Celestial Gemstones: Crescent Moon

1. Welcome: Hi, my name is Vanessa nasdaq and welcome to another Skillshare class. If this is your first time taking a class with me, welcome. I am an artist and an artisanal watercolor paint maker. You can find me over on Instagram, YouTube, and patriotic. Across these platforms, you'll be able to find free tutorials, life painting, events, speed paints, free watercolors, shop discounts, and so much more painting gemstones is a relaxing and magical experience in today's class, the first in a celestial gemstone series. I am going to show you the step-by-step process of painting a detailed gemstone crescent moon in watercolor. From supplies to finding references and seeing a beautiful background, you'll acquire all the skills needed to create your own gemstone crescent moon. So gather your supplies and let's begin. 2. Supplies: For this tutorial, the supplies are as follow. Some arches. Cold press watercolor paper. Feel free to use any watercolor paper that you currently have. However, I personally recommend using 100% cotton watercolor paper paints. And in our next lesson, I am going to give you an in-depth look at the paints that I'll be using, as well as their names and manufacturer. I am going to be sticking to the blues and purples, but feel free to use any combination of two to three, like colors that you wish. I'm going to be using a helix maker or a circle maker. And I purchased this on Amazon for about $3. You can freehand the circles and you can also use a compass. We're also going to be using a ruler, a pencil, and a kneaded eraser, a white gel pen, some copic opaque whites. Now this is a white ink, a water-based ink. Feel free to use white watercolor, white gouache. I'm Dr. Ph. Martin's white white acrylic Anyway that you have will work just fine. You're going to need a cup of water, a paper towel, and a variety of brushes in different sizes. I just grabbed a couple here, a 0 to 814. However, you're going to use the size brush that you feel most comfortable using. If you wish to tape your paper down, you can grab some painters tape or masking tape or washy tape, whatever tape you feel most comfortable using on your paper, feel free to use that. I'm going to use some painters tape. If you want to be able to dry your piece quickly. You can also feel free to use a heat gun or a hairdryer. If not, you can just let it air dry and go for a walk in-between steps. 3. Palette: For this gemstone painting, I am going to be using a very limited color palette. And when I say limited, I don't mean limited by the number of different colors I'm going to be using. I mean, limited by the types of colors I'm going to be using. So I'm only keeping it to blues and purples. So I'm going to move this over in this area here. I am going to list all of the colors that are in this palette. And I will highlight the ones that I will be using. For the most part, I'm going to be using a number of these blues and these purples. 4. Drawing A Crescent Moon: Okay, so let me demonstrate to you how I make a circle using this circle maker, or it's also called a helix maker. They're used interchangeably and I purchased this one off Amazon for about $3. So I am, one of the great things about this helix maker is that it has measurements for all of the circles already in place. So I'm just going to follow those measurements and you're also going to need a little ruler. Okay, so the first thing I'm going to do is I am going to make a two-inch circle. Super easy. Before lifting this up, I want to mark the middle of my paper or of my circle. Now, the widest part of your circle is going to be directly in the middle. So this is where you decide how wide you want that middle part of the circle to beam. So you'll see that my circle is two inches. And I mean, if you wanted to, you can do it right in the middle and you'll have the width of this much. Remember as you go up and as you go down, it gets thinner and it gets thinner. So the bulk of the painting that you're going to be doing or the majority of the gem, the gemstone facets are going to be in this white area. I like mine to be pretty wide because you're working really intricate, intricately. And you want to really be able to see what your, what you're doing. So I want mine to be fairly wide, so I'm only going to go in by half an inch. And of course, you can also do this by centimeters. Alright? I can turn my ruler around, you know, go by centimeters instead of inches. But where in the US this is what we do. I'm going to go half an inch and I am going to mark that half an inch with a little dot. So now we have two dots. You can erase this one. If you don't want to get confused, you can leave it however you want. But I know that this is going to be the widest, the widest part of my crescent moon. So this is what I am really looking at. My circle was two inches. So from the middle it was two inches. And I think that my outer circle or my inner circle, sorry, is going to be about half an inch. Again, you can do this however you want. You can make this appear here as tapered as you would like, as curved as you would like. There is no right or wrong way to do a stylized crescent moon. Okay? So I think for demonstration purposes, I am going to go with half an inch. So if we see here, the half an inch is right at this half an inch is right at this mark right here. It's already marked for me. So that is perfect. So I'm going to put my half inch circle or it's half-inch between the 12. So I'm gonna put the half right here, right over that dot. And I am going to draw to the edge of the moon. And you'll see here that we can erase this part. And you have a beautiful, perfect crescent moon. Now, you can make this by making the circle smaller. You can make this part a little bit wider and you can make it taper down a little bit more. That would be completely up to you. How about we try that now? So instead of making this circle, instead of putting the marker at the half inch, Let's put it at a quarter inch. And you'll see that my circle, my crescent will be just a bit smaller. And we'll just close, close this off. So you'll see that you can, whoops, I accidentally erased what I needed. But you'll see that you can make your crescent moon any shape just by using this. All you really have to pay attention to is how wide you want it here. Okay? And with that, we'll get on to our next lesson. 5. Creating Your First Guide: So one of the places that I like to go to get inspiration on the shapes and the little facets of the Moonstone is Unsplash, un SPL A, S, H. You can go either to unsplash.com or you can go to the App Store, download the Unsplash app. And what Unsplash is, is a lot of royalty, royalty-free images that you can use for your purposes. So what I like to do is go on there. And for this specific painting, since we're doing a crescent moon, I am looking at round gemstones. So we're going to take, let's take this one for instance. Okay, so we're going to look at this gemstone. If you see here, you will see that there are two different parts of the gemstone. It looks as if the gemstone has a circular cut right in the center of it. If you're picturing a crescent. So if we're picturing that this part is not here, you will see that it still has this area here that is cut in a sort of semi circular piece. And you'll see the same thing here. Alright? It looks as if there is a circle going right in the middle of the gems, of the gemstone. If you look at this gemstone, you will see that this one has multiple rings. There's one on the outer edge and there is one on the inner edge. And you can continue looking through Unsplash or any royalty-free Picture sites to get a good look at what the gemstone looks like. But again, we're going to do a stylized version of this. Okay, We're going to interpret it and make it our own. So we're going to take our picture of the gemstone and we are going to give it those circles, if you will. And we're going to free hand them. You don't have to, I'm going to freehand them. You can use your circle maker or whatever circular objects you have. You can use any of those. But I think I'm just going to freehand it. We're gonna go for it now. Okay? So we're going to start at the very tip. And I'm going to draw two sets of these circles. And I'm very, very lightly going to follow the curvature. And I'm not going directly in the middle. Okay? I'm breaking this into two parts. So we are following the curvature. And our goal, if we make it, is to meet at the other end, right? Directly in the middle. It's okay if your hand is shaky. My hand is literally always shaky, but I work with it and not against it. It's okay if you're semicircle on the inside is not perfectly straight. We're not aiming for perfection. This right now what we're doing is setting up our guide for our painting. Now we're going to do the same thing. We're going to start at the same point and add another one. So we're going to start at the same point and eventually break off from that point. And we are going to add another half circle. And we're going to end up again at that same point. So now you have 123 different crescents inside of this larger one. And this is going to be the very start of our guide towards having and creating and painting a gemstone celestial crescent moon. 6. Final Guide and Sketch: So now you have learned how to make the crescent moon and how to make our initial guide marks. So now we're going to take everything we learned while we were working on our practice sheet and we are going to apply it to our watercolor paper. So instead of using a regular eraser on a pencil, I'm going to use a kneaded eraser and that would just broke off, didn't it? Okay, so I'm going to use a kneaded eraser. And we're going to start, I'm going to make my a crescent moon right in the middle of my sheet. And I'm going to use the same dimensions I did with the other one. So this is arches, 100% cotton watercolor paper. And that's what we're gonna be using. So I am going to make a two-inch circle. Remember, try to make it light because this is watercolor paper and you're going to be erasing some markings. I am going to mark the center of my paper. Then I'm going to grab my ruler. And I'm going to go half an inch in and make a mark. And then I'm going to hit the middle point of my helix Maker, which is half, half an inch. And I am going to make another circle. And now I'm going to erase any excess lines. Easy peasy. And I'm using a kneaded eraser because it's much gentler on paper, on watercolor paper than a regular eraser. And it also doesn't leave any shavings. So there you have it, your crescent moon. Now that we have our initial moon shape, we are going to add in our first guidelines. So again, we're starting at the very tip and you're taking it nice and slow. And you're going to break up the circle, whereas the crescent into three distinct areas. So we're going nice and slow, following our crescent shape and meeting at the other. Now we're going to do the same thing, meaning starting at the tip and breaking it open so that we can do another half circle. And you can always erase certain areas that aren't really vibing with you. Such as this area right here, you'll see that this is just a little bit wonky. So I'm just going to erase that really quickly. And I am going to curve that out just a little more. That's why you should keep your strokes nice and light so that you can erase them easily and as often as you need. So there we go. We have our first guide within our crescent moon. And now it's time to add our second guide, which is also the very last one. So there's only two guys that we're going to be following. So let's go back to Unsplash and into our example of this gemstone. So you'll see in this gemstone probably not as clearly as in this one. Okay. You will see that there are lots of little diamond shapes within each gemstone. It doesn't matter what the shape of the gemstone in. The one thing that you're going to find within all of them is that it has these little diamond and triangular patterns within them. So you're going to be able to find them within every single gemstone that you look at. Let's look at this teardrop shaped one. You'll see the diamond. And then you'll see little triangular shapes within each gemstone. Those facets are what come together to build up the inner workings of your gemstone. So here's another one. You'll see the little triangles. You'll see bigger triangles within it. And that's what we are going to be working on. Next. What we're going to do here is we are going to draw a series of lines to give us our second and last guide towards our painting. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to work into three separate sections. This is super fun and super easy. And this is where you just kinda let go, is there is literally no rhyme or reason to where you put any of this. You have plot, let your hair down and you start doing it. What I'm going to start doing is putting in lines and angled lines. They're not going to be straight up and down. They're going to be at different angles. And we're going to intersperse them throughout each, throughout each section. So I'm going to start at the bottom here, and I'm going to start drawing in some lines. There's the first one. How about we make that into a triangle? So there's our first facet, it's a triangle, but we don't want to add too many because these are just our initial guides. So now I'm going to add one here, but this one's gonna be a little bit more angled. Let's add one here. I'm not connecting them. Let us add a nice angled one here. How about one that's not quite so angled there? Let's add another one here. And how about another one here? So there's our first set of guides. Now we're moving on to the middle section. Remember, it does not have to be perfect and you don't have to go overboard with them. Okay? So we're going to add in some angled lines here. Here. I don't remember. You can go crazy, make them super steep if you want here. We'll make this one. Go this way here. And we will go up here. How about some over here? And then make this one just a little bit angles. And now you're going to do the same thing for the last section here. And you'll notice that none of my lines overlapped with each other. So I am just making these lines will make this one semi straight. We don't want them to be straight up and down. We don't want them, but they could be as close to that as possible, right? And we'll make a couple here and one here. And with that, we are completely done with our guide. And now it is time to start painting. 7. Taping Down Your Paper: Now that we have our p sketched out and we are ready to go, we're going to, well, I am going to tape it down to a board so that we can get nice crisp edges and I don't get my desk dirty. Also, it helps the paper to lay flat and not buckle at the edges. And now these boards that are used are the backs of watercolor paper pads. So this is the back of a legion pad. And every time I'm done with a pad of paper, I take the back off of it and I save it. And that's what I use for my my boards to lay my papers on. Now, a few things to know about taping your paper to a board. For those of you who have never done it, who are, or who are a little bit reticent about doing so because you're scared of tearing your paper, that always is a real possibility. But we are going to help minimize the chance of that happening by taking these steps first. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to measure out a piece of tape. I don't have a sweater on right now, but I do have one on my lap, so I'm going to put the sleeve down. I am going to take the tape firmly press it on the sleeve of my sweater or my jeans or whatever piece of clothing that you have, your T-shirt, your pants, anything. And what we wanna do is we want to pick up some lint from your whatever piece of clothing you have to make the tape less tacky. And with that, I am going to after I've laid it on my sweater, I am going to tape it down to my board. And I am going to repeat that process for each side. So I have my sweater again. Press bring it up and it's going to pick up some of that link from your sweater. And it makes it a little bit less tacky. And that's what you want. You want it to be a little less tacky than normal so that you're able to pick up the paint without damaging the paper. That is best-case scenario, right? I say this method works about 95% of the time. So I mean, I think that that's pretty good. Going to turn it. And I'm not really measuring, I'm just eyeballing it. You can feel free to measure however you wanted to this piece, It's completely up to you. Take my sweater again. I like to call this my little my little old man sweater. I mean, nothing would make this sweater any better except to have patches on the on the elbows. That would make my little heart happy. We are all taped. Now you want to press firmly along the inner edge to make sure that there are no pockets and that it is firmly taped down. There's a little air bubble right here from when I adjusted the tape. And now it's time to get started. 8. First Layer: I'm going to start with my size two brush. And I'm going to be using a little bit of this cobalt teal and it's a nice soft, soft blue color. I am adding it to my palette. And I'm just watering it down quite a bit. Because the first thing we're going to do is we are going to add a layer of paint to the entire piece. Now you don't want it to be too thick. You don't want it to be too dark because one, you want to see the lines underneath. And two, this is our very first coat. And our very first coat is going to be super light because we want to be able to see light hitting the diamond. So it's going to have some light parts and some dark, dark parts. And we're just starting off really light. Remember, you can always darken your painting, but it's really, really hard to lighten your painting once you start with watercolor. So I'm going to take this one section at a time. And I'm starting in with the bottom section. And I am very lightly painting in this bottom section. Adding water as I go. If it's too dark and you need to lighten it a bit more, add a little bit of water as you go. Now since you're using a smaller brush, you're going to have to add water a lot more frequently than if you were using a larger brush. And that's okay. We are in absolutely no rush to paint this piece, are we? We are taking our time and enjoying just a relaxing feeling of painting and losing yourself in the process of painting. So we're taking it nice and slow, making sure that you stay within the crescent moon. Now you don't have to stay within this line, but try your best to stay within this sort key. And now I am moving on to the next one. Adding a little bit more water. And oh, that's a little bit on the dark side. And I don't want it so dark. So I'm just going to add a bit of water. And I'm just moving on to the next one now, you can go ahead and paint the entire thing at once. I just like to take my time and just make sure that I have coverage on every part. And I don't know. I don't really like to start to haphazard or too rushed or anything. I like to set the mood for painting. And doing this will help with it. It will have, it will help set the pace and the tone. So going nice and slow and taking your time, you'll see there are some areas that are darker than others that don't worry about that. The one thing you don't want is a lot of cohesiveness. Within earpiece. You want it to have just a lot of uniqueness and a lot of variety. You don't want it to look 100% cohesive and the same throughout. It's not the look we're going for. This is very stylized and very imaginative. And it's just something for us to kind of enjoy. So we are taking our time and we are painting each section as we go. And I have very much set the mood as I am showing you how to paint this. I have a candle burning. The only lights in my office are the ones right here in front of me so that you'll be able to see what's happening. But it is very much a relaxing morning here. As I sit down and show you how to paint this beautiful piece, very much a relaxing morning. And I hope that you are having a relaxing day, morning, evening, afternoon, night as you sit down and paint this with me. Okay. Our first layer is done. Now we are going to allow this to dry before moving on to the next layer. 9. Second Layer: Now that our first layer has fully dried, it is time to start on layer number two. So before we start the actual painting, we have to do a little tiny bit of thinking first. Don't worry, it's not a lot. So I'm going to take my kneaded eraser here. This is going to take the place of my light source. So we have to imagine on our gemstone moon that there's a light hitting it from some direction. I know it doesn't make sense because this is the moon and the moon is what provides the light, right? No, we're flipping that concept here. So we want to be able to give this gemstone a little bit more dimension and a little bit more depth. And in order to do that, we have to cast some light and we have to cast some shadows. So for my purposes, you can do this. You can cast your light any or shadows anywhere you want. But for my purposes, I'm going to pretend that the source of light is coming from on top of the moon. Which means that we are going to have some lightness and some highlights in this area right here. And we're going to have some darkness and some shadows in these areas here. Maybe even a little bit underneath here. Because the bottom part of this or the, the inside part of it is going to be in the shadow as well. So those are things that we are going to think about as we head into our second layer. Now I'm going to take some of that same cobalt teal in just a tiny bit higher concentration. Just a little bit higher, not too high, because we already have a layer of a Down. Even if I added the same concentration is still going to get a little darker. And without really thinking too much about this and about really thinking too much about placement, I am going to start filling in some of our guides. So let's start right here. And I have a little shape here. I'm going to fill in, in-between the guide and you'll see that it's not the paint color is not that much darker than what I originally had down. I don't want to go too dark in the beginning because I can always go darker if I need to. But I can't go lighter. Just keep that in mind as you are working on your piece. So that is done. And now I'm going to also hit up a couple of other little spots with this same color. Not too many. I'm not I'm trying not to go overboard, but a couple. This one is already a little too dark, so I'm going to water, add some water to my brush just to spread that color out and continue painting. There we go. How about we do one more on one of the little areas in the top here. And let us to here. I'm going to try to steer clear of this area around here because I want to keep that one a little bit light an area. So there are some areas that I'm going to not paint in at all. Adding a little ping, sorry, I'm just adding a little bit of water to my brush and spreading that paint out because it was a little on the dark side. That's perfect. Alright, so I am going to now pick another color, blue, and I'm going to keep it for now. I'm going to keep it in the blue family. I'm moving forward. I'm not going to name each one because I just realized that I've been calling this one cobalt teal, but it's not, it's Horizon Blue. So I apologize for that. But if you really want to know all these colors, go back a couple of lessons and go to the one marked palette, and you'll be able to see which one I'm using. I have all of the names listed. Now I'm going to go to this blue, the third one, and from the middle. And I am going to add some of that to my paper. Again. I am not going in very strong. I'm actually even going to put it right here, right on top of the other one. And I'm still going to try to keep it nice and light. And I'm going to go in and then add some sense, we're getting darker. I'm going to try to keep a little bit of this blue concentrated to the areas where I want it to be the darkest. And take your time painting these. One of the things that I love the most about celestial gemstones is that it is so relaxing because you really take your time painting each section. You take your time with the details. And it's just, it's just really, really, really relaxing. So I'm going to paint this one here. And remember right now, all we're doing is focusing on the big shapes that came about from when we set up our guide. You may be asking yourself, if I'm going to place one next to the other, should I wait for that other one to be dry? And my answer to you is no. There is no need for you to wait for the areas next to them to be dry. Let them mingle and let them touch each other. Let the paint spread. It gives it a little bit more of an interesting texture at the end. And I really recommend that you just kind of let it, let it happen, let it mix and mingle. You'll get a lot of a lot of water lines, hard water lines, and let that happen. Let it happen. If part of it is dry and the other part isn't dry, but then it starts mixing any way and you get a little bit like because I used to happen to me, right? I go just let it happen. It's not a huge deal, just let it happen. Hey, I'm adding this blue into a couple of other places. And now I'm going to pick up Let's see. I'm going to pick up one more blue before moving on to the third layer. So how about, I'm trying not to make it too, too dark at the moment. So I think I'm going to take some of this blue and I'm just going to mix it in. I'm just going to keep mixing it in. Maybe I'll even take a little bit of this ultramarine and mix it in. Well, making our own blue here. And you want to do that. You want to have different beautiful little shades of it. And then we're going to really spice it up. So remember we're still on our second layer. So I'm adding in this shade of blue. And this is a bunch of different ones mixed in together. But also, we're going to add some magic to this blue, a little bit of magic. So once you have this blue color down, pick another color. I'm going to pick this one right here. And water that down just a tiny bit. And let's add it in. Let's drop it in at the corner. I'm going to drop in a little bit of that color at the corner. And then I'm going to dry my brush off a little. And I'm going to cook, sit along and look at that beauty. You'd have a nice little mix of colors there at the bottom. Gives it a little bit of interests. Have a little fun with it. And now I'm going to continue with this blue, going to add a little bit under here. Because remember, right under here, the light doesn't reach it. So it's gonna be a little bit darker. And remember this is still our second layer. Even though this part here is a little bit darker, I'm still have a nice light touch with that, but it's not as dark as this one. Because we know this isn't a shadow here. And I'm going to go ahead and add some here. Going to thin that out with a bit of water. I think I'll also add a little bit of color here, but I'm going to make the color very subtle. So I'm going to really water that down. I'm going to add it up here. You'll see that it's very, very subtle. There's not a lot, I didn't add a lot, a lot of that purple like I did here. And now I'm going to take a little mix of this purple and I'm going to mix it in with my blue. And I'm going to continue. Let's add that one here. And he asked, seems like we're going a little crazy with the color, right? But we're staying in the same color family. We're staying with the blues and with the purples to come up with our colors. How about we add this one here? And as you see, as, as you see me going through this, you'll see that there is no pre-plan as to where I'm laying these colors down. There is no set area. Now it looks like this area up here is really lacking because we left. This is going to be our light area and we intentionally left it light. But I don't want it to be super, super light. So I'm gonna go back into my, actually, let's not do that. Let's go back. Let's go into this color here, as you'll see here in the in the swatches, this one is a little bit lighter and brighter. So I'm going to go into that one there. I'm going to wipe my palette here because I am surely am running out of room. And I'm going to use a little bit of that really watered down to add some more color over here that's way too light. So let's add a little bit more. And we're going to add a little bit of color to this area here. That seems pretty, pretty lacking. And you'll see we've kept it light while adding in a little bit more color. I'm going to use that same blue that I just picked up. I'm adding a little bit more to it. And then I am going to paint a couple of other little areas here. I'm going to water that down a little bit more. I am going to paint some over here. As you can see here. I'm mixed another blue color, just with all the blues in my palette. I'm just mixing and matching them together and laying that color down. But it's all in the same blue family. So it's Matt. It's going to remain cohesive. It's still going to look great. So keep that in mind. It's still going to look great. Now for this next one, I think I am going to go with a little bit of this purple color down here and add a little bit of blue to it. I think that'll look really cute. We're doing the opposite of what we did here. Take a little purple and I'm going to add a little blue down here, coming up this way. And I think I will also take some of that purplish, pretty purple color. Water that down and add it up here. If it's too bright, all you have to do, or if it's too dark or too bright, just add water to your brush and spread that paint out with clean water. So continue to do this until you are ready to stop. A couple of points. You don't have to fill in every single shape. You can leave a few that are blank. And I think I'm going to fill this one in here. You can leave a few that are blank. They don't all have to be completely filled in. And that is exactly what I'm going to do after I add this last little piece over here. And you'll see, if you take a close look at it, you'll see that it's still pretty light up here. And I've already started adding in a little darker color down here. So with that, our second layer is done. We're going to let this completely dry. And then we're gonna move on to our third layer. 10. Third layer: Now that both layers are completely dry, it is time to work on our third layer. Now the third layer is when this gemstone really starts coming together quite beautifully. So as you can recall, the example of the gems that I showed you were made up of diamonds and triangles. So we're going to try to recreate that in this piece by breaking up every single section of our guides into different triangular shapes. So I'm gonna give you a little example. I'm going to go back into my palette, and I am going to grab this peacock blue here, which is quite a bit darker than we have been working on it. To begin with. I am going to start watering it down just a bit because I don't want it to go the darkest that it can get, which is like around this area. I want to be able to give myself a little bit of room. How about this piece right here? I zoom doing so that you can see the nuances of this. It's really, it's not too difficult. But what I'm gonna do with this piece is I am going to break this one up into a little triangle. So as you see before, I told you how these lines are our guides. And this is what that guide is for. To keep you within the area and give you a little guide for where you should be putting in your triangles. So we have one there. Now I'm going to grab a little more paint and how about I add one here? But this time I'm going to add it in upside down. So I made this one even darker. And I put it in a darker area. So it looks quite a bit darker from that one. I'm going to continue working in the darker areas right here. I think to this one right here, I'm going to add a little bit of that purple as well. So I'll just add it in the corner here. And I'm going to water this down just a little bit, not too much. And I'm going to continue adding in some triangles. Now the triangles don't have to go straight up and down. They can jump off of the sides here. So I'm going to, I'm going to tuck this triangle right here on the side and paint that in. You'll notice that what I really like to do is do the outline first and then paint it in. And I'm still using the same color. I'm just varying the intensities of it by adding water or adding in more pains. So now I'm going to add some in right here. See how light this area is here. We'll add, will add some here. Nice little triangle. And right now that's all we're doing. All we're doing is adding in triangles to different areas. And I'm taking this for now. I'm taking this one color at a time. Doing so will help me kind of get a gauge of where I wanted to add different colors. But for now, all I'm doing is putting in, putting in these these sections. And I will add one right here. And I will continue adding these until I'm satisfied with this color. I'm going to add a little bit more water. I'm going to continue adding, adding this color and depending on the color underneath, you may get a different color showing through. So I'm going, as I'm moving up, I'm adding more and more water. I'm watering this down a bit more. And I'm going to add some here. But as I'm moving up into the lighter areas, I'm watering it down even more. So keep that in mind. As you move up or as you move towards your light source, you are going to water down the paint and make it a little bit lighter. Remember that very first triangle that we put here, I am going to overlap that triangle. Keep that in mind. You don't have to put the triangles next to each other. You can also overlap them. This one is still a little bit wet, but you know what? I think I am going to add in a triangle right here, right on top of that one. And it gives it a nice effect. So yes, you can overlap them. That also works really pretty if you overlap it using another color. So let's see. I am going to make this triangle right here. And this one is a really nice long triangle. And I think that I am going to overlap it with a bit of this purple. I'm going to try not to put too much water on my brush because there is already some Watertown and I am going to overlap it while it's still wet. And you'll see that the colors will run into each other. And it just gives it a beautiful little facts. With the colors are running into each other and the bleed is just beautiful. So we're going to continue adding in some triangles. Remember to change the direction of your triangle every now and then. You don't want to have them going all in the same place. Also. Look for some that you can make into diamonds. So here's one part of it. And I'm going to add in a triangle underneath it and make that into a diamond. And you'll see that some of it has bled into it. Looks beautiful. I'm going to add a bit more of the purple. And I mixed the purple in with the blue to give us this nice dark purple. And remember, we're trying to concentrate the majority of the dark color down here. Now I'm going to start adding in other colors. I'm going to start adding in some ultra marine. Let's add some of that in. And we'll add some ultramarine over here. You'll see here that I had this triangle cross over one of my guidelines. Feel free to do that as well. We're going to add in a nice dark one right here. I'm going to mix in a little bit of that pink to make the purple, to make that purple a little darker. And I'm going to add in one here. So the important thing here is to be conscious of the colors that you're adding and the direction of your triangles and diamonds. I'm going to go into my very, very darkest blue. I'll bring this up so you can see it, which is that one. So I'm gonna go into the very darkest blue and I'm going to add some really dark areas. I'm going to make this really dark because I want to start adding in a little bit of that depth. Just, sorry, just to give me an idea of where the pieces going, I'm going to add a really skinny one right here. Just really dark, really dark Guinea area right here. And let's add another dark piece somewhere in here. How about here? We'll add another little one over here. And let's add a couple more. We don't want to get too crazy with these super dark pieces, but a couple of more won't hurt. Add one here. And remember, all we're doing now is just take it slowly and adding in some triangles and diamonds if you'd like. And before you decide to move on, before you think you're done with this, stand up and take a step away from your paper and change your perspective. This comes in handy. No matter what you are painting. No matter what your painting, my best advice to you is to change your perspective so that you can look at your piece with sort of like a new set of eyes. So change your perspective so that you can see your, your piece from a different point of view. And you'll be able to see if you're missing anything. If there are some holding your piece, if you think that something isn't working out well, you'll be able to see all of that if you change your perspective. So take a second after you do this last triangle and stand up, look at your piece from the top-down. Pick up your paper, take a look at it this way and see where you are missing some areas. You'll see here. Before I started talking and I was like, oh, there's a really high concentration of blue in this area. I think it needs a little bit more purple. So I added in the dark purple. I think the dark purple gives it a little bit more pizzazz. This area I noticed has three triangles facing the same way in a row. So I'm going to break that up and I'm going to add a piece that overlaps both sections. And then I am going to add a bit of blue to the top of it to kind of distinguish the top a little from the bottom. I liked it, It was just drop it in there. And now I am going to add a bit more color in these areas here. Maybe we'll go this way instead. And I see all of this because I changed my perspective. So make sure that you change your perspective every now and again so that you'll know what you're working with. And keep adding until you feel that it's enough until you feel that you're done. One tip that I will give you is that it doesn't matter if you want to continue and keep adding more and more triangles and diamonds, it won't mess up your piece. It'll just give it a lot more definition and detail. So feel free to take this as make this as accessible as you want there. If you add two little fractals into it, that may affect your piece. But adding too many, it's, there's no such thing. So keep adding them. Remember you can overlap them against the ones that already there from the second layer and from this third layer, I think I'm going to overlap one right here in-between these two. Overlap them. It makes the whole thing come together beautifully. And just continue. See, Let's see what I wanna do here. I'm going to add a piece here, and I have overlapped it against one that I put there. In the same layer. I made it a little bit more transparent. And that's okay. I actually went out of the line here and you don't have to worry if that happens to you, it's okay to go out of the line because we will be able to cover that up with the sky. I'm adding in a couple of lighter yeah. Darker. Does that make sense? Lighter here? Darker. Lighter pieces here. But they are darker than what's underneath it. While still maintaining it. Light. Still maintaining that lightness compared to the areas down here. You don't want to neglect those areas. You still want to add in some color. You just, it just doesn't have to be super, super dark. And I'm mixing some teal into this blue mixture that I have going on here. Let's make some teal into that. And I am going to overlap over here, overlap over that time and still keeping that softness. And I'm going to do the same here. Again, we're still keeping that softness. And on the other side as well. And it's light enough where it becomes transparent. Make a nice big one here. So you can still see the fractal underneath it. Let's do one here. And it's still a good idea to make sure that you are taking some steps back in between these in-between these areas that you're shading. And take a look at it and see how see how it's working out so far. So, um, yeah, I'm I'm continuing. I'm not putting in that many more dark areas, but I am putting in some soft, transparent areas in-between. And all I'm doing is just adding water and I'm putting in some really soft transparent areas in-between diamonds, diamonds and triangles that are already there. So it looks like they are overlapping. But it's giving that just as beautiful dimension to it. And it's just very soft, transparent areas. All I'm doing is just adding water to my existing puddle and adding in some areas. And I've just noticed that this area here does not have a lot of triangles. So I'm going to take in darker, darker piece and I am going to add some here. And maybe over here. Let that bleed in. Because I completely neglected this area. You don't want to neglect any part of this beautiful piece that you are working on. Add some water to that. And let's add some more details over here. Because this area here doesn't have as many triangles either. So I'm going to add some in and fill that in. Have fun with it. I'm going to have this one come down. And now take another step back and look at your piece and see if it needs any dark, darker areas, areas. If you are happy with the way it looks, then leave it as is. And move on to the next step. I am going to continue to add a couple more areas because there's a lot of blue in this piece. I'm going to add a couple more areas that have some purple. And then I will catch you in the next lesson. 11. Adding Highlights: So now that your gemstone moon is completely painted, the next step we're going to do is to add details and to add highlights. For this, you're going to need white gel pen and your white medium, you don't necessarily need to use a white gel pen. You can also use a really small liner brush with your white medium. If you don't have a white gel pen, I tend to do the super, super fine details with a white gel pen because my hands are pretty shaky and I struggled to get straight lines with a with a liner brush. For those who don't know, this is what a liner brush looks like. It's very, very thin and you can make really fine details with it. So the first step is going to be to do a bit of outlining. Now I have just a little bit of black paper and I like to sort of like prime my white gel pen before I start. So you'll see here it, it takes a minute to get going. So just a couple of little things, make sure that the ink is flowing well. The first thing I'm going to do is outline my first guide. So if you remember, if you recall, the first guides are two curved lines that go from edge to edge on the moon. So that's the first thing we're going to outline, either with our white gel pen or with your white medium. Take it slow so that you can minimize any potential mistakes. And I primed my pen and it's still acting up a little. Maybe I need to grab a new one. There we go. I like to do really small strokes instead of one super long one so that I'll have more control over over the line. Again since my hand is so shaky, I am a little bit reticent about doing one super long stroke. And if you need to go over it again for whatever reason, just wait until it completely dries until the gel from the gel pen drive or if the ink. And then you can go over it one more time. There are certain areas that kind of skipped over the paper. It can go over it again. Now I'm gonna go to this side and do the second line. I always keep my black paper next to me in case, in case the ink starts skipping. And I need to sort of like prime and n. And even if you crossed the guide lines with some of your triangles or diamonds, that's okay, go right over them. We're actually covering the entire line. And again, take as much time excuse me. Take as much time as you need in order to get this the way that you wanted. All right, I think my first line, should we dry by now? So I'm just gonna go over those little areas where it's skipped a little. And there you have it. And the second step with this white gel pen is to outline a few of the angles from your rectangles and diamonds. You don't have to go all crazy. Just a few of them will do. For instance, I will take this one right here, and I am just going to outline one of the lines. I'm just going to follow along the line. And I outlined this one right here. And that's it for that. And now I'm going to go to another one and do the same thing. I'm just randomly picking out a couple of lines and make sure they're going in different directions. You don't want to outline all of the ones going in the same direction. So I'm going to do this one as well. I'm just picking out a few here and there. Nothing too crazy makes sure that you pick out a few in every in every section. Let's do this one here. And make sure you're picking out ones that go from the top to the bottom, not the ones that hit another, another another angle. So from section to section, from section to section. We'll do this one here. Let's do here. You can do as many as you want. Just try not to do all of them. Let's get here. I like to do a good, a good amount of them. And remember, always take a step back and look at your piece to see if there's if there are any gaps. Because you want it kind of spread out sporadically. But you don't want to have too many gaps. So there's an area that's missing. So if you see here this entire area is missing. One of these lines. I'm going to add another one in. I'll put one here. And maybe I'll add one here. I look to see if there are any other areas. This one could probably use one or I already did that one. It's just really, it's next to a light one. And let's do this one here. And I think for now I'll be done with this, but I'll check back later and see if there's anything else that it's kind of like sticking out and I may be missing. So now I'm going to go and grab my Number two round brush. And I'm going to grab my paper towel so I can keep this handy with me. I'm going to grab my white medium. And there's a couple of things that you can do if you want to grab your palette. If you're unsure about how much white to put down, because we're going to go from light to like really bright white. If you are unsure about how much weight to put down, grab a palette. And this one is fairly dirty. I'm going to use here the back of it. And I already got some pink on it. Let's get rid of that. And I am going to take some white. And I'm going to add it here to the palette. And I am going to water it down a bit. So the first couple of highlights we're going to do are going to be very light. So the light is going to be mostly concentrated here. Now that doesn't mean that we're going to neglect adding some highlights in other areas. We're just going to add more on top, okay, but we're still going to add some highlights just like we added the dark areas. We added a few up here. We're still going to do that. They're not going to be asked dark. Okay, so I'm watering down this ink and I'm going to do the exact same thing that I did with the triangles and my paint, but I'm going to do it with white. So I'm not going to follow the same lines. I'm going to just add new triangles. And I'm going to add one here. You'll see that it's very, very late. Let me do another one for you. Will add one. Add one here. You'll see how light it is. It's almost the white is almost transparent. And that's what we want for our very first layer of white. Just a little bit of transparency. So it just looks like just a hint, hint of light. And we're going to add these in as many places as possible. Just a nice little light area. Okay, and I'm going to add a couple more of these almost transparent areas of whites. Just a couple more. And now we're moving on to the bay areas of white. And now I am going to go straight from the bottle. And I am going to make some nice stark white areas. So we're going to do again the same exact thing. We're going to do, triangles of white. So I'm going to do one here. You don't want this to overpower your piece. So be very strategic. About where you are placing your white triangles. I think since this is already the nice start of one, I'm just going to go right in here. Remember you're going to add them sporadically everywhere. Concentrating the majority of them up here. But you're not going to neglect any of the other areas. So we have one there. Let's make a really big one. We're gonna make one that crosses over one of our guides. My brush is a little bit dry, so I'm going to wet it again. And I'm going to make one that crosses over the guide. And again, this is stark white, nice and bright. And now I'm going to add some more up here. Remember I'm concentrating the majority of them where the light is hitting it. So let's add one here. And we're going to try not to go overboard and overdo it. So let me add one here. I'm gonna make this one go at an angle. But it's gonna be a skinny one. Don't forget to add your skinny little ones as well. You don't want them all to be super big. So let's add a little skinny one right here. And a little skinny one right here. Okay? And I think I think we are done with this. Let's add one up here. I say as I do, as I say not to go overboard. But we'll do that. After that, what you want to do is add a couple of little specs. So if you notice when you're looking at a gemstone, you see like little sparkles. So that's what we're going to add. We are going to add some splatter at the end, but we're painting the background so we don't want to add too much at this moment. So I'm going to just add a couple of little dots of white manually. Just around certain areas and there's, there's no rhyme or reason. Just add them where you see fit. Okay. And now it is time to work on the background. 12. Painting the Background: Now that we are about 95% done with our gemstone crescent moon, we are going to paint the background. And I am going to use this blue, which is enthroned quinone blue. However, I'm not going to use it from this palette. I actually put and throwing quinone blue and all of my pallets. So that's this one right here. Because I am going to switch to a size ten brush and I'm able to grab it from the wells here. Much easier than from the small the small pans. So for our background, you are going to pick your favorite dark color. You can mix them up. You can pick one or two for the most part, I'm going to be using in throwing quinone blue. I might throw in some peacock blue. And I'll show you once again, this is the peacock blue. So I'll be using this one and possibly that one. But to paint the background, it's fairly simple. So you really want to get your brush as wet as possible. And you want to add a lot of water to your Well, I usually don't put my paint on a pallet and then work from that. I always work directly from the well, and we're going to take it one area at a time. Make sure that your pick your pieces taped down well so that water doesn't get under there. Still might. That's okay. If it does, I'll show you how to correct it at the end. And we are going to start adding in the color. So on the corners here, I always like it to be nice and dark. So I always make sure to add as darker concentration of color as I can. And then I'll rinse my brush a bit and then just pull some of that out to give it a bit of lightness in the middle. And then I'm just going to alternate with that. Alternate with areas of dark and areas of light to give it a nice airy galactic feel. So you'll notice that I am going to be working in sections. What do I mean by that? Well, oops, I already messed it up a little. Do you see there I got some splatter inside of my moon. I'm going to leave it that way. Okay? Because anyone who has taken a class for me, either here or on YouTube or on any other platform, knows that I tend to make a lot of mistakes. You can do one of two things. You can grab a tiny piece of tissue paper or paper towel. You can leave it if you want, or you can just grab a tiny piece and pick it up. And it's going to leave a little bit of a spot. That's okay. We'll work on that later as long as hopefully I won't forget. Okay. So in order to keep a nice even look to the background where there are no breakups between wet paint and dry paint. What you wanna do is thoroughly wet the corner or the edge on one side. And this will give you time to work on the rest of the paper over here. And that's going to stay nice and wet. Okay? And that way it won't dry before you have a chance to go back at it. Now, I am going to avoid my crescent moon for now. That's water some of this down here. I'm going to avoid my crescent moon for now. And I'm going to go back in with a smaller brush so that I can get that area there. So now I am wetting this area, a nice little puddle of water at the end. And I'm going to go back over here and you'll see that it's still nice and wet. So I don't have to worry about any of those hard water lines between the dark dry paint and nice wet paint. I'm going to wet this now. And now I'm going to grab a smaller brush. I'm holding the other brush and I'm going to go in and I am going to try to get nice, gentle outline along the moon. You don't have to go all the way to, to the to the edge of the moon. Just close. The reason why I say you don't have to go to the edges because we're going to be adding a glow to the moon. So you don't need to touch the crescent moon and the Global take care of masking that. And I'm going to turn this around and do the same here. Again, I'm not going to go straight to the edge because we're going to mask because that edge with a nice glow were going around, around, around. I'm going to add a nice puddle here. And then come back over here and continue on my merry way. So all of this is beginning to try, but these edges aren't. So I'm not going to have any of that separation between wet and dry paint. And I'm just adding in some water now. And let's add a bit more. So I'm just alternating between adding in lots of really dark paint and then water. Now I'm going to add a puddle here. And I am going to add more of a puddle here. And I'm coming back over to this side. And I'm going to continue on. And you'll see that by adding in that water, it gives us a nice lightness to some areas. And the darker areas are always for me, the darker areas are always going to be in the, around the edges and the corners of my backgrounds. Okay, and now I'm going to go in with my smaller brush and tried to get in just a little closer without actually touching the crescent moon. Okay, perfect. I think if you're satisfied with it the way it is, You can leave it at that. You don't have to do anything else. You can just let it dry and continue on your merry way. However, I think I'm going to add a second layer. And I think that the second layer I add is going to be with the peacock blue. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to try not to disturb that bottom layer. So I'm adding in the second layer. And I am not adding in too much of that peacock blue because I want it to shine through. I want the, the layer underneath to shine through. So I'm only adding it in some areas. But you'll see what I'm doing in-between is I'm cleaning my brush off and I am just putting in water very gently around it. That way I will have a nice bit of depth and I won't have any of those hard water lines. So we're going around the moon. I'm adding in a bit of color where I see fit. I mean, you can add, you don't have to do this layer. I enjoy it. I enjoy adding in a bit of color here and there. And I am going around with some water in the areas where I want to keep the blue undertone from the color beneath, or the blue tone from the color beneath. I'm turning my paper as I go. And I am adding in some blue and just watering down where I don't want to add anymore paint. And I'm going to keep doing this until I reach the other side. And if there are some areas, if you're doing this second layer, and then there are some areas that you are not too happy with if they're too light or if they're too dark. You can always add in a bit from the first blue. You can add a bit of that backend. I am adding in a bit of that and threaten quinone blue back in. A bit of the peacock blue over it. Now, let this fully dry before we move on to the next step of adding a glow to the crescent moon. You really want this to be 100% dry so that we can reduce the amount of blue that gets in our white. 13. Removing the Tape: Once you have dried your background, you can't or once your background has dried. At this point, we no longer need the tape on or we don't. We no longer need our paper on a board. We no longer need the crisp edges and our paper will no longer buckle because we're not doing these huge washes anymore. If you're satisfied with your background, if you think you're not going to work at anymore, then feel free to begin to take off your tape and just work on your paper. So that's what I'm going to do now, one tip when you are taking your tape off of your paper is to pull away from the paper just in case the paper rips. It will rip away from your piece instead of into your piece. If you're really ambivalent about doing about removing the tape, you can heat up the taper bit by using a hairdryer and a heat gun to or heat gun to loosen up that glue. So just run it over it a few times to loosen up that, you know, the glue ends, tried to pull it away. So I am now going to take this off and remember, pull away from the paper. That way if it rips, it won't ruin ERPs. Same on this side, we're pulling away from the paper. And over here. And do it nice and slow and nice and gentle. And you'll see here for me some of the paint ramp underneath the tape. And that is a super easy, simple fixed. So don't fret about that. And there we have it. No more tape and beautiful crisp edges except for that up there. But we will, we will work on that. 14. Adding Stars: Before we start working on our glow, we're going to add the stars to the background because we don't want to add it on top of the globe. We want them to show underneath it. I'm going to a size six brush. Feel free to use whatever size brush you desire. Just keep in mind that the smaller the brush you use. If you use a size two instead of a size six, you're going to have smaller specs for the stars. The bigger you use a bigger brush size you use, the bigger they are. There are several ways to do this. You can either one tap the paint on. You can tap it with your finger, which is what I usually do. Tapping it with your finger gives you more concentrated, bigger specs. Tapping it with a brush gives you smaller, more dainty specs. You can also use a toothbrush, fill it with white, and then flick the paint on it. I am not using that because that causes a huge mess everywhere. So I'll be using two methods. I'll be using the tapping it with my finger method and the tapping it with a brush. So I load my brush with paint or with white, whatever you're using and tap. You can feel free to put as many or as little as you want if it gets into crescent moon. Perfectly okay. Because it's just going to add to that sparkle of it. So you can actually purposely put some, some in there. It's not a huge deal. And now I'm not tipping it back in, but with any excess, I will tap it on a brush and get the little tiny specks in there. And there you have your stars. Now we're going to work on adding in the glow. 15. Make It Glow: We are finally getting to the finish line. One of the last things that we're going to do before adding in the final detail is to add a glow around our gemstone moon. So I'm going to remove it from my board. Lay that down, and we're going to add the glow. The only thing you're going to need for this part is a small brush. I think I am going to go with a size six. And you need your weight medium, whatever white medium that is. So this is going to take a little bit of practice if you are not entirely used to it. So I am going to show you a couple of the steps that I am going to take in order to give this a soft globe. One of the most essential pieces are tools that you're going to need is a paper towel. I'm going to keep my paper towel here on the side. And we have to kind of find that medium between adding enough water and not adding too much. So let's get started. If you recall, we left a bit of white in between the background and the gemstone moon. And that is actually going to help serve as our guy. Also, it was much easier than having to painstakingly tried to get in there with our background. So I am going to clean off any residue from my brush. And you'll see here the water is coming out and nice and clear. And I am going to dip into my white. I am going to run it off the edge here to get rid of any excess water. And I'm going to do this a little bit at a time. We're going to do this very slowly so that we tried to be as precise as possible. I'm going to go in by outlining the outside of the moon. And we're doing this in small sections. I'm putting in a small outline and take your time doing this. There is no rush so that we don't get into the piece. I did a small outline. Now I'm cleaning off my brush completely and I am turning it on a piece of paper to get rid of any excess water. And now I'm going to go on the outside of that outline with a clean damp brush and pull a bit of that white out of there. I'm going to clean my brush off, do the same thing again, roll it, and then go back in there and pull some of it out. If you want to do it a third time, roll it. And this time we're going to the edge of where we put the water and just really just gently clean up any of those edges. And I'm going to do the same thing. Again. Moving down the paper. Very slowly. Clean my brush off, roll it and blend those edges out. Clean. Roll, blend. Clean, row and blend. If it's too dark for you, then you can go back in with some more water and blend that out a little more the minute you see yourself picking up anything other than white, such as the blue paint from underneath, lift up your brush, clean it off, and go back in. We were trying our very best not to disturb the blue underneath. Now I'm going to continue down. Make sure to try to get that line straight as possible. And I'm going to continue with the same technique. Try not to scrub at it, or we want to do is coax a little of that white out of that area. Just very gently. Clean off our brush, roll it to get rid of any excess, and then drag some of that down with as little water as possible on our brush. We want as little water as possible. Perfect. And now we're going to continue this way. And we're going to work our way around the paper. Oops, I picked up a little bit of blue there. So I am it's because my brush was too watery. So if you pick up a little bit of blue, dry your brush, clean and dry your brush off. So that all you have is the white and you don't disturb the paint underneath. So you're doing it very lightly. Now the inside glow is done. I see here that this is not even, you can leave it like that. I just am a little bit anal and I like it to all be the same. So that happens and you want to add a little bit more, you can feel free to do that. This part is still wet, but it's not going to stay wet for long. So if you want to add a little bit more white, then you have to make sure to do it while that area is still wet. You can touch up any areas this way as well. And then we're going to continue around. Continue around, making sure you get right up to the edge of that white. Cleaning off my brush and working my way around to the paper. Some areas will naturally be brighter depending on how much paint there is underneath it and how thick of a line you make when you first lay the white down. So that all really depends on you. You can make a really thin line of white and have a very thin glow. Or you can make it super thick and have a thick glow. I'm going to add a bit more white there because I started off pretty thick and then I ended off not fixed assets and nuts, so gluey there. I'm doing the same thing. And just remember, every single time you go to put your brush on the paper. You want to try to avoid having a ton of water on your brush. Because having a ton of water will disturb the blue paint underneath. And that will give it like a blue effect. If that's, if that's the effect that you want, then go for it. If you want it to glow blue instead of bright white, then definitely go for it. That's also a look. And I am going to continue going around and around until the entire outside of our crescent moon has a beautiful, beautiful glow to it. And I have a ton of water just sitting here. So I'm going to pick some of that up. And I pick it up. And now I'm going to go back in and just add a bit more white. Just remember the more passes of water of plain water that you put over the, over the paper, the greater your chances of disturbing the blue paint underneath. And if you do add too much water, you can just go in with a very dry brush and suck it up. Suck that water into your brush. Okay. I had way too much water there, so I removed some of it. And now I'm going back in with the white to give it a bit more of that glow. I can see I added too much water, so I'm struggling a bit to have a nice clear edge. I'm just pulling it out, pulling out that glow a bit more. And I'm just running clean water along the outside edge of it. And there you have a nice glowy moon. If you take a step back, make sure that you do that so that you can see if there are any inconsistencies. And right here I have a little bit where the glow didn't reach as far as the other areas did. So I am fixing that now. I have some here where you can still see the white on the edge. So I am going to go in with clear water to blend that out. If you see any other areas like that where the white has reached the very edge, just go in with clear water and blend that out a little bit more. There you have your glow. 16. Bonus Tip 1 Add Shimmer: If you are satisfied with your piece, you can leave it just as is. But now I'm going to give you a couple of little bonuses. So bonus one, if you look at your piece and you wanted to add a little bit more pizzazz, I suggest adding in some metallic watercolor, shimmery metallic watercolor. I am going to go in with a multi Chrome. And a multi chrome is a watercolor that changes color depending on the light. And I really loved to add shimmery metallic watercolors to my pieces because they give it a nice Little touch. This is a bonus. You do not need to do this. I also like going in with a dual Chrome or a multi chrome that lays down clear. So this will show up clear on white paper. Let me give you a little bit of an example. So if I take this and I put it down, it shows up semi clear, right? I contaminated my brush with a little blue. But when you move it in the light, it has pink, it has purple, it has blue. It's a little hard to see with all the lights in here, but there are a lot of different colors in it. And I like to go in with one of those. And all I'm doing is the same thing that I did before. And adding in a couple of triangles with this multi chrome. And it'll just give it a little extra pizzazz. Just a couple here and there. And it is the perfect little addition to any celestial piece. Now, these multichromosomal I use are from the Sprout Creative, which is also my brand of homemade watercolors. And if you are not able to get your hands on a multi chrome, then just use a light, a very light shimmer, or metallic in one of the colors that are already on your piece. So if you made your crystal or your gemstone moon with mostly blues, then use a really light blue metallic or shimmer. If you made it in mostly purples, then use a light blue or light purple, but use one of the colors that are already in your moon. Now the reason that I use this multi chrome, which is called fantasia, is because it has purple and it has the blue in it. And this just gives it a little extra something to spice it up. And as you can see here, mostly you can see the purples coming through. But it also has blue, a little bit of pink. And it just gives it a little extra specialness. 17. Bonus Tip 2 Add Stars: Bonus tip number two to give it even more sparkle and shine, let's add in a couple of stars inside of our crescent moon. The stars are super, super simple to make. We're just going to start with a little diamond. See it's very tiny. And then add little lines coming off the top, the bottom, and the sides. And there you have cute little glowing sparkly star as the sporadically in earpiece. To give it just that little extra special something. You can also add some to the outside. So we're starting with a diamond and we are adding in some sparkle. And some shine. It's simple, yet effective in bringing together the entire piece. You can also add more elements to your gemstone moon. And I'll throw in a little image here showing one of the elements I added was the star coming down from the tip of the moon. You can leave it as is. You can add other elements. My next class in this series of gems, celestial gemstones is going to be on crystal stars. So once you take that class, you'll be able to add Crystal stars. You can do just a ton of things or you can just leave it, as is. 18. Bonus Tip 3 Fix Mistakes: Bonus number three, if you like me, ended up with some paint that traveled underneath your tape. There's a really simple solution to that. Grab your white and grab a brush. Make sure your brush is not too wet. Because we don't want this paint to become transluscent in any way. We want a nice opaque layer of it and cover it up. So get as close as you possibly can. And cover up that mistake. Depending on your medium. If you're using white watercolor, some white gouache, you may need to go in for a second layer. Once that layer has dried. But there you go, as good as new. 19. Final Project: I hope that you really enjoyed this class as much as I enjoyed putting it together for you. So let's deal. Gemstones are one of my favorite paintings to make. For your final project. Take what you learned in this class today and make it your own. Use different color ways to bring out the beauty of your GMP's. Change the background or the scenery in the background. Put it against a city or against a mountain range. Just shake it up a bit. Add more details to your piece. Add more stars, maybe a shooting star, maybe a comment. Just add more details to make it your own. When you're done, please post your projects in the project section so that I can see them and admire them and comment on the beauty that you create. I'll see you next time.