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How do you draw the dark? Think about it.

Maybe the question itself is flawed, because of course darkness isn’t a thing - it’s a change in lighting conditions that affects everything within your picture. But the point remains that if you want to draw a picture of a room or a landscape in darkness, you will have to find a way to do so.

Different artists have different approaches. For example, in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, which involves scenes in a darkened bedroom and under a night sky, colours are muted. Sendak also uses extensive cross-hatching to add shadows to his landscapes, walls and characters. In the day time scenes, this is lifted to give a much lighter, fresher atmosphere.

Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks is a very famous example of a painting depicting the dark. As with many of his other images, the darkness is emphasised by the inclusion of a source of bright light. Indeed, the painting can be seen as a study of light in the darkness, in which he skillfully represents not just the blazing lights of the cafe’s interior, but also the effect they have on an adjoining exterior wall and as they spill onto the pavement.

Indeed, many of the great paintings of night are actually depictions of light. Think of Van Gogh’s Night Painting or Starry Night Over the Rhone: the stars (and their reflections) are the actual ’stars’ of the piece.

Stars, the moon, street lamps, deserted streets, populated beds - your subject matter can all help, too, giving us visual clues that help us understand what time of day it is.

If you find the whole area daunting, why not play around with a few techniques and see what works? Try a thin, watery but dark wash over your entire picture - or crosshatching like Sendak. Or try looking at your subject not as a picture of dark, but of the points of light contained there. See what difference it makes if you do nothing but add the moon to a handy portion of sky.

In the end, the best way is to draw from life, and to truly observe before you do so. if you are accurately representing he shadows and light you see before you, your picture will succeed. Try it!