paint one of these, I build up many layers of paint, and it’s important to diversify how much water you are adding, so more in some places than others. This allows shapes and bursts. I also sprinkle in salt to get the small white whispy effects. Depending on how wet the paint is, the salt will have different affects, and you can always drop more water onto the painting while it is wet, to create bigger burst and whisps. The more layers of paint you add on top of a dry layer, the more intense the pigment colour becomes. I will do a video at some point to show the affects of this and how to get different affects with watercolour paint in a later blog post.

A watercolour nebula commission piece - A2

If you want to commission me to paint you a watercolour galaxy, please get in touch. Prices for these begin at £60.