Night Sketching in a Travel Journal: 5 Techniques for Painting City Lights

Night sketching: your travel journal doesn't stop at sunset

Urban Sketchers has just announced the recipients of its 2026-2027 regional events grant program. Among them is the Asia Link Sketchwalk Pune 2026, in India. Its program includes workshops, sketchwalks, demonstrations, an art market and night drawing sessions.

An international gathering of sketchers is therefore officially putting night sketching on the schedule. Proof that this practice has every right to a place in a travel journal.

In mid-November, night falls around 5 p.m. Many sketchbooks then go back in the drawer until spring. Yet lit shop windows, street lamps and deep blue skies make excellent subjects, whether you're travelling or in your own city.

Here is a simple kit and 5 night watercolor techniques to help you make a success of your first night sketch.

Why drawing at night changes the way you see

Night simplifies the subject. Details disappear, leaving only dark masses and points of light. It's an excellent exercise in values, meaning the relationships between light and dark.

A night sketching workshop presented by Urban Sketchers sums it up well. Reducing lines, shapes and colors is part of the recipe for success. Two or three colors are often enough for a night scene.

Lights, for their part, catch the eye immediately. A single yellow window in a dark street gives the page its mood. You don't need to draw everything to tell the story of an evening.

The night sketching kit

Your usual travel journal supplies are enough, with a few additions. The principle: few items, easy to take out with cold fingers.

• a pocket-size sketchbook, with paper that can handle water;
• a fine felt-tip pen or a waterproof ink pen;
• a small watercolor box with a limited palette: an ultramarine or indigo blue, a burnt sienna, a yellow for the lights;
• a water brush, so you don't have to handle a water pot in the dark;
• a white gel pen or a little white gouache for highlights;
• a small clip-on lamp or a headlamp with soft light so you can see your page;
• a folding stool;
• warm clothes and fingerless mittens, which leave your fingers free.

A tip about the lamp: a very yellow light distorts how you read colors. Choose a neutral, dim light, otherwise your blues will look dull once you're back home.

Tinted paper option. On a gray, beige or black sketchbook, the logic is reversed. The background already carries the night: you add the lights in a lighter tone, with gouache, white pencil or gel pen.

The 5 techniques for painting city lights

1. Reserve the lights first

In watercolor, the white of the paper is your brightest light. Once covered, it is hard to recover. So identify 3 to 5 main points of light: a street lamp, a shop window, headlights.

Leave them white, or lay down a very pale yellow first, then darken everything around them. The Artists Network demonstration also advises starting with the light sources. It uses masking fluid; in a small format, painting around the lights with the brush is simpler.

Exercise: on your pen sketch, circle the 3 main lights in pencil. You are forbidden to touch them with the dark paint.

2. Paint the night sky blue, not black

Tube black deadens the page. Instead, mix ultramarine or indigo with burnt sienna. You get a lively dark, warmer or cooler depending on the proportions.

Make a gradient: very dark at the top, lighter toward the horizon. That is where the city lights up the sky.

Exercise: in the margin of your sketchbook, paint five small strips with different proportions. Note beside them the one you prefer.

3. The wet-in-wet halo

With a clean brush, dampen a round area around the street lamp or the window. Drop a touch of yellow or orange in the center and let it spread. Wait until the paper is almost dry before laying the dark around it, otherwise it floods the halo.

Another method described by Artists Network: wet the center of an area that is already painted, then lift the color with a slightly squeezed-out brush.

Exercise: paint three halos, on very wet paper, damp paper, then almost dry paper. Compare how the color spreads.

4. Think in silhouettes

Draw buildings, trees and passersby as dark masses, without detailed windows or faces. A passerby becomes a vertical shape with a small head. Let the light tell the story of the scene.

Exercise: for 5 minutes, paint directly with the brush using your dark mix, with no preliminary drawing.

5. White highlights at the end of the sketch

Wait until everything is dry. With a gel pen or gouache, add the reflections on wet cobblestones, string lights and headlights. Under each light, a few short vertical strokes are enough to suggest a wet pavement.

A common mistake: putting them everywhere. A dozen touches at most, placed near the darkest areas.

Where and when to draw at night

The ideal moment is the blue hour, just after sunset. The sky still holds some color and the lights come on. It doesn't last long: arrive beforehand, and draw your lines with the light that remains.

A few subjects for a nighttime travel sketch:

• a café terrace or a bakery storefront;
• a Christmas market and its string lights;
• a lit train station, ideal for making a night sketch in a station with the timed method;
• a harbor at night and its reflections;
• the alleyways of a medina in Morocco or an illuminated bazaar in India;
• a lively square in Occitanie or Catalonia.

For safety and comfort, draw under street lighting, with company, or from inside a café, behind a window. On rainy evenings, you can also continue your travel journal at the museum.

Blue, the queen color of the night

From these five techniques, one color stands out: blue. It carries the sky, the shadows and the silhouettes, and makes the yellow of the lights vibrate.

Isabelle Santori paints in ink and watercolor, and her blues are her signature. Her travel journals are painted on location. L'Infusion Bleue is devoted to Morocco in blue, and INDEscriptible to India and Rajasthan.

To see how a limited palette can tell the story of a place, browse her travel journal books. You can also explore her gallery.

Your first night sketch this week

This week, treat yourself to a 10-minute night sketch, from your window or a café terrace. Just three goals: a blue sky, three reserved lights, dark silhouettes. The highlights will come at the end.

If you would like guidance, Isabelle Santori teaches travel journal and painting classes and workshops. You will find her details on isabelle-santori.fr. Your travel journal doesn't need to wait for spring.