Transcripts
1. Intro: Beginner's Guide to Painting the Northern Lights: Quick & Easy Night Sky Landscape: Have you ever wanted to
paint the Northern Lights, but you just weren't quite
sure where to start? Hi, I'm Kelly Chase. I have been a skill
share instructor for a number of years now, and today I want to
show you how to create this Northern Lights
look very simple, easy, quick little steps. My goal is to help
you loosen up and get comfortable with
your watercolors and get you to
enjoy the process, plus create something
absolutely beautiful. We're going to be
creating a beautiful glow in night sky using these incredible
teals and turquoise colors along with
black silhouettes, gorgeous trees to highlight it. Class is designed for beginners. So even if you've never picked
up a paint brush before, you'll be able to
follow along and create a beautiful Northern
light landscape. We're going to start with the basic watercolor techniques, including wet and to wet blending to create that soft
glowing effect in the sky, and you'll also learn how to
layer colors for depth using simple brush techniques to paint bold black
tree silhouettes. And by the end of the class, you'll have a
finished painting and a solid understanding of how to blend watercolor seamlessly, create that atmospheric effect and add some contrast
with silhouette. And for your project at
the end of the course, I'll show you how to
create this beautiful, stunning glowing
Northern light sky. If you are ready to capture
this beautiful night sky, come with me, jump in and
let's start painting.
2. Northern Lights Start by Wetting the paper: This one we're going to do
a Northern lights look. I think I'm going
to use a couple of different colors
for this one. I have my Prussian
blue and I also have some turquoise that
I'm going to use, and then probably a little
bit of the Vidian green that comes in our cotton kit, VeridianO we can
also use the Rosa, this one here, that's
in the Rosa kit. First thing I'm going to do
and also I'm going to use probably a little bit of
brown because I want to make that Prussian blue pretty dark, almost like a black color. Then I also have
some black guash. We're going to do some
trees along the bottom. I could do it this way
or could do it this way. I think I'm going to do a
Northern light so I want to have it lengthwise instead. The first thing I'm
going to do is I've got my plastic area here. I'm going to wet the
back of my paper because I want this
one to be pretty wet and we want it to lie flat. I'm not going to actually do
the taping around this one. I got my wash brush and I'm just going to wet the
back of the paper. I have some color on
there. Look at that. It's actually greens. Nobody's going to see the
back anyway when it dries, it's going to be just
in a really nice light shade of green. I'm going to wet want to wet the back of
that a little bit too. I'm going to stick
it down on here. No you did this before. Going to wet the entire
paper's going to be super wet. I think it's pretty wet. Just wet it again. I don't want this to dry because
I want a lot of movement. I do have it on
the board because we are actually
going to tilt this, tip it upright, so
we can get some of that paint to really
flow on here. I've got that pretty wet. Always have to wait because even though this is 100% cotton, I'm using arches
paper for this one. You can see that it still
does absorb and so you might have to wet it again just to make sure that you've
got enough water on there. This is not going to sit on the top as some of those
inexpensive papers do. Let's go ahead. I think I'm
going to switch brushes now. I'm going to go to
just a number two.
3. Northern Lights creating a Wet into wet background: And I'm going to
try some of this. This is supposedly turquoise, but it looks more blue to me. I think I'm going to
do a little mixture of the Cotton turquoise. This is a really
old old one too. This one's been around. I think somebody actually
gave me that one. I'm going to use a
little bit of that green from the rosa kit, and I'm going to mix it in here. I want this to be
pretty vibrant. I actually have
something over here too. This actually looks
like it's ridian. R on my plate plate's
been around for a while. I've got that nice bright green I'm just going to come in here and slap
some of this on here. If you've ever seen
the Northern lights, they have the shimmery
look to them. Again, this is just
nice and light. Maybe some soft colors
in there as well. In between those areas is where I'm going to go with
that darker color. We're going to go in. We have a little bit of Prussian blue
and a little bit of brown. Actually have the brown. This is the Romber that's sitting
on here on the side. I'm going to just activate
that a little bit. Let's see how dark we get this. That's nice and
dark. I'm going to feed this in between
some of this area. I have the white. Nice and bright. Get a little bit of brown in there so I can get
nice and dark. I'm still moving fairly quickly. I don't want this to dry on me. Sometimes you have to add just a little bit more of the paint or the pigments in there
so that doesn't happen. I don't want to cover
up all of that green. I want to make sure that that is going to be nice
and loose in here. I'm going to do a little bit
of lifting with this here. Just a little bit. Just to
blend some of that area in. That's all I'm going to do.
I'm going to tip this up. Looks like I have there we go. I have a little bubble on
there that wasn't color. Going to tip it up and see if we're going to get any
movement from this. Here we have some. Let's tip it up. This way. I want that nice flow, I may have to add a
little bit more paint because this is going to
get a little bit lighter. You can see some of that's
just running in there. I don't want to lose
all of that green. Let's go back in with a little
bit more of this green. Nice ridian color and add
a little bit to that. It's really bright. Add a little bit
of water to that, see if I can soften
that a little bit, blend a little bit of
those colors together. I'm going to tip that again. I want to make sure this is
going to move down in here. I'm just moving some of that, trying to get it to have a little bit more
movement in the colors, a little bit more
blending in some areas. It's really dark there
and tilt it back. You can even move it
sideways a little bit. I didn't leave as much of that lighter area as I would
have liked, but that's okay. Rotating it again this way, you can see this is
pretty wet here, so I'm going to go back up. I just got to watch your colors and see what they're
going to do for you. Spread some of that out. You can see all of
this is extremely wet. You can see how you get that
nice movement in there. Let's clean some of this
up across the bottom here. Tipping and tilting. I think that's going to be good. We've got nice movement. We can go this way
a little bit more, see if we can get some of
it to go this direction. I'm going to go up in the corner and tilt it to the
left a little bit. You can see some of these
colors are going this way now. Stuck my finger right
in. That's all right. We're going to have
some stars in here. Some of that is
even moving where I stuck my finger in there. Et's take a little brush. Everything is still
wet, so it's okay. I'm not going to get much for color blurbs here.
A little bit of water. I can add a little bit more
of that darker blue and brown. That's almost black. That's what I was looking
for. Some of these areas. Et's see what this
is going to do. Super fun. Nice and dark. We're going to
again just tilt it, see if we can get some
more movement in here. We have a lot of
patience with this. I may have wanted to leave a little bit more green in there. I've got a lot of that
darker value in there. If it's northern
lights, shimmer across. Let's see if I can lift
some of this up that. Scrubbing it with
a little bit of water because that
blue is really strong, a little bit more green in here. I know how they
just bounce around. Adding a little
bit more green in here just because I don't
want to lose too much of it. A little scrubing tilt and
tip, let some of that move. That's really dark
grate there too. Soften out a little bit. This is really fun
because you're just playing with the colors, the feel it gives you and it doesn't have to be set up
just like mine, obviously. This is just about where
the paint is going to go and where the green and
the blues and the lights. You just want to have a little bit of
everything in there. Remember, this is going to
dry lighter than what it is. Going to soften up
a little bit more. Again, I can play with this for some time because
it is nice and wet. I'm just scrubbing
some of this in here. I just want to lighten
that up a little bit more. You can even do
those little swirls. They have the Northern lights have this little
movement in them. Playing, watching, see
what it's going to do. I'm holding it. I'm just moving that paint around a little bit more. Lifting some of that off. I just want a little bit
more brightness in here. I want it to all be super dark. Tilting back down. All right. I think
that's going to be good. I think I'm just going
to leave that as is and we'll let that dry and come back to it
and see what we get. Before I do that, I think what I'm going
to do is I'm just going to use my little
piece of wood here, I'm just going to lean that up a little bit so that this is on a little bit of an angle
that's going to continue to run down while we let that dry.
4. Northern Lights adding darker layer: Actually slightly damp
here in the middle. But as I'm watching this dry, I feel like it's
just really light. I'm considering if I want to add more darker values on the
side of this almost a black. I think what I would do is re wet this, start with the back. Yeah, because I want
it to be all wet. I don't want it to be somewhat
wet and somewhat dry. I do want to be careful and
I don't mess the front up, make sure that when
I flipped it over, I dried this so that I
didn't put it in water. Then we're going to wet the front not going over
with much pressure. I just want it to
be nice and damp. I don't want to reactivate
those paints underneath. I have it all wet. See if this is going to
lay flat for me or not. You can see some of the color is being picked up a little
bit as I go over that. I try not to go over
it too many times. I think I'm going to just
take some black guash. And we're going to add
just a little bit of that to my pink palette over here
or my plate, I should say. I do want to have a little
bit of blue in there. We're going to take the blue, that turquoise color and just mix some of that
together over here. Black and blue, a real rich color and then I'm
going to go in, I got to switch my brush out. So as I grab a smaller brush, what I want you
to take a look at is how I'm holding my brush. I'm holding it way up near
the very end of the handle, and that's going
to give me a lot more looseness in my painting. I'm not going to be so tight by holding it up really,
really close. So that's something
to keep in mind is where you're
holding your brush. If you want that loose feel, hold your brush further back. You will notice later on as
I switch out my brushes, I'm using my really
fine detail brush. I'll move my hand a lot closer so that I'm more
control when I'm painting, like, for example, the trees. Or it's going to be darker. I didn't like that green right there. I'm going
to cover that up. And a little bit
of it in here too. There. I like that better. That's not really
wet there, is it? Let's make that a
little bit softer. I just took my brush and
add a little water to it. I can soften some of
these edges here. If they're too either
too stark, too stiff. These are just
blooming in there. Let's soften those edges
just a little bit. Again, I'm just scrubbing it. I've got a lot of edge here
too. Let's soften that. Let's soften this a
little bit down here. It's another layer and we're
going to let that dry. Then we're going to add
some stars and we're going to do some trees
down near the bottom here. This is going to be pretty
dark with the trees, so I don't want to lose all
of that brightness down here. That's why I didn't go
down any further with that darker value down there. All right. So I'm going to
dry that we'll be back.
5. Northern Lights Final Details: Okay, so we are all
dry front and back, and now I'm going to use my larger brush size two
with a little bit of guash, mixing it in a little bit
with the blue, but not much. Mostly black now. And I'm
going to paint a tree. So I'm going to start with a bigger one just so you
can see the difference. So because I have a little
bit bigger painting, it's not just a
little five by seven, I can actually paint
larger trees on this one without it looking strain without taking
up the whole space. So you can see in the
original painting of the picture that
I have up here, I decided to go with
a smaller tree only because I just like the
looks of it better, having the bigger trees. I mean, it could be
done a lot faster, but I like all of those little variations in there of all those little trees. So you can change it
in mid stream here. So I've got my bigger tree here. So all I'm going to do is
I'm going to fill in some of that darker area on the bottom, and then I'm going to basically
start over again and use the top of that tree as the
bottom of the tree again. So here we go. So we'll fill this in, and I'm just scrubbing over the
bottom of that tree. We're going to create a
mountain of trees down here. And I'm going to take this
and I'm going to just kind of scrub it just creating
some texture here. This would be pretty as
water, I can see, like, a little rocky cliff here,
too, if you wanted to. So there's so many things
that you can do with this. But let's go ahead
and fill it in. We're just going to do
a basic tree landscape against that beautiful
northern lights looking sky. So if we come up over here, again, I have that
really dark color. So sometimes you're not
going to see much of the details unless you're close up because it looks
so dark from here. So again, I'm going to
scrub some of that in. I'm starting with
an okay size tree, and now I'm just going to just create the slash marks so
trees off in the distance. And we're going that way I can get a better idea
what that's going to look like without putting
on all the details yet. So again, let's just
fill in down here. I painted this
entire paper again because it all was wet into wet. I didn't use any type of
tape around the outside. And sometimes this
is easier when you're really using a
wet into wet paper. That way you don't
have to worry about it and doing any type of buckling. And you can pre
stretch your paper by wetting the paper
before you paint on it, and you can take staples and
staple it around on boards. But again, I like to do
things the easy way. Sometimes I just want to
grab my paper and go, and I don't always have
time to size my paper. And by sizing, I just mean
basically getting it prepared, so it's not going to shrink when you add the water
to it just by pre wetting it basically
and then letting it dry because it does shrink. When you wet it, it expands, and then it shrinks
once it's dry. So we have all those tops of
those trees in there now, and now I can start adding
some of the details. So you can see how
much quicker it is rather than painting
them one by one by one. You could just go
ahead and put all of those slashes
in there and get the nice variation of tree
height by doing this, and then going back
in and just doing the little details of
the tops of the trees. Extend some where you need some, maybe go a little taller. And this is a much
faster way of doing it, and I'm using a larger brush. Again, a larger painting,
a larger brush. Using a small painting on a
painting that's, you know, bigger, it's going to take you a lot longer, and you're
going to be very tight. You're going to do a lot
of those little details. So this one is the dagger
brush, is what I have now. I love this little brush. It's just very loose. It makes you much looser
with your paintings as well. And I love that real sharp
point that it has on the side. So I can get some nice thin
trees in here if I want them. So you can see I'm not really
painting every single tree. I'm just filling in and
letting some of that light shine through because you don't know where one
ends and one begins. We talked about that when
we were doing trees before. You get messy, get
free with them. They don't have to all
be perfect little trees. I just love this
against this night sky. I think this is just such
a pretty little painting. And again, it's pretty simple, other than just trying to
figure out where you want your colors and how
you want them to be. But, you know, a lot of times this stuff
just does it for you. If you let the paper and the
water paints do their thing, they just do a great job by themselves without you
barely even touching it. Giving it a little tip and tilt. I mean, with this one, I think I overworked it more
than I needed to. And it still gives
you that illusion. I mean, they're not like the Northern lights
where you see them. You know, I've never actually
seen them in person, but just pictures,
but, you know, they have really swirl
big swirls to them. But you still get
that feeling of them dancing around and you still get the feeling
of that light. Alright, so I got most
of that space filled in, and now I have switched to my fine liner brush number one, and I'm just doing the
very tips of those trees. And this just gives me
a really fine line. This is a little tighter. You can see that I
have my brush now, I'm holding it right
up near the tip, and that gives me
much more control. When I was doing the sky and the bottom part of the trees, the looser you are, um usually is the way
you hold your brush. So if you hold your brush near the back end of
your paint brush, it's going to be nice and
loose with your paint strokes. And as you come closer and
hold it more like a pencil, you're going to get all
of those fine details. And remember, with
your paintings, if you want to have
them fresh like that, I didn't do a whole lot of There's no tight
control in the sky. It's very loose. And so most of my focus is on the
tips of those trees, and just the background
becomes the background. It's just muted. It's just
the color behind there. But that tree now really
popped out in the front. And usually with most paintings, you have, you know, like, one or two things that
you really can focus on. It doesn't have to be
the entire painting if you're not painting tight,
if you're painting loos. So there's a real big difference between painting tight
and painting loose. And I really like both of them, and I think it's
really important to try to try both of them. Most of the masters, you know, the old masters of painting with watercolors are very loose, and they do that where
they have just, like, a few main things
that they really key in on that have a
little bit more detail. But the rest of it
just kind of fades into the background.
You know what it is. But, um you don't really
see it per se, close. It's just a blur of
color back in there. And if you go up
close on paintings, you'll often see that. Not every little
item is painted in. All right, so I'm going to
continue on with these trees. Let you listen to some
music because we've done this before and
just let you watch. Alright, so I think I'm
finished with that part. Let's cover that up, and let's sprinkle some stars in
there. Little star dust. So for the stars, I'm using my docked Martin's
bleed proof white, and I'm just put loading up my brush and
splattering that all over, covering that front a cause I don't want that to
be in the trees. Now, if you don't have
bleedproof white, you could also use white guash. You could even use acrylic white paint water
down a little bit. Just remember that it's
not going to reactivate, so this should be
your final step. Hope you enjoy
that, and let's get ready to share your projects.
6. Outro and Project : All right. Are you
ready for your project? I would love to see
what you created. So don't forget to upload your project in
the class gallery. That's a great way to showcase your work. You can
get some feedback. Plus, you can see what
others are painting. And if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment because I'm here to help you. So I hope that you have fun exploring these
techniques and feel more confident
blending your colors and creating some
simple silhouettes, plus creating those
beautiful glowing skies. So if you've enjoyed this class, be sure to check out my other watercolor courses
here on Skillshare, where we explore more fun and
easy painting techniques. I did just do a recent one on palette knife painting,
which is super fun. So thank you so much for
painting with me today. Keep practicing,
keep experimenting. And most importantly, keep
having fun with your art, and I can't wait to see what you create next. Happy painting.
Kellie Chasse, 7 Years Teaching on Skillshare!
