Space is a gas

My students ask me every year how to paint outer space.  This technique is so much fun and quite easy to accomplish!  I tell my students to make a puddle of blue, red, yellow and white.  they need a flat scrubby brush.  you want to apply the paint in a circular scrubbing motion and try to do it in horizontal path ways.  start with putting your brush into blue and then red.  this will make a purple.  the purple is the space between the gasses so you will probably have more of this color...or not!  I never clean out my brush for this process.  I will start with purple then scrub that onto my canvas or paper, add yellow scrub, add white scrub, add red, scrub, add blue scrub ...until the entire surface is scrubbed in.  don't over blend the colors because those are the gasses and the lights from local stars reflecting inside of them.  After the entire surface is covered, I wash out my brush.  I will mix blue and white and splatter dots over the entire surface.  I will then do the same with red and white (pink), yellow and white and then just white dots.  these are the different stars and each color represents the different temperatures they come in.  I will sometimes put in some more gasses if needed.  at this point, I pick about 3 or 5 places to put a tiny yellow star with a white dot in the center.  it will get rays of light coming off of it for twinkle.  after you paint outer space...the sky is the limit on what you paint on it!