How To Draw A Night Sky With Pencil

Terminal calendar week, I shared tips on how to draw a nighttime heaven, and promised y'all a step-by-footstep tutorial this calendar week. When I wrote final week's mail, I hoped to have an actual subject to work with.

That didn't happen, but I did spend the week looking upwards afterwards sundown and earlier dawn. I saw plenty to describe a generic night sky.

Before nosotros go started, let me recommend some other sky drawing tutorial, How to Draw a Clear Heaven with Colored Pencil. The methods are basically the same, but with different colors and a few additional tips and techniques.

How to Depict a Night Heaven

Step 1: Establish the Foreground

Plant the horizon past outlining anything that shows against the sky. It will be easier to work around those details than to draw them over the finished sky.

TIP: You lot can employ masking moving-picture show to protect the shapes that show against the sky. Cut the film to shape and printing it lightly into place. Carefully shade the sky then yous don't disturb the film, then remove the film.

If you adopt, you tin also shade the shapes that show confronting the sky. I drew a horizon of trees, then blocked them in with black and dark green.

There won't be much item in the foreground, and then keep the values adequately nighttime and featureless. I used medium-heavy pressure, simply lighter pressure makes it easier to make adjustments later the heaven is finished.

If you want stars, print them into the paper with very sharp pencils. Not all the stars should exist the same effulgence, so select three or four light colors. Press firmly with some and more lightly with others. I used Prismacolor Verithin because they tin sharpened to a very fine betoken.

Yous tin can likewise employ a stylus. The resulting dots will exist white. My "stylus" is a fine point Zebra pen with no ink in it. Printing more heavily with some than others.

NOTE: The stars impressed with a stylus showed up best. Consider using two different tools for impressing, so the resulting stars are different sizes.

How to Draw a Night Sky - Establish the Foreground

Adding green over black keeps the black from getting flat, and gives the copse but enough dark-green cast to bear witness they are trees.

Besides notice the diverse directions in which I stroked while adding black and dark-green. If this were a more finished piece of art, I would probably utilise lighter pressure and more layers, but that isn't necessary.

Step 2: Adding Color to the Sky

Begin glazing color into the heaven with black and nighttime blueish. Use light to medium pressure level, and draw each layer every bit evenly a possible, so no pencil strokes are visible.

Notation: Medium pressure is the same equally normal handwriting pressure.

Information technology'southward best to use a blunt pencil. The blunter the pencil, the less likely you'll "fill in the stars" you impressed into the paper.

In this analogy, I put black over all of the sky, and dark blueish over half of it. The slight concealment at the top is the upshot of multiple layers.

How to Draw a Night Sky - Adding Color to the Night Sky

TIP: Yous can use heavier pressure level for these layers. Simply remember that the heavier the force per unit area, the more likely you are to fill up in some of the impressed stars.

Stride 3: Darken the Values

Darken the values by continuing to layer the two original colors. I added a medium blue to my palette for this pace, but I sandwiched information technology between multiple layers of Blackness and night blue.

With each layer, offset at the top and piece of work downward, using a variety of strokes to cover the paper.

To smooth out the color and value gradations, use a piece of bath tissue folded into a modest square. Kickoff at the meridian and "pull" colour down into the lighter parts of the sky, so I blend horizontally.

How to Draw a Night Sky - Darken the Values

This might be all yous demand if you want to draw an early evening heaven. Y'all can nearly feel the descending arctic of evening, can't you lot?

But if you desire full dark, then keep layering!

TIP: If you're cartoon early evening, reduce the number of stars, especially down about the horizon.

Step 4: Finishing Touches

For a darker sky, proceed adding alternating layers of blackness and dark blue. Blend the colors every few layers.

Keep until the sky is as dark as you want it.

How to Draw a Night Sky - Finishing Touches

Is It Finished?

I used Bristol vellum for this tutorial. By the time the drawing reached this point, the paper was and so slick, even the lightest tissue blend removed more colour than it blended. I had hoped to go much darker, simply decided to stop here.

For a finished piece, I'd employ a paper with more molar. Stonehenge, Canson Mi-Teintes or maybe a sanded paper. Strathmore Artagain is another possibility, though that may also exist too smooth.

If you prefer Bristol vellum, use heavier pressure and fewer layers, or spray the drawing with workable fixative. Even a workable fixative made for colored pencils—such every bit Prismacolor Tuffilm—will not completely restore the tooth, but you will be able to do a little more layering.

Conclusion

Seeing the stars "come out" on this little drawing leaves me wanting to do a larger, consummate piece. What about you?

This is only one way to draw a night heaven. Equally I mentioned to a higher place, I think I'll expand on this method for a "existent drawing."

Of grade other factors play a role. Is there a moon? Clouds? What about bogus lighting? Or maybe a falling star? The possibilities are endless.

No matter what blazon of night heaven you lot want to depict, follow these basic steps and you can draw a night sky of your ain!

Got a question? Inquire Carrie!

Carrie L. Lewis

Carrie Fifty. Lewis has been an artist longer than she can remember. An oil painter from her teens, she began using colored pencils because they were ideal for highly detailed work, and were easier to ship and use at equus caballus shows. She at present uses colored pencils almost exclusively. From the first, horse were a favorite subject, and she'southward been an equine portrait artist for most of her career. When she began drawing with colored pencil (and after a move to Kansas,) she found special beauty in landscapes, and landscapes are at present what she draws most often. The rugged Flintstone Hills region of eastern Kansas is at the top of her list of cute places to visit and draw.