My attempt at the vast night sky

In my last entry, I mentioned the challenge of using watercolor to portray the deep night sky. So last night I went out on the back porch to search the vast sky for color and composition. I was presented with a lovely view of the planet Saturn on the left with the bright star Arcturus in the middle and the Canes venatici stars, Alkaid, Mizar and Alioth on the right. A lovely night indeed!


It was a lot of fun to put down all these washes of color--glaze over glaze of dark blues, violets and blacks. Because so many people still have no electric power due to the hurricane, the ambient light is lower than usual. This is a painting of the western sky about 10 pm looking toward and above downtown Richmond where it is usually much brighter along the horizon.

Sunday thunderstorms

During this very busy day, I managed to see these astonishingly beautiful clouds in the southeast above downtown Richmond as thunderstorms moved in from the west at about 4 pm. The light changed quickly as the larger, heavy clouds rolled in behind me. These cumulus clouds still caught the weird light of the day and held the dark of the coming storm.


This was a strong but brief storm with rumbling thunder and distant lightning. As it has so often been this summer, there was not enough rain. Gardens and lawns exhibit that late summer droop of fatigue and thirst.