As the white balance in the photo was off and all the lights do not blink at the same time, the next step was translating these notes into colors back in the studio.
It's a lot of color mixing for such a small amount of paint application.
But once the lights were in, I could paint the sky and landscape around them (although to show this step I am skipping to the second layer of paint).
By painting the sky (and later the tree line) over the lights, I accomplish two things. First, I can control the size and the shape of the lights.
Secondly, I avoid the look of the of the lights being plopped on top of the painting. Think of any bad starry night painting you have seen.
And just in case you were wondering, the above is a shot of my palette and how many different colors go into one sky. Light pollution courtesy of N. Charleston is to the left, and moonlight provided by Artemis is to the right.
Now I can focus on the water and marsh reflecting the sky in the middle ground and foreground, with the same style of palette gradient to accomplish it.
Finally in the category of difficult work, I wanted to soften the edges of the little lights. Think of a star or a streetlight, and how they have a small halo around them.
In the previous picture, only the yellow lights had a small, transparent glaze painted around them. In the picture above, all the lights are softened by this small (but very large for the stress of its nerve-wracking precision) glaze.
The last layer is a true, all over, glaze layer, which I sometimes use to adjust the overall tone or atmosphere of a painting. But in this case, it was just a clear coat to even out the sheen until a varnish can be applied.
And just because this post was not long enough, here is my favorite part, pulling off the tape (props to Scotch Blue Edge Lock for making superior tape ;), exposing the sides that I painted black nearly two years ago, and dropping it in its home, the frame:
And ul 104 (sink or swim) is done!
-jb.
