Three paintings, same harbor, same vantage point, different hours. Dusk, midnight, and the hour before sunrise when the water goes the color of a bruise. I set up in the same spot three separate nights to get them, which was less romantic than it sounds. Mostly it was cold, and a security guard asked what I was doing twice.
Gouache forgives working in the dark better than watercolor does. It sits opaque on the page, so you can lay a pale note over a dark one and still see it, which matters when you’re mixing paint by phone flashlight and can’t fully trust your color memory until you get home.
The midnight one is the one I’d keep if I could only keep one.