Discovering a hobby: Space painting

Here is another hobby that is both pretty cool, and very easy to learn: Space/Speed painting.

Maybe you've already seen some street artists perform that?
They would grab a blank canvas, start spraying paint over it, throw various hardware on top,rub it with paper, spray it some more, and in less than 3minutes, bam! Revealing a wonderful modern looking painting of a space scene out of a seemingly black piece.

The images are pretty cool by themselves, and the ability to make them so quickly also looks great.
Guess what? This is actually pretty easy, with no prior art experience, and even if you never managed to draw anything before, like I do.
By learning and throwing together a small set of specific yet simple techniques, you can make endless variations of stunning scenes.

All you'll have to do to get into it the hobby will be to grab a reasonable set of spray paint cans and random hardware.
Interested ? let's go!

Supplies

You can get started pretty quick in this hobby.
You will need :

• A set of different spray paint colours.
• Paper: Glossy white paper in decent size, The back of all those crappy posters you get in magazines work great.
• Some stencil hardware : pot lids, flower pot bottoms, paper plates, spray paint caps...(They must only touch your working surface at the edges, don't use plain flat items.)
• A straight edge: like a large masonry spatula.
• Glossy and thin paper scraps: those that come abundantly in your mailbox without solicitation.
• Some kind of respiratory protection.You might think you enjoy the smell of paint or solvents, but you'll quickly start blowing weird colors from your nose after a session and apart from being funny, it's quite unsafe in the long term.

Here are some more tips from my personal experience:

• Buy the paint online from an "urban art" shop. You'll get good brand paint,in all colors, for 3 times cheaper than at your local hardware store (You should pay them around 3-5 € piece, for good brands).
• You only  need the most basic colors to be able to make most scenes : black,white,gray,blue,yellow,red,orange,purple and green. Buy at least two cans of black, you'll be using that color much more. You can also grab a can of matte or glossy clear coat.
• Another advantage of buying from a street art supplier, is that you'll be able to buy spare caps.Do so.They cost nearly nothing, and will save you when you'll inevitably end up with clogged ones.
• Take the time to purge/clean the nozzles after you're done, according to the cans instructions.Otherwise, it only takes one uncareful use to make a nozzle unusable for good.
• Think about using glow in the dark paint for your more advanced scenes! They make for awesome pieces once you master the basics.

And remember, it really is as easy as it looks. Even without any artistic predispositions, you should be able to pull out quite appreciable drawings within your first 2-3 tries.
Speed is the thing that is slightly harder to master, but unless you intend to use this skill as a performance, you probably should just take your time, all by yourself.

Technique

The underlying technique that allows such nice and rich textures to be rendered is actually quite simple.
But I suggest you watch some tutorials videos online first, to make sure you get a feel of the order of operations required to compose a full scene.
(The core of your learning curve will lie in understanding how to properly order your operations to achieve the final scene.)
You'll be working the whole time with much wetter and thicker coats of paint than you would for any kind of traditional painting, and you will be layering colors wet on wet. That's what makes most of those effects possible.

There is a reason why space painting always features similar elements such as planets, nebulae, pyramids, skyscrapers, water and reflections, silhouettes...
All of those come from similar techniques that easily produce great looking results. We will quickly go over some of them.

Textures and planets

The most basic and core technique is the ability to produce textures, and to mask them into clearly defined shapes (planets, pyramids,canyons...).

The basic idea is as follows:

• Choose 2-3 colors to make up your planet "theme". Common combinations are Red-Black-Yellow, Green-Blue-White, Yellow-Orange-Red, White-Gray, Red-Black-White,Green-Blue...
• Layer them in a vague shape where you want to paint your planet: spray one color, then the second and third over it.Yes, you want them them to totally overlap and hide each other in most spots.But small voids or thickness differences will add to the texture effect.
• Now, take a sheet of scrap paper, crumble it roughly, unfold it a bit and gently lay it over your colors.Give it a couple random strokes with your hand, and lift up. Tadaaa! the random paper features will lift bits of paint to varying depths from your base and produce a nice rich texture.There are various techniques you can use here: a pure flat piece of paper will lift large consistent areas and make marble-like textures, a very crumbled paper will give a lot of turbulence, if you gently rub it in circles before lifting, you'll get swirls and turbulence...
• Now, decide for a light source in your scene, and spray a light white stroke from afar, on the quadrant of the planet facing the light source.
• Spray a similar light black stroke on the opposing side.
• Then, you cover the color blob with one of your round stencil devices. A flipped over flower pot bottom works well. Don't forget to add a strip of duct tape on it's back to make for an easy lift handle.
• Generously spray black paint all over your canvas.
• Carefully remove the mask, without scratching the painting: you get your nicely defined planet with shadows and highlights.

You can see a good full tutorial about it there:

Before lifting up your mask(s), you can add various other space features to your scene:

Nebulae

The easiest of all, just spray random light strokes from afar in vivid colors like blue, pink or purple maybe with some yellow highlights.

Stars

One of the most difficult  depending on how you approach it.
Easy if you have gloves: just spray white paint abundantly in your palm, dip in your fingers, and flick them at your artwork.

Harder if you don't: hold the nozzle pointing upwards (careful with your eyes!) , and veeeeery gently press it, but from the back side of the nozzle rather than the center.You want paint to spray slowly in big drops instead of the full fine mist. Practice this beforehand, as it's not that easy to get it right at first.

Planet rings

For this, use the edge of a small piece of carboard as in the above video. You can put various indentations in it to get more rings.Just remember to paint a wider zone than just your planet for this effect.

A quick swipe from the edge of a serrated piece of card is all it takes

Big stars, flares, comets and waterfalls

All of these are pretty straightforward.
To make a big star with flares, use a straight edge (masosnery spatua, piece of cardboard...), hold it a couple centimetres above your work, and spray white paint ON the straight edge. This will leave a blurry straight line glow with a well defined edge.

Make more of it at different angles, then end by a single white spot from close up in the center.

For a small comet, just turn your can upside down, put it perpendicular to your work, and give it on quick spray from up close.

Waterfalls are made using similar techniques.

Pyramids,canyons,mountains and stencils

Pyramids use a mix of the planet and star technique.
Basically, you prepare your texture as for a planet,, then use the corner of a sheet of paper as your mask instead of a round implement (it will act as both the mask, and paint lift off device).
Then you use black paint and a straight edge to add a shadow line down the middle of your pyramid.

 

 

You can also use various stencils and silhouettes cutouts for drawing more complex shapes.
Using torn paper pieces with rough edges can be used for canyon edges.
Pyramids with torn edges make mountains, see next technique for adding detail.

City scapes,detailed mountains and water

The technique for those is similar to the one used for planet rings.
first you lay your multiple color texture, then use the edge of a piece of cardboard or a spatula to draw the shapes.
Just stick the edge of your drawing tool straight into the work, and drag around :

• Vertically, In a small right angle " ^ " motion to draw a building (see first video on this page for more details)
• Horizontally, with a slow wiggle and a downward pulling motion for lake waves.You can also just use your fingers for that. Don't forget to paint your water surface with a rough reflection of the above elements first.

A city scape, made with the edge of a piece of cardboard.

Similar technique gives a nice mountain texture.

Lake scenery with a rough reflection...

...smeared into a nice water body.

Alternative water technique, wiggling the edge of the card sideways.

Other:

I won't get into more detail there, as there is plenty more detailed tutorials out there.
Just search Youtube for "space painting tutorial" to get loads of information.

Some other common patterns used in speed painting you might want to check out are trees, dead tree branches, waterfalls,rocks, meteors, volcanoes... You can then refine and combine all those techniques into a wide variety of sceneries.

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to this new pretty cool hobby!
If you think it in advance and order your supplies early, you could totally master this over the weekend.
As a side effect, your room will end up with cool conversation starter art of your own.

See you soon to discover other weird and cool hobbies !