I recently painted the Crab Nebula using acrylics on canvas! The painting is 12″x12″. I took WIP photographs along the way to make a tutorial on how to paint nebulae for you guys.
Click for a tutorial on how to paint the Crab nebula!
I used Golden acrylic paints to create this; the most important part of my palette is the Golden Acrylic Glazing Medium shown in the photo on the left. You can see the ratio of medium to paint I use in the photo on the right: about 3:1. This creates a really thin layer that builds up delicately without becoming streaky, like acrylic paint mixed with a lot of water is prone to do. You can use any colours you want, but I prefer to use the full rainbow spectrum in my work. I like to use metallics and “interference” iridescent colours as top level glazes to increase depth in my work; the shininess of the metallic paint makes areas where I use it stand out even more against the matte dark background.
I start with a canvas ground painted a solid carbon black with acrylics; you can use black gesso if you prefer.
I like to use a full spectrum of colours. However, here are some of my favourites, that I definitely remember using in this painting. I use Golden brand acrylic paints.
Yellows: Cadmium Yellow / Hansa Yellow / Naples Yellow
Blues: Phthalocyanine blue / Cerulean blue / Phtalocyanine turquoise / Primary Cyan
Reds: Cadmium red medium / Alizarin crimson / Pyrrole orange (transparent)
Other: Interference violet / Permanent violet / Permanent green / Iridescent gold / Metallic blue / Titanium White
Using a white charcoal pencil, I sketched in the basic shape of the Crab Nebula and the major stars around it. Using unmixed white paint and a tiny 00 brush, I painted in the stars.
Then, I started to build up some of the light areas in yellow and orange, corresponding to the Hubble image I used as a reference:
You can still see the white charcoal I used as a guideline to the right of both of these WIP shots.
I used this acrylic glazing painting technique to paint the wisps of nebulae:
Following the ratio of 3 parts glazing medium to 1 part pigment, start with a thin streak of acrylic paint thinned with glazing medium. Using a brush, your fingers, or a wet rag (your preference; I prefer my fingers or a rag since they allow for more control), pull the paint on one side of the streak down and to one side of the streak. The top part of the streak should be intact- you want one side to be hard, and the other side to be fuzzy, in order to create the illusion of a dense point of gas. Let this dry, then go over the area with another colour in another colour to build depth. (To create a large glazed area, paint a blob in the center of the area you want the glaze to be thickest and smooth the paint outward and away from this area with your fingers, a rag or a brush.)
At this point, I began to build thin glazes of light blue over the central area of the nebula, building up the lightest areas in the process so they didn’t get lost in the fog I was building:
My main concern here was building depth within the cloud of gas; this required plenty of detailed solid areas underneath successive layers of glazes, and variations in color and tone so some areas of the painting receded and others came forward.
Blue and purple areas tend to recede, while red, orange and yellow areas come forward to the eye. I continued to paint in lots of detail, cloak it in a thin glaze of blue paint, and repeat the process. As I added more layers, I began to add iridescent blue pigment glaze to the paint.
(Some of the colours are off because the light changed as I was painting, sorry!)
I did not find some of my previous details accurate enough, so I used the glazing and building process to amend them. I also began to build greyish shadows and vibrant blue-green highlights back into the light central area to give it more depth.
Finally, I added more highlight details in green and pale magenta for the receding highlighted areas. I finally glazed over the areas I had just painted with an extra thin layer of metallic blue paint. Using metallic paint on the very top layers of the nebula makes it stand out and catch the most light.
Thank you for viewing this tutorial! If you like this painting or space art, prints are available here at my Zazzle store.
Original art commissions are always available through my Etsy store, ArtbyAlizey!
Very nice. Love the glazing technique.
I have a huge art project i need to get done in 2 days and the part im struggling with most is the nebula part. I was wondering if you could please help me with this? Maybe giving me a few tips on how you made this painting so great? Lol. Phenomenol work! Please get back to me asap! Thank you :)
Hey Carlie- the trick is to mostly be patient, keep the layers really thin and use lots of layers! It’s ok to layer the same colour more than once if you do it really thinly and add detail in different areas to. And with the stars, be careful and try and keep them round and small, otherwise they become distracting!
Dear Alizey,
Very lovely and inspirational work, ….I intend to work on a variation of this kind of composition and am equally intrigued with the Interference and Iridescent paints.
In your tutorial, you mention the application of a thick line of paint that you manipulate to give a hard and sharp edge…could you expand on that detail and process a little so that I may follow it very clearly ? Following the ratio of 3 parts glazing medium to 1 part pigment, start with a thin streak of acrylic paint thinned with glazing medium. Using a brush, your fingers, or a wet rag (your preference; I prefer my fingers or a rag since they allow for more control), pull the paint on one side of the streak down and to one side of the streak. The top part of the streak should be intact- you want one side to be hard, and the other side to be fuzzy, in order to create the illusion of a dense point of gas. Let this dry, then go over the area with another colour in another colour to build depth. (To create a large glazed area, paint a blob in the center of the area you want the glaze to be thickest and smooth the paint outward and away from this area with your fingers, a rag or a brush.)
At this point, I began to build thin glazes of light blue over the central area of the nebula, building up the lightest areas in the process so they didn’t get lost in the fog I was building:
Many thanks and Congratulations with the gorgeous Works.
Richard.