One thing I have always taken pride in is pushing the boundaries of an artistic medium beyond its perceived potential, to create something exciting. When I started painting nebulas and galaxies in watercolor, it was my intention to do exactly that. But HOW did I do it???
I had done two small space art watercolors already, but I wanted to do something larger, with a high level of detail. At first I was going to paint the galaxy Andromeda. I had practiced with a few finished schetches to catch on to the galaxy's nuances. (After all, if you're not accurate with a galaxy, it will just look like a swirly blob.) But Andromeda was a rather nondescript galaxy, and I wanted my painting to have an impact.
Looking through my old astronomy calendars, I found a few favorite NASA images. One spiral galaxy in particular caught my eye, a barred-spiral galaxy with a good structure and nice coloring. I painted it once, layering out the paint. But the colors looked far to muddy, the bright spots didn't look light enough, the spots where I dotted masking fluid looked all wrong, and I wanted a much higher level of detail.
I started again, laying down only the brightest and lightest yellows and pinks, which I could add darker details to later. I gradually and carefully built up layers of darker and cooler colors over the brighter and warmer ones to define the brightest parts of the galaxy, and the darker glow blending into the surrounding abyss. Once the form of the galaxy solidified, I worked in detail of streaks of reddish-brown for dust clouds, and tiny stippled dots of color for the stars. Bright stars were defined by scraping away paint with an exacto knife.
