Technique
Why I paint moonlight from memory
Technique · · 1 min
Your eyes change in the dark, so the painting has to wait until morning.
If you try to paint by moonlight, you will mix every color too dark. Your eyes adjust, the palette looks brighter than it is, and in the morning the painting is mud.
One hour of looking
So for the Moon Studies I made a rule: one hour at the water, no sketch, no phone, no notes. Just looking.
What is left in the morning
Memory is a good editor. It keeps the shape of the light, one or two dark shapes, and the color of the sky near the moon. It throws away everything else, and most of the time it is right.
Paint what you remember, and you paint what mattered.
An old teacher, said often
Twelve full moons gave me four paintings I liked. The rest were good mornings and bad canvases.