50+ Watercolor Moon Painting Inspiration Ideas Tips & Tutorials [Art Scene Examples]

Below are 50+ watercolor moon painting ideas. These ideas are intended to provide you inspiration for your own watercolor moon painting. After the photos, I have included a list of watercolor moon painting tips for beginners and five watercolor moon tutorial videos for you to learn from.

Watercolor Moon Art Inspiration Ideas

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Watercolor Moon Painting Tips for Beginners

• Light Washes – My advice is to begin with light washes around the moon to create a soft, glowing effect and gradually build up to darker tones, preventing over-saturation and maintaining the moon’s luminosity.

• Moon Texture – The texture of the moon can be hard for beginners. I’d recommend you to use reference photos for craters and details, applying light touches and subtle shading to create a realistic moon surface, blending colors carefully to avoid harsh lines.

• Gradient Skies – Start with lighter colors like phthalo blue near the moon, gradually transitioning to darker shades like indigo towards the edges, creating a smooth gradient effect in the sky. Apply multiple layers, allowing each to dry before adding the next, to deepen the night sky’s color and add richness without causing unwanted splotches or backwash.

• Stars and Splatter – Utilize white gouache and a toothbrush for starry effects, splattering paint for stars and adding larger dots for a glowing effect, enhancing the night sky’s depth. There are many ways to make stars, but I think this is a relatively easy way to do it for beginners.

• Tree Silhouettes – Paint asymmetrical tree branches and silhouettes using dark colors against the moon for contrast, ensuring natural randomness for a more realistic look.

• Wet and Dry Techniques – Experiment with both wet-on-wet for soft, diffused backgrounds, and wet-on-dry for detailed moon textures and sharp silhouettes, mastering the balance of water and paint.

• Moon Positioning – Decide the moon’s placement carefully, using a circular object to trace, creating a focal point that balances the composition and guides the viewer’s eye. You can then use that as the light source in your painting.

• Simplified Shapes – My advice when you start is to use simple shapes to represent trees, mountains, stars, and other objects in your watercolor night sky scene. Simplifying these shapes helps capture the essence of the night without getting lost in intricate details.

• Perspective – Remember to convey the depth of your watercolor moon scene by scaling elements – distant trees and land should be smaller and less detailed, becoming larger and more defined in the foreground.

Watercolor Moon Tutorials for Beginners

Below are five watercolor moon painting tutorials so you can follow along and learn:

Watercolor Moon Tutorial 1 – This tutorial demonstrates how to paint different phases of the moon using watercolor techniques. The focus is on creating seamless blends and patterns to emulate the moon’s surface. Click here to view.

Watercolor Moon Tutorial 2 – This tutorial covers the process of painting a night sky with indigo, highlighting the use of minimal layers for effectiveness. Techniques for creating a gradient sky and adding stars with gouache are discussed. Click here to view.

Watercolor Moon Tutorial 3 – This watercolor moon scene video tutorial guides viewers through painting a detailed moon using a wet brush on dry paper, with emphasis on creating texture and depth. The process includes layering and adding highlights to enhance realism. This is a good place to start if you want to create realistic moon paintings. Click here to view.

Watercolor Moon Tutorial 4 – This tutorial presents four different night sky watercolor paintings, each exploring various techniques like wet-on-wet, creating moonlight effects, and using salt for texture. It focuses on experimenting with different scenes and learning watercolor beginner techniques. Click here to view.

Watercolor Moon Tutorial 5 – This tutorial shows you how to paint a watercolor full moon night sky, starting with a wet base and building layers around the moon. Key steps include creating a detailed moon crater and adding stars using white gouache. Click here to view.