Last week I wrote about three space paintings I was currently working on. I’ve still been whittling away at them, but I think I finally finished one of them. Maybe. At the moment of this writing, I’m waiting to see how dark the acrylics get after it dries and cures completely.

Let’s have a quick look back at the painting from last week:

Every time the starburst in the center dried, it got darker and darker. I kept having to paint it over and over to brighten the colors. Here’s the next layer:

At this point in the painting, I was really thinking about painting this over and starting anew. I liked some of it, but it was no where near what I had in my mind. Yet, I likes the gaseous clouds, so I thought I’d keep working. What could it hurt, right?

Note how much the centered darkened after drying here on this next picture compared to the last. It might not seem like a lot, but it was. In fact, this might actually have had another yellow layer put over it before I took the picture. Anyway, this was the first star layer.

Continuing to build… here I have darkened up so of the black areas and I have added even more stars. Again, I’m losing the bright spot at the center. Really don’t know what I was thinking! *grin*

I could easily see that I had added too much water to my white and I had a lot of muddy puddles on the painting rather than stars. As I began to clean those up, that’s when I saw the picture truly beginning to take shape. It started looking like a nice painting.

I wish I could say it was something I did, but honestly it had been a long day when I got to painting this part of the picture and I was so tired that my brain was literally just shut off and I was acting on instinct. I can’t say I was really thinking about what I was doing; I was just letting my hand work at the painting.

And finally, I think I’ve finished. As I said above, I’m waiting for it to fully dry before I make that determination, but if I do anything much, it’ll be to add another layer to the highlights. Must keep it bright.

Yes, I am setting this one up to hang like a diamond on the wall rather than a square. I did flip it around repeatedly when I was taking pictures, mostly depending on how it was already sitting on my easel.

I am happy with how it came out. Not bad for a painting I was so unsure about.