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Painting the Basic Star Field

Toothbrush Method

Star fields are probably one of the most basic and fundamental elements in space art. Luckily they are also one of the easiest to paint.

Good random star fields are best produced by a random means such as the spattering of a tooth brush. A used tooth brush generally works better than a new one. It has bristles that are worn and splayed in many different directions. Used brushes are also usually softer and a smaller child's brush is small and easier to control. Bend the handle back if you can. A low heat or flame may be needed. Careful to only soften the handle and not burn it.

Make sure the tooth brush is completely dry. Do not wet it first with water as is otherwise done with artistic brushes. You want the paint to be as concentrated as possible. Black gesso is difficult to cover and you need a good heavy droplet to be highly visible.

Load the brush by putting a small thin bead of white paint on the brush. Jar acrylics are best because they are thinner yet contain a higher proportion of pigment than tube acrylics. You can also use white acrylic gesso, since it is bright white and designed to cover and prime surfaces.

Too much paint will cause large spatters that do not resemble stars. You may want to work the paint into the bristles slightly and test the spattering on a test sheet of colored paper. Hold the brush perpendicular above the board (or canvas). Rake your thumb slowly across the bristles. As the bristles elasticity snap back they throw some droplets of paint onto the board. The droplets will tend to be thrown mostly in one direction so you need to move and turn the brush. It may even be more effective to hold the board and move both.

As you continue to spatter, the brush will dry out of paint and the droplets become smaller and subsequently easier to control. It also takes more pressure and work to get a significant amount of stars field. The smaller droplets can be used to render dimmer or more distant stars. Very fine droplets can be used to paint star clusters, galaxies and other distant background objects. This variation in droplets allows one to paint (with practice) realistic looking star fields and a wide variety of celestial objects with this surprisingly simple tool.

Reload and repeat to get the desired results. Be sure to always test a freshly loaded tooth brush on sample paper.

Wash the toothbrush with soap and warm water when done. Dry the board flat to prevent any paint droplets from running. Droplets can take a long to dry as an outer skin forms first and the interior dries slower. So allow extra time between steps to avoid breaking open any droplets and smearing their contents. One hour is probably adequate, although overnight is best.

If large elongated spatters do occur, do not panic. Allow them to dry and print over them with a small fine point brush using black paint or gesso. You can also carefully divide up the spatter into multiple stars. Perhaps even imagining them as a multiple star system.

Airbrush Method

Another tool for painting star fields is the airbrush. If your air source can be regulated then reduce the pressure below the normal working pressure causes the airbrush to spatter droplets instead of producing the normal fine spray.

Instead of reducing the air pressure you can intentionally use the "wrong" combination size of needle and tip. Use a smaller needle with a larger tip. Most airbrushes have available a selection of small, medium and large tips for spraying different amounts and viscosity (thickness) of paints and liquids. The tip must be combined with a matching size needle to produce a fine spray. Combining the wrong size tip and needle causes the airbrush to spatter droplets instead. (A few airbrush manufactures produce specially designed spatter caps. However, these are usually special order items and may produce far too heavy of a droplet. On the other hand, they may be ideal for large mural sized works.)

The advantage of this technique is you have a great deal of control where the droplets are placed (droplet placement).The disadvantage is that the droplets are all the same size with little to no variation. This lack of variation produces uninteresting or fake looking star fields. Of course different methods can be combined producing optimal results. It only takes a slight amount of variation to add realism to a star field.

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