Sometimes I get custom watercolor requests (which I love) and recently an old friend asked me to create a custom painting based on a John Donne poem, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning." After reading the poem I was inspired to paint a night sky and the goal was a dark and beautiful sky (think evening a storm is rolling in) overlaid with the image you get when you take a long shutter-speed photo of the stars. I've published a post dedicated to the creative process behind the painting but, for now, I'll just share a few tips about how to paint the sky I created for this painting.