What I like most about painting at night is that sometimes scenes that barely attract attention during the day become infused with mystery and emotion as the light dims. Here’s a few of my favorite recent nocturnes.
The painting above is one of the local waterfront parks in Rockland, Maine, where I live now. It was a foggy night, and the background lights were a cruise ship slightly offshore.
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The crane above is a real icon as you drive up US Route One along the Atlantic coast. And when I was painting this, a security guard came by and made me move about 50 feet because I was on their property. He explained that no photographs or drawings were allowed to be made while on company property. But he couldn’t say anything once I left the property. The same view, I just backed up!
I usually start my nocturne paintings at night, and once they’re all blocked in I finish the details of the painting the next day in the daylight.
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Hello. How are you? I think that painting at night sounds glorious.Thank you. Kiesa
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Great article on nocturnes. I’ve been working on nocturnes increasingly over the past year and find them frustrating, maddening, challenging…and wonderfully addictive. I’ve always begun them perhaps an hour before sunset, and finished after dark, but your suggestion to return the following day to edit and drop in essential highlights is a helpful revaluation.
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A nocturne addict! Haha! I love them too. Yes, I find it really helpful to go the very next day after I’ve done a night session on a nocturne. That way how it really looked is fresh in my mind and I have the landscape in front of me to be sure my drawing is accurate. Sometimes I really just do a detailed block in to make sure the values and placement are good and finish the details in the light when I can actually see them. And I’m not tired, perhaps more importantly. I’ve found myself out on the street at two in the morning painting if things were going poorly.
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Love the paintings as always my friend!
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Thank you, Dana. Hope life is good for you!
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