Uranus

With Uranus being really cold and having a lot of green/blue methane in its atmosphere, I went for the tundra supergranulators again.  I’ve already used these for Neptune but, because this set of planet paintings is a series and not a collection (a subtle difference) I’ve no problems allowing two of them to have so much in common.  And I used some titanium white and white gouache too.

Once the pencil outline was down, I put on some masking fluid.  Some around the edges of the rails and some around the edges of Uranus and the two carefully placed (compositionally balancing) moons plus a starry spatter all over the sky.  It was only after I’d done this that I decided to add some thin white lines supporting the rails.  I put these on using a mapping pen, masking fluid and a ruler.  If there were any gaps (and unfortunately it looks as if there weren’t), that wouldn’t have been a problem – it would have made them look more realistic.  Of course it was messy laying a ruler down on top of wet masking fluid to do this – it would have made much more sense to add the straight lines before all the other masking marks.

The first paint to go down was the sky: I used the tundra purple, pink, blue and orange, just putting them down wherever I fancied.  I sprinkled on a minimal amount of salt in a diagonal from bottom right to top left.  It didn’t show up in the final painting.  And, rather than masking out some hard edged rings like I did for Neptune and Jupiter, I created the rings by lifting off paint with kitchen paper.

Before painting the moons and planet, I removed all the masking fluid and then masked that part of the nearer rail in front of the planet.  Then I added the colours.  I started with the top moon in tundra green and blue and the bottom one in tundra green and pink but ended up using all five colours in both.  I got to something I was happy with pretty quickly for the moons, but not for the planet.  I wanted cloudy bands that would reinforce the message that Uranus was on its side and rolling but was never entirely happy and kept dabbing paint off and adding a new layer.  I even found  myself lightening the pole and the left side of the planer with titanium white at one point.  Eventually, though, the paper started to feel as if it had taken too much punishment so I had to stop.

Next it was on to the rails.  After removing the rest of the masking  fluid, I painted the “top” of the rails in white gouache and the side facing us in a greenish mixture of colours.  I even remembered to lift paint off the tail in a couple of places where the ring was in front of it.  As a finishing touch, I added white highlights to the top left of the planet and moons and Tundra violet shadows. To the rails and supports in places.  And that was me done.

I think this turned out well.  The sky is off the charts as usual and the rails and supports make this one interesting.  Uranus itself, though, might be a little overworked.  Not sure.  Still, a worthy addition to the series.  This one’s up for sale.

Three planets still to go and I think I know where I’m going with them…