The Milky Way Challenge
This month, I’ve posted a demonstration of how to paint the Milky Way in watercolour. Since it took me three goes, I’ve included all three versions in the video so that you can enjoy the journey with me, along with all the highs and the lows.
The experiment came about because of several people asking me the question of how it might be done in watercolour (following my earlier demonstration of how to paint the Northern Lights). Never one to shy from a challenge, my efforts are duly submitted for all to see, warts and all. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not the experiment was a success, and if so, which of the three versions works best.
The essence of the challenge, for me, was to identify the different elements of the subject, and figure out which of the available pure watercolour techniques might suit them best. Suffice to say; there were a few little surprises along the way; things that I assumed were going to be straightforward, and weren’t, and the frustration of how certain combinations of different techniques simply didn’t work well together at all.
The other thing that I should mention is my insistence that I wasn’t going to use any white paint. Whilst I do have a tendency to be a bit purist about these things, I’m a great believer in the end justifying the means, and in researching how other artists had tackled the problem, I’ve seen some excellent examples where the spattering of white paint has been used to very good effect. In a couple of those examples posted online, I was quite astounded at the ridiculous amount of flack the demonstrator received for having used white paint, as if this was some major sin!
Painting the Milky Way was fun, and if anyone else should like to have a go at it, I would love to see their results (and will happily post them in a future newsletter for others to enjoy). If you do send me your efforts, though, it would also be great to have a few notes – just a paragraph will do – to tell me which methods you found worked best for you… and, just to be clear; white paint is not only perfectly acceptable but also very sensible.
