This is my set up while painting Blood Orange Blossoms at Night. You can see I have two hammerheads going to provide a nice even light across the painting. Extremely useful when you start working bigger than 11*14 inches.
Over the past couple years, painting at night has become an obsession of mine. I developed an extreme sensitivity to sunlight a couple of years ago and as you can imagine it was a huge blow to my mental state as I was just getting into painting out of doors.
I remembered seeing nocturne paintings by Whistler and then Marc Dalessio on his blog. So I set out into the darkness to have a go. It was a very steep learning curve but I found that the consistency of lighting at night allowed me to take my time and complete more finished paintings on location. Though some might consider night to be night, and not to differ in hue or tone, the atmosphere is very different night to night. In my experience the look and atmosphere changes quite drastically because of cloud coverage, dust, and the lunar cycle just as in daylight.
So if anyone out there has an interest in painting in low light conditions and not feeling limited by lighting situations read on.
Something that has become of up most importance to me as a plein air painter is gear(even more so because I am painting out doors in low light conditions probably 75% of the time). Now easels, brushes, paint, paint boxes, and supports are all very important but, if this was all reduced down to charcoal, or graphite on paper lighting is the most important thing.
The moonlight is very often not even bright enough to see what you are drawing or painting let alone being able to distinguish tonal values and color. I had seen a post on Marc Dalessio's blog about clip on reading lights that he uses and thought "I should give them a shot." I used one for about one year and during that time almost all of the work took on a very warm orange feel. This was because a lot of the clip on lights out there have extremely cool to almost straight blue lighting. This causes one to reach to the compliment which is orange. So after some really deliberate searching for something more in the middle of the spectrum I found that the Hammerhead Mighty Brite lights fit the bill. I now use those only as they allow me to make really accurate tonal value and color mixing decisions they have multiple brightness settings which is also a bonus.
For painting at night I have worked extensively with oil and watercolor. I've found that watercolor works much better for me because of the lack of heavy glare and texture.
Now there are more applications to using these lights than just at night. All manner of low light situation in the studio and out will benefit from these little lights as well as sunrise and sunset painting. Not that I am trying to sell you on these but, it would make a great addition to anyone's kit.
The only thing left for painting some nocturnes is actually going out and painting them. If you have any questions about materials or just want to check in feel free to email me on my contact page!
Cheers!
Nearly finished drawing for a larger nocturne I did some time ago.