Exploring the Universe with Watercolours - Learn to Paint 5 Stunning Space Paintings

1. Welcome to the Class: We all have spent some time gazing up at the stars and admiring the beauty of the night sky at some point in our lives. If you're someone like me, you must have admired astronauts who get to travel into space and see the beauty of our Earth and the night sky from above. Hello everyone, I'm a Geethu watercolor artist, an aerospace engineer, and an art educator based in the UK. Have you ever dreamt of being an astronaut or the chance to travel into space? What if I told you that I could give you that chance to travel into space and enjoy the vastness of the universe today? Even though not real, what if we could get there with our paintings? Have you guessed what this class is about now? Yes. It is about exploring the universe with paintings, with our watercolors. We're going to put on our spacesuit and embark on a journey into space from our homes. First, we're going to take off into space. In this small spacecraft, you will be able to enjoy the beautiful night sky while we take off from the Earth's surface. Next, we're going to look at our beautiful blue planet from space. We will see the glow of light as the sun cases the Earth. From here, we're going straight to the sun itself. I know it is practically impossible, but we're going to do it with our watercolors. After having spent some time with our star, we're going to head to our first galaxy, a green galaxy. Our spaceship is going to exclude those tiny stars as they sparkle. Our last destination is going to be this beautiful nebula, where we are going to fall into space and be lost in watercolor paintings. Are you ready to be my space group? Before we start on our journey, I will take you through all the art materials we need so that we can pack your bags and be ready to strap in. We will also go through the pre-flight checklist by looking at some of the essential watercolor techniques needed for this class. If you're looking to learn in detail about all the watercolor techniques, then you can go through my class on Ultimate Guide to Watercolors. After we finish with the checklist, we are ready for launch. All of the paintings are in real time and thus will be easy for you to follow even if you are a beginner. Are you ready to join me in this space shuttle? Let us begin the countdown and liftoff. [NOISE] Lift off 2. Materials You Need: Let us have a quick look at all the art supplies that we will need for this class. Throughout this class, I will be using artist grade watercolor paper. This one is from Archie's. It is cold pressed, 300 GSM or 140 lb, and it is 100% cotton paper. So I would highly recommend using 100 percent cotton paper for this class because sometimes you might see that you're getting the techniques right, but you're not able to get that perfect look for your paintings. This might be because of the paper. Another one of my favorite brands of paper is the Saunders Waterford paper, which is also 100 percent cotton and 300 GSM or 140 lb. Don't worry if you don't have these exact brands, you can join me with whatever watercolor paper that you have. I would highly recommend using a paper that is at least a minimum of 140 lb and having a texture of cold pressed or rough green. Cold pressed means it's having medium texture. For all the paintings in this class, I will be using an A4 size sheet. You don't need to exactly use A4 size sheet, you can go for a smaller size if you want, or you can even use sketchbooks but make sure that the paper is watercolor paper. The next thing that we obviously need is watercolor paint. I will be using paint from watercolor tubes like this. But you can use both paint from tubes or pens, whichever you own. I will be using paints from different brands, such as Art Philosophy, Sennelier, Daniel Smith, and White Nights. But don't worry, I will be telling you all the shades in the respective class projects, so join me with whatever watercolor paint that you have. Next, we need watercolor brushes. I will be using a flat brush like this one for applying the water on my paper. I prefer to use a larger size brush to cover a large surface area of my paper. You can either use a flat brush or the larger size brush that you have to apply the water on a paper. Throughout the class, I will be using these two brushes mainly. This one is size 8 and size 4 brushes from Escoda. These are natural hair brushes, so all you need is basically a medium-size brush and a smaller size brush for the detailing. Then I will also be using a small size brush. This one is a rigger brush, so you can see the pointed hairs that it has. It has long pointed hairs. But you don't need these exactly, you can use a very smaller size brush. This would be what we're going to be using for adding the stars on our galaxies so that is why we need the pointed tip of the brushes. Go with the smallest size brush you have and you will be covered. I will also be using a synthetic brush for the lifting off technique. We will be trying to lift off some watercolor paint from our paper to create different effects, so we will use these synthetic brushes for that. The other brushes that I showed earlier are natural hair brushes, and these are synthetic hair brushes. The synthetic hair brushes are perfect for the lifting off technique but there is one thing that I want to tell you, don't worry, because if you're a beginner and you have not invested a lot of money into watercolor brushes, then you are likely to be having synthetic brushes itself. If you're a person who has invested a lot into watercolor brushes, then definitely you have both of these. Not to worry about the brushes that you're going to be using. You can join me with even the most basic brush that you have with you because it would cover for both the synthetic and the natural hair that we're going to be using in our paintings. The next thing that we need is a watercolor palette for mixing our paints. You can see that my palette is quite messy. All you need is a plastic palette, or you can even use a ceramic palette. We will need two jars of water, one for applying freshwater on our paper, and the other to rinse off our brushes. You can see that when we're rinsing off our brushes in water, we turn the water into the color that we were using. If we were to use this water for applying the water for the wet-on-wet technique, we would actually be applying water with color on it. It is safer to use another jar of water, which would prevent us from applying colored water onto our paper. Then we will need a ruler and then an eraser and our pencil for the pencil sketch. You will also need a compass to make few circles. This is my makeshift campus because I can't find my other compass so I made with my pencils. Then you will also need masking tape to tape the edges of your paper onto the surface that you're going to be painting on. This would help your paper to prevent bending while painting. It is better to use a board and stick your paper onto any kind of board or you can even stick it to your table, or you can use other surfaces such as magazines or books. Then next thing you will need is white gouache or white watercolor. So I will be using this white gouache from Winsor and Newton. It is zinc white. You can also use titanium white, but it is all right, use watercolors also because they are exactly the same. It doesn't matter whether you are using white watercolors or white gouache. Then you will also need some paper towels. This would be to wipe off the excess water from your brushes and to correct any mistakes and also for the lifting technique. You can also use a cotton cloth for this purpose. Lastly, we will also use some table salt to get few watercolor textures on our papers. This is the normal table salt that we use for cooking. We need just a bit of it. Get your supplies ready and let us have a look at all the techniques that we will need for this class. 3. Watercolor Techniques: Before we start painting, let us have a quick look at all the techniques that you will need for this class. Here I have my paper taped down and I have just divided it into two sections. Let us have a look at the wet-on-wet technique. I'm going to use my flat brush to apply water on the paper. This technique is called wet-on-wet simply because the paper and brush that we're using is going to be wet. For this technique, obviously, the first part means we have to wet our paper. This is what I'm doing right now, I'm applying water onto my paper. We have to make sure that the water is even. You can see that when I added water onto my paper, it was forming small pools of water, we don't want this, we need it to be just having a glazed look on our paper evenly on the whole surface. Just make sure that you even out the water that you apply. You can move it out of the paper onto your masking tape. And then we load our brush with paint and we will apply it onto the paper. Since our paper is wet, you can see that the paint flows, so that's what is known as the wet-on-wet technique. You can see now, I'm going to gently dab my brush on my paper and in different directions, and you can see that how everything is blending together, this is because of the water on the paper. See here now, I'm going to just tap on my paper and see how the paint has spread. This is because of the water, obviously, and this is what is called as the wet-on-wet technique. It has a lot of uses for different painting, and we can use it to our advantage and make different paintings, and we can achieve a perfect blend with watercolors as well when using this technique. Here I am just going to add a bit of yellow to the bottom, and because yellow is a lighter color, it is mixing with the indigo that I applied at the top here and forming a green. That is one thing that we have to be careful about, that is, when applying a lighter color and a darker color together, so the darker color will always overpower the lighter color. Then the next thing is, you can see that I'm applying on top of the area that I already applied before. The key thing with advanced wet-on-wet technique that I want to show you today, is that when you're applying paint onto your paper, the key thing that you have to be careful about is do not let the paper dry. If you keep on applying more and more paint on all of the areas, then your paper will stay wet because you're applying a wet paint on top of it. The most important thing that you have to note here is that, don't let your paper dry, just keep applying the paint on top of it. First I had applied a lighter tone or lighter coat of indigo, and then before my paper was drying, I applied more darker tones on top of it. You can check out my class on ultimate guide to watercolors where I'm explaining all about the wet-on-wet technique and the different kinds of blending, and you will also learn about water control on your paper. I think that would be a great start if you're a beginner, but I will be covering some of the techniques that we are going to use in this class in this lesson as well. Here you can see the wet-on-wet blend that I have made on my paper. The key thing is to just keep applying the paint without adding too much water on the paper. Now the next thing we're going to look at is the water blooms. We need a normal brush for that, and we will need to dip our brush in water and we will splatter this water onto the paper. This comes from the water control theory, which says that do not add more water on your paper because otherwise it would form large blooms. You can see I've added water onto my paper and it just spread out the paint where it touched and created these blooms, or it is also known as the cauliflower effect. The next technique that we're going to look at is called the wet-on-dry technique. This means that using your wet brush to apply on the dry paper without applying water onto the paper. If you apply a brush stroke directly on the paper, it means that it is a wet-on-dry stroke. But you can easily convert a wet-on-dry stroke to a perfect blend by applying the next stroke, right where you ended the previous stroke. You see I applied a green first and then I'm taking my indigo and I'm applying right next to it, right below where it ended, the paint just mixed together. Since your paper is too wet, when I say paper, I mean the brushstroke that you just applied is still wet, you would be able to move your brush over it and create a perfect blend there, even without applying the water at first. This is what is called as wet-on-wet blending. I'm just going to apply a bit more of indigo towards the bottom to show you the next technique. The next major technique that we will need for the paintings of this glass is the softening the edges technique. The indigo stroke that I applied is still wet, it hasn't dried, and if you run your brush over the edge, you will see that the paint spreads on to the surface where you just applied the water, and if you keep applying water to the edges, you will see that it will reach a point where there is no more indigo to flow down because it is just getting lighter and lighter, but what you have actually done is you have softened the edge of the indigo paint that you applied. Just run your brush over the edge of that stroke and you would see that it has just softened the edge, so there is no more hard edge for the stroke that you applied. The next thing I'm going to show you is the wet-on-wet splattering. As the name suggests, it is, again, wet splattering onto a wet paper. I'm just going to wet my whole bard of the paper towards the bottom, and I'm going to pick up my indigo again. I'm going to hold my brush and splatter the paint on my brush onto that wet paper. Because as these are splatters, you can see that they spread very little, and this is quite different from the dots that you would put on your paper. Because when you add small dots, these are going to be spreading a lot and not as efficient as the wet-on-wet splattering method. The next technique that we're going to look at is called as the lifting technique. This basically means we're going to lift off our watercolor from the paper. The brush that I had been using was this Aquario series brush from Eskoda. It is a natural hedge brush, whereas for the lifting technique, I'm going to be using this synthetic hair brush, which is the Prado series from Eskoda. We will also need a tissue. We're going to slide our brush onto the wet or semi-wet watercolor paint on the paper and remove the paint from that area where we just slide it. Once we do that, your brush holds the pain that you just removed. This is why we need the tissue. We will dab off this paint on the tissue or you can wash off and then dry your brush on the tissue and use the lifting again. The more you do this on top of the area, you will see that the more paint comes off. I recommend using a synthetic brush for this because a natural hair brush holds a lot of water and even if you dab off all the water, it would just introduce more water on the paper and the lifting would be really difficult, but the synthetic hair brushes holds lesser water and hence it is very easy to lift off using the synthetic hair brush. As I said in the art supplies lesson, if you are not a person who have invested into natural hair brushes because they are quite expensive, then you're likely to be having synthetic brushes in your hand, and so it would be really easy for you to use your brushes for the lifting technique. You can see here that I'm using my brush to lift off paint from the left side. The left side, I had painted using the wet-on-wet technique and it is still wet. This is the reason why I'm able to lift off paint. It would be very hard for us to lift off paint from a paper that has dried completely, it needs to be at least semi-wet or completely wet to use the lifting technique. If it is too wet, then the paint would simply flow back to the place where you just lifted, and hence, a semi-wet surface and a synthetic brush is perfect for the lifting technique. Our paper has now completely dried and I'm going to show you the next technique which is wet-on-dry splattering. This simply means that the paper is going to be dry and your brush is going to be wet and you splatter paint onto the surface. The splatters would not spread like before, and you just get perfect dots at random places. That is what the splatters is for. We will be using it to add the stars on our paper. There are two ways that they can add the splatter. Either you can use the single-handed method where you just tap your finger onto the brush, or you can use the two-brush method by tapping this brush onto the brush holding the paint. You will see that the paint falls onto the paper, dropping at random places and giving the perfect splattering. I will be adding the stars on my galaxy using this white gouache. This is zinc white from Winsor and Newton. Or you can also use white watercolors. Here I want to show you the difference between white gouache and white watercolors, which is basically the same because many of you may not have gouache paint and it is okay to use your watercolors itself. Here I have taken my white gouache, and I'm also going to take my white watercolors. First, I'll show you using the white gouache, how the stroke is. I'm taking my white gouache on my brush and I'm splattering onto my paper. You can see those splatters, they're already looking like stars. This is what we will be using to make the stars on our galaxies. I'm just going to add some stroke onto my paper. This is just to show you the white paint that I'm using. Then here I'm taking the white watercolors. We will add the stars with the same. You can quite see that there is not much difference between both of them. Here is the stroke that I'm going to add. The stroke here looks darker because I just used a darker consistency of paint, that's all. There is literally no difference between gouache and watercolors if you're going to be using the white paint. Next, let us have a look at what is called as the dry brush technique. I just picked up a lot of paint on my brush and I'm going to slide it across the paper. The first stroke is obviously wet and has a lot of water that is on the brush and hence, it does not dry. But as you keep applying more and more strokes onto your paper, you can see that the paint has dried. In order to get the dry brush technique right, you can actually do your first strokes on some other paper, or you can use the tissue to dab off the excess water from your paper. Once you start getting the dry brush strokes, you can apply these onto your paper. This is going to be very important for one of the lessons. Make sure you practice this a few times on a rough sheet because it is going to be really helpful for you. Here I have loaded my brush with red paint and I'm just going to add a spiral. You can see that I started my spiral with the wet-on-dry technique, and as the water in my brush was finishing off, it converts to a dry brush technique. This is because the first few strokes has water and then when there is lesser water, it starts to appear on top of the paper. The basic point behind the dry brush technique is that when there is lesser water on your paper, there is not enough water for the paint to go into the texture of the paper, and it would just eventually appear on the top areas only. This is how you get the dry brush technique. It would be really better if you can practice this a few times to get the perfect dry brush technique. I would also like to suggest that the dry brush technique is perfect on a paper that has at least a medium texture. When you're trying to do the dry brush technique, try to use a medium textured paper or rough surfaced paper. I think we can move on to our class projects now. As I said, all of these techniques are explained in a great detail in my class on Ultimate Guide to Watercolors. You can check that out to learn more about each of these techniques. Without any further ado, let's start our journey into the universe. 4. Taping the Paper: For all the paintings in this class, I will be using an A4 size sheet. As I've already told you, this is artist paper. I'm going to show you how I taped down my paper. I'll be taking my masking tape and taping all the four edges of my paper onto the board. You can see that there is a slight bend on my paper. This is because I cut it out of a roll of paper and it still has the bend from the roll. But all of this is going to go away after I tape down my paper onto the board. Taping down the paper has a lot of uses because it would keep our paper onto the board, that is stuck firmly onto the board, as well as give us clean borders for our painting. This is just a normal masking tape that I got it off Amazon. Sometimes you may find that your masking tape is tearing off the paper or that your paint is flowing into the sides of the paper even after applying the masking tape. If you're not using an artist grade paper, it is most likely the paper that is the culprit. But if you're using artist grade paper, then it could be the masking tape. But there are some ways where we can prevent the paint flow to the edges of the paper. Here, I have taped the paper onto the board firmly, but we're not done yet. Here I'm going to use my ruler and I'm going to just run over the edges of the masking tape, just to make sure that it is stuck there firmly. I do this for all of my paintings and it keeps the paint out. Sometimes only in the corners, maybe some of it might slip away, but the rest of the areas remain really safe. This is really a good method to protect the edges of your paper. Just run your ruler over the edges. This is the reason why I said you need ruler in the art supplies. We don't really need it for the other class projects 5. Take-off to Space - Part 1: Let us take off into space in a small spacecraft and begin our journey into the universe. Let us have a look at the colors we need for this painting. For the yellow clouds in the sky, I will be using Indian gold and yellow ocher, so you can use either of these. Then for the darker regions at the top, I will be using indigo and Payne's gray. You can also use black if you don't have Payne's gray, you just need a darker color to apply at the top. Then for the violet and purple regions, I will be using two colors, which is Alizarin crimson and tailor blue, so Alizarin crimson, SPR83, and tailor blue is BB15, so these two colors is what we will be using, so I'll be using these to mix fairy shade of violet and purple. Then for the spacecraft, I will be using transparent brown, burnt sienna, and Payne's gray. You can also add a bit of Indian gold to get the highlights or the fire part, so you can use burnt umber if you don't have transparent brown, so you just need a darker brown for this. These are the colors that we will need for this painting. We will also need white gouache or white watercolors for the stars in the sky, so let us get to painting. The pencil sketch for this one is going to be very minimal and simple. We only need to sketch the spacecraft and nothing else, so it is just a small, simple shape for the aircraft to cylindrical type shapes with a triangular pointed head at the top, which is going to be the nose of the ship. This is what we will be taking off in. If you want, you can add two lines on the paper for the trail of the aircraft, and here, I'm going to be using my flat brush to apply water on the paper, so I'm going to be applying on the whole of my paper, even on top of the spacecraft. Because the spacecraft, we will be painting with a darker tone than what we will be painting with the background on, so it is fine to paint the whole of it right now. Use a larger size brush or a flat brush to apply the water. You can see how much of water I'm applying. It is just a glaze on the paper. Then next thing we're going to do is we're going to create the line of fire or the emission from the aircraft as it is going towards the sky. I'm going to create a whitespace for that, so we're going to use our tissue to dab of water from that specific region. You can see it is just below the spacecraft, all the way towards the bottom. Then I'm going to be switching to my size eight brush to start painting, so I'm starting with Indian gold. Don't worry, if you don't have Indian gold, you can use yellow ocher here, and yellow ocher would be a perfect choice because it would also not mix with the indigo that we're going to apply liter and form any green, so start applying Indian gold in small random shapes, and also some towards the bottom where the spacecraft, a machine or the fire part is going to be. So this is the trail of the spacecraft and also the clouds in the sky, so this is just an imaginative painting where the spacecraft is soaring into the sky. Then mix a red with a blue. I'm using Alizarin crimson and paler blue to create a purple for the next shade in my sky region. If you have purple or violet, you can use that directly as well. But the reason why I'm mixing red and blue together to get a purple and a violet is because by varying the amount of red and blue that I'm mixing my paints, I would be able to create different purple and violet, so this is the reason why I'm using that. Using the purplish shade that I created, I'm adding it onto my sky at random places, closer to the yellow, again, in the shape of smaller clouds and larger clouds, and you can see that I added a bit more of red into my mix, and I've created a nice red purple shade, and this is what I'm applying now towards the bottom. At the top, it was more of blue and red mixed together, so that gives me a nice violet shade, and at the bottom I added more red to it, so it became a red purple shade, and you can see that even though we lifted off the water from the spacecraft region or paint will flow on top of it, so we either have to use the lifting method or use a tissue to dab off the extra water. The reason why I did not use masking fluid or why I did not apply the water around that region is because I actually want the paint to flow on top of it just a little bit as it is flowing right now because this would act as the sky. That is what we are seeing through those fumes coming out of the spacecraft, so all you have to do is if your paint is flowing into that region, use a tissue to dab it off and you'll see that most of it is spreading, and it also leaves a slight color behind, and that is exactly what we want. Apply the purple and violet shade at random places, so this is totally random and I have no specific rule I'm just using the mix of these two shades and applying at random places. Here towards the bottom, I'm applying the reddish purple shade, more red in my mix, and I'm using my tissue repeatedly to take out the pain that is flowing into my fumes region, so my paper is still wet and I'm working on the wet on wet technique. Don't forget that. If your paper has started to dry, you might need to apply water at the bottom part or the top part whenever you're painting on that surface. But make sure that you do not add any water to the existing paint that you have applied because this would create blooms on your paper. Towards the bottom part of the spacecraft, also where we added the Indian gold, we will add these reddish purple shade. I'm covering the entire bottom part of the paper with this red or pink shade, and I will also add few darker tones onto my beeper at random places, so you can see the circular motion that I'm trying to do with my brush. This is to get those clouds like shapes and I'm not using any straight lines you can see that. Now, we will get back to painting the top region, so I have mixed a bit more blue into the red purple mix, and I have got a violet shade, and this is what I'm adding at the top. We have to be very careful around the yellow, we do not want to mix this with yellow. Otherwise, we would be getting shades such as brown or if you have more blue in your mix, then your yellow would turn into green. Towards the top region of the violet that we applied, we're going to add indigo, so that is the sky part at the top and it should be really dark, so this is the reason why we're painting it with indigo, so indigo is a very nice dark blue, so add it towards the dark region and cover the entire surface of the beeper at the top with indigo. We will also add the indigo in the shape of certain smaller clouds towards the bottom. You can see the shape that I'm making, it is totally random and I'm just swirling my brush around the paper. We need the indigo at the top region to be really dark so make sure you apply a darker tone of indigo at the top region. I'm applying more and more paint onto the top of my existing paints and trying to darken it as much as I can. Since indigo would not allow me to make it more dark, I'm going to be using Payne's gray at the top. This is where I said that if you don't have Payne's gray, you can also shift to using black paint. On top of the indigo apply the darkest black that you have, I'm using Payne's gray here. But don't cover the entire part of the indigo just at the top region. Make sure you get that nice transition from the indigo to the black at the top. This would happen if your paper is still wet and you're working on the wet-on-wet technique. We have to be working really quick for this painting. I'm painting on an A4 and my paper is likely to dry while I paint the bottom part or the top part. If you're not using artist-grade paper, which is 100% cotton paper, then you can attempt this painting on a smaller paper such as A5 and I'm pretty sure that you'll be able to work on the wet-on-wet technique. Now, I'm going to add more yellow onto my painting. Remember in the techniques class, I said that the key thing to keep our paper wet is to keep applying the strokes. My yellow region that I applied at first had started to dry so I'm going to add yellow on top of it again and this would keep my paper wet at that region because it had started to dry and so are the other regions, that is the pink and purple and red violet shade that we applied, they are starting to dry. We need to apply paint on top of it again to make sure that we keep our paper wet enough and create that perfect transition between each of those sheets. Every time you're applying the paint, make sure you apply them in the shape of clouds. They're just going to be random, small twirling motion with your brush and you can clearly see at the bottom part of the spacecraft where the paint has flowed inside so that is fine. I'm keeping on adding my strokes using the mix that I created, using the blue and the red and I just vary my shades by adding more blue or more red as I want. I've added more blue now and a bit of red into it, and I've got a nice violet shade and this is what I'm adding onto my paper right now. The red-purple shade that I had applied at the bottom has started to dry so I'm going over it again. Now we will paint the emission clouds at the bottom of the spacecraft as it blasts off from the surface. If you have seen pictures of the spacecraft, you might have seen large cloud formation at the bottom part so this is the exhaust from the engines of the spacecraft. We're going to be painting this with a nice violet shade. At the bottom part, we will add this in the shape of clouds. I'm sorry, I did not realize that the camera was not focused on the paper towards the left side but you can see what I'm doing towards the right side, I'm just adding a darker violet or bluish violet shade in the shape of clouds. We need to make this really darker and we need to be working on this to get the cloud effect. Before that, I'm just going to add few smaller clouds into my sky region on top of the yellow and some at random places and I'm doing this with a nice violet shade. Use the tip of your brush to get smaller clouds. Now I'm going to use my white paint to paint the exhaust at the bottom part of the spacecraft. Let us take some white and we're going to add this on top of the violet shade that we added. This is going to be part of the cloud formation at the bottom part of the spacecraft as it lifts off from the ground. We're still working on the wet-on-wet technique, my paper is still wet and I'm adding the wet paint onto my paper. It's all right at this point if your paper has dried because maybe you're not using 100% paper cotton paper and it's not staying wet as long as mine does and it's completely all right because these smaller clouds that we're adding with white, it would also look good if you're adding it with a wet on dry stroke. It really doesn't matter and this is the reason why I chose this specific painting for the project because I know that many of you may not have 100% cotton paper and I wanted something that you all can try out. Once we added the white paint on top of the violet paint, we're going to add the violet on top of it again. We're just trying to get a nice puffy cloud of smoke at the bottom part. First we added violet, then we added a bit of white on top of it and now we're adding violet on top of it again. This would create that puffiness for the clouds that we need. Now, I'm going to mix a more darker violet shade to add on top of this one so the cloud or the smoke at the bottom part is going to be in different layers when you see it in a picture and this is what we want to create. This is the reason why we added different colors on top of that. First we applied violet and white, then a darker violet on top, and now I'm going to add an even darker tone on the top so I'm going to be using Payne's gray. At this point, you can also use black if you want, but make sure that your black is not too black because we don't want the smoke to be dark or we don't want it to look black so just try to use a medium tone of black at the bottom and apply this at the bottom part of the violet shade that we applied and make sure that the white that we applied is visible. This is like layers of clouds that we're adding on top of each other to get that puffiness in the smoke. Again on the top, we will add some more white. This gives the maximum or the best amount of puffiness in the cloud. You can see already how my cloud region, so this is not actually the cloud, this is the exhaust from the spacecraft and you can see that how it is making it look standout, isn't it? This is one way you can do and don't worry if you're not working on the wet-on-wet because even if you add these on the top of each other using the wet-on-dry stroke, it is still going to look perfect because that's also how another way of doing it so don't worry about that. Once we have added the clouds, we will have to wait for the background to try to move on to the next part. 6. Take-off to Space - Part 2: Our background has now completely dried. I'm going to start painting the spacecraft trail, and for this, I'm going to be using my white gouache. You can also use white watercolors. I'm going to take my Size 4 brush, load it up with white paint, and I'm going to run my brush over the trail of white that we wanted, and remember some of our paint had flowed on top of it. This one, now I'm going to make it white by adding white watercolor or white gouache on the top. You will notice that no matter how much white watercolors you add, some of the color underneath is still visible, and this is exactly what we want because we want that smoke trail to be not perfectly white. This is the reason why I did not use any masking fluid. Because if I had used the masking fluid, it would have been too perfect and it wouldn't look like smoke. Now, just add the white watercolors in the shape of the smoke trail towards the bottom of the cloud formation that we made, and then right below the spacecraft. Let us add small lump towards the left and towards the right. This is to show the sparkling part where the engine is emitting these smoke from the spacecraft. We applied the white paint all the way towards the bottom where we had applied the Indian gold. So now we need to blend it with the Indian gold to make sure it looks like the emitting smoke or fire part. So add a bit more of Indian gold to the area where you just light the white paint and try to blend it with the white. Since the white is still wet because you just applied it, you will be able to blend it nicely, and also try to add a small yellow line towards the left and the right and try to blend the whole thing. This will make it look like the exhaust fire from the spacecraft. I am using water to blend it towards the bottom, and because my background is completely dry when I'm applying water on the top, it will not move the paint underneath. You can clearly see, I'm adding the white paint to the area and trying to blend it perfectly onto my paper. Now, onto the region right below the spacecraft, I'm going to be adding two pointed lines. In order to create the point, what I'm going to do is I'm going to switch to my smaller size brush, or my rigger brush because it has a pointed tip and I will load it with a white paint, and starting from the bottom part of the aircraft, I'll stretch my brush outward and liftoff. This would create two pointed sharp lines, and it will look like the bars there is sparkling. Just pointed line outward and lift your brush as soon as you move outward and it will give a nice point, and you can add smaller sparkling lines towards the bottom. Now, we will paint the spacecraft and I'm going to be starting with burnt sienna. For both of the parts of the spacecraft, we will first paint with burnt sienna, and since this is a very small part of the painting, remember to use a smaller size brush. I'm using my Size 4 brush here. Apply the whole of both the parts of the spacecraft with burnt sienna and then next is we're going to use a darker tone. I'm taking a transparent brown here. You can also use band amber, and we will apply this darker tone of the brown towards the left side of both the spacecraft. Only towards the left side because we want the right side to be lighter. Add this transparent brown or burnt amber, whichever you're using towards the top and towards the left side. Now you can see that my right side is glowing and my left side has a darker shadow. We will need to blend both of these together. Just use a damp brush and run it over the paint, and you will see that your burnt sienna and your transparent brown has mixed nicely together, and then towards the bottom part of the aircraft, add a little bit of Indian gold to show the exhaust lighting part. That is the fire coming out of the engines at the bottom, the booster ignition. Now, we will add the stars in the sky. We only need the stars at the top part. So the bottom part of the painting, I'm going to cover it up with a scrap piece of paper, and I'm going to load my Size 4 brush with whitewash. Don't worry. You can also use white watercolors, as I said. We're going to splatter this white paint onto our sky region. I'm just using my hands to tap onto my brush. You can use either two brush method or the single hand method. All of the regions where there is the indigo paint, we will splatter it onto our paper. There, now our painting is complete. We can peel off the masking tape. Remember to peel off the tape at an angle away from your paper. There, our painting is so beautiful, isn't it? We have now officially taken off into space. 7. The Earth from Space - Part 1: We have now taken off from the Earth's surface. Let us now paint the Earth as seen from space. We will need Veridian olive green and dark green for the surface of the Earth. Next, we will need paler blue or a nice medium blue to paint the sea parts of the Earth as well as the background. Then for the background as well as few dark spots on the Earth, we will be using indigo, and we will also use a dark blue such as Indanthrone blue or Prussian blue. Don't worry if you don't have Indanthrone blue or BB60, you can use Prussian blue instead. Then for the darker parts of the background, we will be using Payne's gray. These are all the colors that we need for this lesson. Let us now do the sketch of the Earth. We need to make a very big circle towards the left side. I can't find my compass, so I'm going to be using my dinner plate, which I use as a palette and I'm going to use that for making half a circle, so a semicircle towards the left side. This is what is going to be the Earth. Let us start painting the background first. We're going to be working on the wet on wet technique as usual. Let us apply water to the whole of the paper at the background at this space around the Earth and yes, it is space so apply water evenly. You can use a larger sized brush or a flat brush like the one that I'm using. Apply the water along the edge very carefully and make sure that any water doesn't flow into the space of the Earth and make sure that there are no pools or large blobs of water. I'm taking my size eight brush now and I'm going to use the pointed edge of it to apply water along the edge. You can see how very carefully and slowly I'm applying the water. This is because the edge is very delicate, as in we can't lose the round shape of the Earth. It has to be round. The key trick to keep your paper wet for a longer duration of time is to apply the water multiple times. When you do that, your paper will stay wet for a longer duration of time. We are going to be starting with tailor blue. Tailor blue is BB15. But don't worry, if you don't have tailor blue, you can go with a very nice lighter blue that you have. You can also use bright blue instead. We will apply this along the background around the Earth shape. But can you see a little space of white that I have left? I left a little white space between the separation of the Earth and the background. This is because I want to create a hollow shape around the Earth. I left a little bit of whitespace while I was applying my stroke and I'm applying tailor blue to the whole of my background. But here again, roughly towards the bottom shape of a circle, I'm going to leave a little bit of whitespace again. This is where the light is going to be. Obviously, you know the light source is going to be the sun. There's going to be a sparkle there. That space is what we have left as white. The rest of the areas we will apply tailor blue. Observe the whitespace that I have left and the rest of the spaces I have added tailor blue. Remember to apply the paint in a nice darker consistency or concentrated form. Now, we need to add the darker tones. I'm starting with indigo and I'm applying along the top. We will be applying indigo to the areas that are further away from the light. The light is the area where I left it white and the further away from the light, it means it's going to be darker. So at the top, we need to apply indigo. My paper's still wet and I'm applying indigo on top of the tailor blue. It is blending with the tailor blue and creating an even blend. Towards the bottom, you can see that I'm blending the indigo with the tailor blue. Again, towards the bottom left, we will apply darker tone of indigo again because this part is also further away from the light. Only the areas closer to the whitespace we will leave as tailor blue and the rest of the areas we will apply indigo. We want our indigo to be as dark as possible. Remember to take concentrated indigo. Don't worry if you don't have indigo, you can mix your blue with black. Here, now I want an even darker tone for my background. I'm going to add Payne's gray on top of my indigo. Towards the top edge, I'm going to be adding Payne's gray. On top of the indigo, I've added Payne's gray and I'm blending it with the indigo and the tailor blue. Ideally, what we want to achieve is very dark black background towards the furthest points of the light. Then it will be indigo and then from there would be tailor blue. It needs to be a perfect blend between these three colors. We should also make sure to leave that whitespace as it is. You can see, I've taken more of tailor blue and I'm mixing it with the indigo and the Payne's gray that I applied. When you dig more of the first color and you apply again, you will see that you will be able to blend it perfectly. I'm taking more of Payne's gray and adding it to the outside. The point is just basically to make the outer edges dark as possible. It needs to come lighter as we move towards the glow. The glow is the light, that is the whitespace that we have left. I'm adding more of indigo and Payne's gray to the outside. You can also use black instead of Payne's gray and add it as dark as possible. Towards the inside, we will be blending with tailor blue. Now for the glow or the light, we're going to be using our synthetic brush for the lifting of technique. As I said, don't worry about this brush categories. Just use your normal brush that you're using for painting. Using your brush, dab off the paint from the light area if it has flowed too much on to the whitespace that you tried to leave behind and using this dry brush, try to make a small circular shape by moving the wet paint onto that area if there is a bigger whitespace. You can see I've created a small semicircle. Now, I'm going to be lifting off the paint from my paper in the form of sparkling light. You can see I'm moving my brush as a line on my paper. Then I'm removing that paint by dipping my brush in water and then make sure you dry your brush on the tissue and then repeat this process. This line, we're going to be doing it in different directions. This would create the whitespace or the sparkle of the light. Then we will also try to lift off along the edge of the circular shape, that is the Earth. This will form a nice halo shape around the Earth, giving it the glow of the light. In a single motion, rub your brush or slide your brush along the edge all the way to the top. The key thing is do not start in the middle, start from the light area and just move your brush across the side all the way to the top. As you reach the top, you will see that not much of the paint is getting lifted. But that's all right because we want it to start lighter and go darker towards the edge. That is why do not stop midway. Just keep lifting off and only stop at the end. Then for the lines of the light, liftoff and slide your brush. Only lift off at the point where you want the light to stop. You can see I've added three long ones and then I'm adding smaller ones in-between. The long ones I let my brush slide for a longer duration of time and for the smaller ones, I'm lifting my hand quicker and not until the brush reaches the end of the paper. This is a longer one. This is another of the longer one. I wait until I'm sliding all the way to the end of the paper. But for the smaller ones, I lift my hand off quicker than the other ones. I hope this makes sense but this is one way of lifting off paint. You can try this on a scrap piece of paper and try practicing it. You might have to do it 2-3 times to get it right. But trust me with practice, you will get this right. It is just very simple, trying to lift off paint from a wet surface. It will only work if your paper is semi wet. Don't try to lift off from a paper that is too wet because the paint will just flow back in. This is what is actually happening on my paper because it is still wet and it flows back. But that is why I'm doing the lifting process multiple times. You might have to do it over and over again on the same line multiple times to get that lifting perfectly. This is for the outside part or the space bar. Next, we will get on to painting the Earth. 8. The Earth from Space - Part 2: The space part of our painting has now completely dried and let us start painting the earth. We will be painting with the wet-on-wet method again. Let us apply water along the inside that is on the surface of the earth. Make sure you apply the water evenly. Don't forget that. Along the edge, I will be using my size 8 brush to apply water. Remember, we have to apply the water very carefully because we can't afford to lose the circular shape of the Earth. We can only paint the Earth after the background has completely dried, otherwise, when we're applying the water, the paint from the background would flow inside. You can apply the water multiple times to make sure that your paper stays wet for a longer duration of time. This is the reason why I always spend a lot of time to apply the water on my paper. Usually, I let the first coat of water sink into the paper and then reapply again. This makes it stay wet for a longer duration of time. Now, we're going to start with our first color, which is viridian. You can also use emerald green for this. We will start applying towards the bottom part of the Earth. This is going to be the color of the land on our Earth. Make sure we apply the paint towards the bottom part almost away from the light area. We don't want to lose the light area on the Earth. You can see, I've just applied random shades. Here we're not going to add any real continents on the Earth. That would be a really difficult task for us. Next, I'm digging olive green and I'm applying towards the top right next to the viridian or emerald green. If you don't have olive green, you can mix a little bit of brown to your sap green and you will get a nice olive green color. You can see that I'm applying a totally random just at few places but towards the right side because the left side, I want it to be the sea. The two colors that we have applied now is viridian, or emerald green, and olive green. Now, we'll paint the ocean part. We will start with teal blue again. I'm applying the teal blue along the ocean part of the Earth. Around the edges of the land area that we have made, we will paint with the teal blue, and we will also add teal blue to the whole other parts of the Earth. The whole thing first, we will cover it up with teal blue. Remember, I'm working on the wet-on-wet technique. You might have to paint quickly to cover the whole thing up with teal blue. You can observe that I'm not adding too much water onto my paper. When you're working on the wet-on-wet technique, that is one important thing to note. Add more water onto your paper with your brush when you're painting because that would create blooms. Just add as much water as there is already on the paper. Keep picking up more paint but not a lot of water. You can see I'm covering the whole of the earth's surface with teal blue. This is what we're going to do. But closer to the light, we will try to keep it as white as possible. Don't worry if you can't get it white because we can add the white light with white watercolors later on. You have to be careful along the edge. As I said, we can't lose the circular shape. Very carefully along the edge, use the pointed tip of your brush to get that circular shape. Now we have covered the whole of the Earth with teal blue, but we need to add some more darkness. We need to give it the shape of the ocean. Here is what I'm going to use my indent 3 in blue or PB 60. Don't worry, you can use Prussian blue instead, or you can use another dark blue that you have. I will be adding these dark blue strokes to my ocean area. If you have taken my ocean class, you might find this very easy because this is just simply trying to add some darker strokes at random places to the ocean area. If you haven't taken my ocean class, I would highly recommend taking that class. Now, we have added those darker strokes with Prussian blue. Then we're going to add the darker edge of the earth. The topmost part and the bottom-left part are going to be really dark because this is further away from the light. The light is towards the right side, as you can see, where we have left white and the other places which are further away from the light are going to be darker, just like the background. This is why we are adding indigo on the top and we're blending it with the teal blue. We're still working on the wet on wet technique. My paper stays wet for a longer duration of time, mainly because it is 100 percent cotton paper. But there is also another thing, I'm going on adding wet paint onto my paper and this wet paint will keep my paper from drying out. If there is some area that does drying, then what you need to do is apply more paint of the same color on top of it, and you will just keep on wetting that part with the paint. So that is how you can keep your paper wet for a longer duration of time. I've painted the edges with teal blue. Then I've added few darker tones with Prussian blue or PB60 indanthrone blue, and towards the edges, I'm adding indigo. To make it even darker, you can add Payne's gray to the top. But don't add Payne's gray all the way towards the center, just only to the top and blended with the indigo. We want this area to be really dark, that is why we are adding this color. It is just like the way we painted the background. The glowing part of the Earth is going to be with white and teal blue, and the darkest areas we're blending it with indigo. Now next, we will add some darker tone towards the top area where we apply the olive green. So pick up a darker shade of green and just apply it to the land area at the top. Now, I'm going to be using my white gouache paint to apply the clouds on the Earth's surface. You can only paint this one's the Earth has completely dried. I'm going to be using my size 8 brush and I'm going to be using my white gouache paint. You can also use white watercolors, or even you can use acrylic paint. Using this white gouache paint, we're going to take off the line of the pencil sketch along the light area. And also we will try to mask off any teal blue that has sit into our white area because we want this region to be really white. This is the glow in our painting or the light from the sun. So along the edges, we will apply the white. You might have to apply the white multiple times to make it as white as possible. Do not stop until you get clear white. So as I said, add the paint as many times as you want and try to get the white on the paper. Then we're going to be adding some clouds into our Earth. So these clouds are going to be like on the top, on the atmosphere, which is seen from the space. So we're going to be adding this using few wet on dry strokes and dry brush technique. Remember I showed in the techniques lesson that when you apply wet on wet stroke after a while, it changes to a dry brush technique because there is not much water on your brush. This is what we're going to be using exactly here. We're going to add some wet on dry strokes onto the Earth's surface. We're just going to keep on painting until there is no water left on our brush and our stroke converge to a dry brush stroke. Towards the edges, we will add the white for the light source and towards the inside we try to add it in the shape of clouds. So if you have taken my oceans lesson, then these dry brush strokes were actually the waves in the ocean. But here these dry brush strokes are going to be the clouds in the surface. So it's like the atmosphere and when I say clouds, the air currents in the Earth's atmosphere so that's what this is going to be. Just randomly tried to make few shapes. You can see here I'm sliding my brush across the paper, there is not much water on my paper, so it's creating a dry brush stroke and that's what we exactly want. So try adding it in different shapes. Maybe circular. Circular would be the best because the clouds or the air currents usually forms circular shape and that's what we're trying to add. Slowly, just slide your brush across, and you will see that the dry brush strokes coming into the picture. Remember, for the dry brush stroke, you need to at least have the medium textured paper otherwise your dry brush strokes will not appear clearly. So try this multiple times on a scrap piece of paper and you will see that how your brush is making those dry brush strokes. This is what we want to replicate onto the surface of the Earth. There are some areas in my painting which I had left a little white. Here. I'm adding more of the white paint on top of it to create the form of dark clouds. So when I say dark, it means a larger surface area is covered with the atmospheric air currents. So you can do both the wet on dry and the dry brush technique to get these atmospheric air currents onto the surface of the Earth. You don't even need to do the dry brush technique. Also, you can do a total wet on dry technique also, it just means that you Earth discovered in a lot of clouds. It can be a cloudy day, so it doesn't matter. There can be a lot of air currents in your painting. So if you can't get the dry brush technique, go for the wet-on-dry technique. It wouldn't really matter. It would just mean that your Earth is having a really cloudy day. That's all. I mean, a large part of your Earth is going to be under the clouds, that's it. So don't worry. You can see that some of the areas, I'm trying to darken them, darken as in whiten them with white, using a concentrated form and some of the areas I'm just using light paint. Here, I'm adding more white to the area of the light. I had applied the white paint earlier and it had dried. So I'm adding on top of it again to make it more white. Once you have done this, our painting is complete and you can take off the masking tape. This is my most favorite painting from this class. One day, I wish I could go up into space and have a look at the Earth like this. Well, it's everyone's dream, isn't it? Here is our beautiful Earth painting. I hope you had a really good time watching the Earth from space. I really can't take my eyes off from this painting. See you all in the next painting. 9. The Sun - Part 1: Next, we're going to travel straight to the sun. I know it is practically impossible, but it is not so impossible with watercolors. First, we need Indian yellow, then Indian gold. These paints are from White Nights. Then the next color is burnt umber and permanent brown. Permanent brown is just a brown mixed with a little bit of red in it, so don't worry if you don't have permanent brown, you can mix your burnt umber with a little bit of red and you will get the permanent brown shade. Then I will be using sepia. Instead of sepia, you can also use Van **** brown. Then we need Payne's gray for the darker areas and lastly, we will need a red shade or alizarin crimson. I'm going to be using alizarin crimson, but you can go for any pink or red shade that you have. There we go, these are the colors. Again, for starting with the sketch, we need to make a circular shape and I'm going to be using my smaller dinner plate this time to make a circular shape. You can use a compass. We only need part of a circle towards the top, so this is going to be the glowing flaring sun, and only part of it is going to be visible. Just part of a circle towards the top, and that is all for the sketch. First, we will paint the outer part of the sun and we're going to apply water for the wet-on-wet technique. Remember, take your time to apply the water, make sure that the water that you apply is evenly without any large pools are blobs of water, and also try to preserve the circular shape of the sun, so we have to be very careful along the edges. Use a pointed brush like I'm using to slide across the circular region towards the outside. There you go. I'm going to start with my Size 8 brush, and I'm going to start with Indian yellow. You can use any yellow that you have, either transparent yellow, Indian yellow or orillion, you can even use Gamboge yellow. We will apply this along the edge of the sun, so this is going to be like the flaring glowing part. We will apply along the edge and this will be the wet-on-wet technique, so you will see that your paint is flowing towards the other areas where you have applied the water. You have to be careful because this is the edge of the sun and we don't want the paint to be flowing towards the inside. Slowly and carefully along the outside and we will also add some random strokes towards the bottom. The whole thing about this painting is that everything is just random and it is depicting the fireball of the sun, the flaring fire outside the sun. It doesn't have to be in a uniform manner. This is totally up to your wish, so that's why this painting is so beautiful and all of you are open to your creativity. You don't have to be applying the strokes exactly as I'm doing, you just need to have the colors right. The next color that I'm adding is Indian gold. Don't worry, if you don't have Indian gold, you can actually make Indian gold. All you need to do is mix a bit of alizarin crimson with Indian yellow. Again, alizarin crimson means all you need is a nice pink shade and add yellow to it. When you add more yellow, you will see that it is getting into a nice golden shade. You can also add a little bit of brown to your yellow and red mix and you will get a nice golden shade. This is almost going to be similar as Indian gold, so you can use that. I applied Indian yellow first and then to the other areas, I applied Indian gold and now I'm going to be taking alizarin crimson. Alizarin crimson is like a reddish pink shade and when mixed with yellow, it gives a nice spreadsheet. You can go and use directly a red shade here, you don't need to use alizarin crimson itself. I'm applying the alizarin crimson towards the right side on top of the yellow, so it is turning my paint into a nice, beautiful red shade, which is exactly what I want. But as I said, you can directly use red on top of it. Remember to use a concentrated form of red, otherwise, your red would mix with the yellow and form an orange shade. Again, I'm applying my alizarin crimson at random places just a few lines. This is again, the flaring part of the fireball outside the sun. I'm trying to blend the whole thing together, so I'm picking up more of my Indian gold and mixing it alone with the red so that I get a nice perfect blend. Then towards the bottom, I'm going to be applying the permanent brown. This permanent brown shade is a nice brown shade, which is almost like reddish brown, so you can also use Brown Madder. Brown Madder is very much similar to this permanent brown shade from Art Philosophy. If you don't have either of these two shades, all you need to do is mix your brown with a little bit of red and you will get this nice, beautiful reddish brown shade. This is what we will be using for the medium brown tone near the flaring sun. You can see on top of the yellow and Indian gold areas, I have just made a few lines, but also trying to keep the yellow there itself. Then towards the bottom, now I'm adding burnt umber. Burnt umber is like a nice dark brown shade, so I'm applying this towards the bottom part of the permanent brown that we have applied. To the whole of the bottom part first, we will apply this burnt umber. Now we will add more darker tones on top of it. I'm going to be taking sepia and I'm adding on top of the burnt umber towards the bottom. The bottom area is like the furthest place away from the flare. This is why we are adding the darker tones and towards the very bottom, you can make it even more darker by adding a darker tone such as Payne's gray, or you can also add black. Can you see the variation of the shade towards the bottom? All the way towards the bottom it is Payne's gray or black. Then comes sepia or Van **** brown, which is like a very dark brown. Then we go to the next shade of brown which is burnt umber and then on top of it is the permanent brown, which is like a reddish brown. You can either use permanent brown or brown matter. You can see now how I have applied and I'm reapplying my strokes because my paper is starting to dry and I need to wet it quickly. For wetting it, I'm applying the paint on top of it again. When I'm applying the paint on top of it again, the water on my brush, not a lot, but the wet paint would just keep my paper wet more and more. This is how we can make our paper stay wet for a longer duration of time. Pitch black or the black possible at the bottom part and towards the top, we need the lightest areas. I've already made it so dark black towards the bottom using Payne's gray. Now I'm going to keep on blending my top area. Now you can see a clear separation between the permanent brown and the others. This is because my paper has started to dry, but I'm not going to let it dry. I'm going to reapply my strokes on top of it and blend it along with the wet paint. See here, I just applied Indian gold and I'm going to apply the Indian yellow along the outside of it on the top. When I'm applying, you can see that it looks like a wet on dry stroke. This is because my paper has dried, but the areas where I just applied the water is still wet and I'm trying to wet the other areas by reapplying my colors. That is how I keep my paper wet for as long as I can. See, I'm applying the red and the area surrounding the earlier red had dried. But when I apply the paint on top of it again, I've re-wet that area. This is one way where we can create that perfect blend between different colors and keep our paper wet for as long as we can. The key thing here is to not stop at any place. Because the place where you stop, your paper has dried and you just put a wet stroke. That place would create a harsh edge or line on the paper which we do not want. This is the reason why I'm repainting all of the parts and continuing until the whole of my paper is covered in paint again. This would make sure that our painting is vibrant as well. You can clearly see the strokes that I'm applying towards the bottom. I'm trying to create some swirling motion with my brush to replicate the look of the flaring sun. If you look at pictures of the sun, you will see that the fireball has flares in different shapes, mostly like twirling around. That is what I have tried to add here. You can see the yellow, how it is twirling and swirled into a small elliptical shape. Not exactly an ellipse, but you can see the swirl on the paper. This is what I have tried to achieve here. You can have your own shapes. It doesn't really matter. All that matters is that the bottom part should be as dark as possible and create a nice transition between the different colors. That's all. I wanted this painting to be as vibrant as possible. I just added each of those colors multiple times onto my paper so that everything was vibrant and really standing out and I also didn't want to create any harsh edges. I made sure that I keep my paper wet for as long as I can by reapplying my paint strokes. Another important thing here that I want to tell you is that even if your paper is not the same as mine and doesn't stay wet for a longer duration of time and you're getting a lot of wet on dry strokes, it is fine because this is like the sun's surface and we're trying to do the flare. It is okay to have wet on dry strokes and having edges and borders because it is just going to be like a different swirling fire motion. That's it. This is the reason why these paintings are so easy and everyone can follow along. Because even if you're not using an artist grade paper, the swirling motion would still make it look like the sun. Once we have painted the outside part of the sun, we will have to wait for the whole thing to dry before we can move on to painting the inside part. Now let us paint the inside part of the sun itself 10. The Sun - Part 2: The flaring part of our sun has now completely dried. We will start painting the inside part of our sun. We need to be applying the water along the inside because we're going to be working with the wet on wet technique. Use your pointed round brush to apply the water along the inside. Very carefully along the edges, we need to preserve the circular shape of the sun. Remember, there shouldn't be any large pools or blobs of water. Apply the water very carefully. First, we will start with Indian yellow. We applied Indian yellow along the edge and towards the inside. Also, we're going to be applying the Indian yellow first. This is like the most glowing part of the sun so we need that to be yellow. I'm applying Indian yellow. You can use transparent yellow, gamboge yellow or Aureolin. For this inside part of the sun, we're going to cover the whole thing first with Indian yellow, so onto the wet water add the Indian yellow onto the whole of the inside surface of the sun. Now, we have covered the whole thing with yellow. The next color we will use is alizarin crimson or the red shade that you used. We will start to apply this towards the top area. These are going to be the darkest parts at the dark region of the sun. The glow is at the bottom and towards the top, we need to be adding few reddish dark shades. I'm starting with the alizarin crimson and applying it on top of the yellow. You can see that it has turned to red shade. As I said, you can also go ahead and use red shade directly. Remember to use a concentrated form of red because otherwise the yellow would mix with red to form orange. You can see that I have applied the paint in the form of small circular region, such that it forms like the darkest region towards the outside of the ball of fire. Then the next color we're going to be adding is Indian gold. I'm applying Indian gold towards the edges of the red that I have applied. You can clearly see the blend I'm trying to make here. Yellow first, then I added red on the top. Then I'm using Indian gold and I'm blending it. I'm just trying to create some shapes onto my sun's surface. Random shapes on top of the yellow. I will also be using the pointed tip of my brush to create some curved lines. This is just to replicate the flares or the surface of the sun. If you look at pictures, you can clearly see that it forms as if it's having rings of fire on the sun's surface. That's what we're trying to do. You can make the same with a few red as well. Towards the top corners, it is going to be darker. As we approach the glowing part, we have to make it lighter. That is why I have used yellow. Our strokes are completely random. I'm using a mix of both alizarin crimson and Indian gold to create random shapes onto my sun area. To some places, I'm also applying the red, you can see that. Applying some curves with my brush. This is totally random. If you asked me to make this again, my strokes are going to be entirely different. This is just very random. Don't worry about trying to get the exact stroke that I'm applying. Then I have switched to my size 4 brush because I want my strokes to be thinner now. I'm going to be using burnt umber. We're going to add some few small curved lines with this burnt umber. I just picked up the wrong shade so I had to wash off my brush. Yes, we need a darker brown so you can either use burnt umber or sepia. We're going to add few darker spots onto the sun's surface. Again, if you look closely at the pictures of the sun, you will see that there are few sudden darker spots on the lightest areas as well. I don't know what these are, but it is there in pictures as I've seen it. That is why I'm adding them. Few dark spots at random places. These dark spots are probably not that essential, but I still wanted to add them. I'm adding few spots with my red, again, alizarin crimson. I'm just trying to make some random shapes onto my sun's surface. Wherever I had applied these darker strokes, I'm trying to apply some crimson next to it. Don't forget that these are totally random, so you don't need to worry that you have to get it exactly as it is. By now, you might have understood that [inaudible] that I have used for the sun, the Indian yellow at first. Then I added some darker tones with red and Indian gold on the top. Then I'm making fewer lines on the top with my Indian gold red. I've also added few dark spots with burnt umber or sepia. I'm just trying to create more dark spots, not exactly dark but medium tones onto my sun's surface. Next, I'm going to be taking my white gouache paint to add few random strokes onto my sun again. I want to add fewer lighter areas. I'm adding these with white. My paper is still wet and this is the reason why I'm adding these white strokes. Random shapes, again, just like we added with the Indian gold burnt umber and alizarin crimson, few certain random white strokes. This would add a nice glowing surface to the sun's surface. I'm just trying to create some random shapes. Since my paper is still wet, it is blending with the underlying color and creating a nice texture surface on the sun. This is not at all essential. Don't worry if your paper has dried and you're unable to make these white strokes, it is completely all right. At random places, just keep applying the white. Now, I'm going to pick up my Alizarin Crimson or red shade again and we're going to add some wet on dry stroke onto our paper on the outside of the sun. We're just trying to create more of the flares on the paper. So mix a bit of yellow if you're using Alizarin Crimson because I want it to be red, so that is why I said you can use red directly. So I'm just trying to add this flare shape onto my paper. So this is the reason why I said that even if your paper had dried and you were doing the wet on dry stroke, it is fine. This is because you can see now that I have applied a wet on dry stroke and I have made a tiny petal shape. This is just to show the flaring part outside of the sun but I would be blending the edges of it with yellow and adding few shapes with the yellow as well. So you can see I have added it with yellow paint and I have blended the edge of it and I'm blending the yellow onto my paper by using a damp brush. So this would make sure that I'm softening the edge of the yellow and that it doesn't create a harsh edge. And I'm going to be doing the same for my red shade. So you can see the petal shape that I created is now gone because I have softened the edges with yellow and water. We were just trying to create a flare around the sun using a swirling motion. You can add as many swirls and flares as you want. So now the whole part of our painting has dried. That is both the sun and the background. Now I'm going to add few splatters, but I want these splatters to be on to the outside part of the sun. So the rest of the areas I have covered with scrap paper, and I'm going to mix yellow with white. The reason I'm mixing yellow with white is because our background has red shades and the yellow might not become clearly visible on it. So when we mix it with white, we turn it into a little bit opaque and make it visible on top of the surface. And here, I'm splattering the paint on top of it. When you add white to the yellow paint, it would make it more visible. At the same time, it would be slightly yellow. You can add some towards the bottom part as well, but not a lot. So we have covered that part of the painting with scrap paper. You can also use tissues to cover up your paper. As you can see, I'm changing the direction of my paper because we have a circular shape and we have to get around to painting along the edges of that. So either you have to cut out your paper in the shape of a circle, or you can just move out your paper like this and add those splatters. Then the next thing is we're going to add some splatters with red. So here I am mixing my yellow with Alizarin Crimson again to create a nice red shade. I'm going to be adding splatters with this red shade. So we don't need to mix this with white because the areas that we're splattering is with yellow. So when we add the splatters, it would be clearly visible. So add these red splatters onto the fairing part as well. Splattering is my most favorite watercolor technique and I can never stop doing that. It is always like my weakness when it comes to painting because I just keep on adding as much splatters as I can. Even though I get all of the splatters on my board, on my palette, on my hand, I still love doing it. So let us take off the scrap of paper that we use to cover the sun area and you can see the painting closely how the splatters have turned out. So we're not yet done with the painting because I really want to add a darker part towards the top of the sun. So the red shade that we have added is still lighter. So I'm going with permanent brown at the top. So permanent brown is a mix of red and brown if you don't have permanent brown, or you can use Madder brown. So towards the top, towards the left and right corners of the sun, we will add permanent brown and then towards the edges of the permanent brown, we will add the red shade. In my case, I'm adding Alizarin Crimson and then we will use water to soften the edges. So this will not disturb the paint underneath because it has already dried. We will do the same towards the right side. So remember in the techniques lesson, I had shown that you can done wet on dry stroke into a blend. So this is what we will do here. First, we will apply the permanent brown and then right where that permanent brown stroke is, next to it, we will apply the red shade. So this would make it blend perfectly and then the edge of the red shade, we will apply water to soften it. So there, that's permanent brown added. So next, I'm taking the Alizarin Crimson, the red shade, and applying it to the end of the permanent brown. So you can see my brown mixed with the red and created a blend right there. Then now my red shade as you can see has a harsh edge. So I'm going to soften it by using a damp brush and pulling out the paint. So don't worry, if your paper has completely dried, you will not be disturbing the paint underneath, but rather your red paint would just flow and create a perfect blend on the paper. So now this looks more interesting, because we have added some darker tones towards the corners of the sun and the glow outside is clearly visible as well. So this is the reason why I wanted to add that darker tone towards the edges. So now our painting is complete and let us peel off the masking tape. So this is quite fun, isn't it? Although it is practically impossible for us to go to the sun, but we can do so with watercolors and that's what makes it even more interesting. It is so cold here right now that I actually wish I could go to the sun. So jokes apart, here is our final painting. See you in the next one. 11. Green Galaxy - Part 1: We're now going to move away from the sun and into a far-off beautiful green galaxy. For this, the colors that we need, are phthalo blue, phthalo blue is PB15. Then we will need sap green. I'm using sap green from Schmincke here. Then we also need a darker green. This is perylene green, again from Schmincke. But don't worry, if you don't have this green, you can mix your green with black. Lastly, we also need Payne's gray. Then for the stars, we obviously need white watercolors or whitewash, whichever you are going to use. As I had previously mentioned, it doesn't really matter which one you're using. I'm going to start with my Escoda flat brush and I'm going to apply water onto the whole of the paper. This one doesn't have any pencil sketch at all because this is just going to be a simple galaxy in which we are going to have fun with our paint. Lots of blending so we need to apply the water evenly on our paper. Remember, this is the most important part in this painting. This is because most of the work is going to be on wet-on-wet. We need our paper to stay wet for a very long time. You can really do that by applying the water on your paper multiple times. Run the water over your paper evenly, just like a glaze, and then let it settle. After that, re-apply the water. Now we start painting. I'm going to be starting with phthalo blue. I'm using my size eight brush. I'm just going to start at the center of our galaxy. This is where the blue shade is going to be. I'm just adding a small stroke in the center. Then, since we're going for a green galaxy, I'm going to be mixing my sap green. This is a nice sap green, don't worry if you don't have sap green, but I think most of the watercolor sets out there have sap green. But if you have a darker green, then mix yellow with it to get a nice sap green. We're going to be painting this in certain small arc type strokes. You can see I've added a few arcs around the blue and then again adding some random strokes. But you can also see that I'm leaving certain spaces as white. This is just totally random. I'm just trying to create a shape in the center. Your shape doesn't have to be exactly the same. This is what is so special about this galaxy. This is a very different type of galaxy in which we have some glean lighting in the center. The lighting can be totally according to your wish. It doesn't have to be the same as I'm applying. I'm just applying my strokes at random and I'm leaving certain white spaces in the middle. These white spaces, we will be adding a darker background later on. For now, we're just going to keep on applying the sap green. You can see because I'm doing the wet-on-wet technique, my sap green is spreading and this is exactly what we want. Then we switch to the next color, which is Perylene green. I'm mixing it with a little bit of sap green to get a nice medium tone of green. Still darker. Perylene green is a darker green. It's not actually green, it is PBk31, which is actually a black shade because it is PB K means pigment black. You can get the shade by mixing green with black. If you mix your green with black, you should be able to get this nice darker shade. This is what we are going to be applying in the areas that we left white and also towards the outside of our painting. The darkness of the galaxy, we will be first applying with the perylene green. Use your medium-sized brush or larger sized brush. Because now we're going to cover the rest of our paper with this darker green. As I said, don't worry about the paint perylene green, you can just mix your green with black and get this nice dark shade. For the whole rest of the part of our painting where there is no sap green, which is going to blend and add this darker green on the top. Remember in the techniques lesson, and also in the previous lessons, I explained about how to keep our paper wet for a longer duration. The basic thing is to not let your paper dry. This means that if you keep applying your strokes onto the paper, it should not dry. You can see I'm not picking up more water because there is already water on my paper. I'm only picking water enough to apply the paint. That is the first basics of water control, that is, we should not introduce any more water onto our paper than there is already. Now you can see that I'm re-applying the blue. This is because the blue areas had started to dry and I'm going to rework on it so that I will not allow my paper to dry. We started with the blue and then we're going to go with the sap green again to make sure that it doesn't dry. Wherever it starts to dry, keep applying your strokes, but just make sure that you don't get any dark edges or harsh edges. In order to avoid the harsh edges, the key thing is to continue painting right next to the stroke that you applied. If you see this harsh edge forming that point, then you can remove that harsh edge by painting right next to it. That's the key important thing. I don't know if this makes any sense at all. But the most important part is obviously water control. You will really achieve it with a lot of practice. This is also one of the reasons why I always say that the watercolor paper is of utmost importance. If you're using a paper that is 100 percent cotton paper or which is artist grade, you will surely see a difference in your paintings. The areas where we applied the perylene green. This is the darker part of the galaxy and we need it to be darker. I'm applying Payne's gray over it now. If you've taken the other projects, you already know that the darkness first, I apply somewhat lighter color and then onto the top I add Payne's gray to get my dog depth in the painting. You don't need to use Payne's gray itself. You can use black as well. This is what we're going to do. Working on the wet on wet still. We are going to apply the Payne's gray on to our galaxy areas where it is darker. Mostly towards the outside, we will add the Payne's gray and try to blend it with the darker perylene green that we applied. Now I have gone around once over my whole painting with the Payne's gray. But now I want it to be more darker because you can still see that it is slightly greenish towards the edges. We're going to darken this as much as possible. I hate to use black in my paintings, which is the reason why I go for beans gray. But you can use black and you will get a perfect dark shade towards the borders. This is what we want. Towards the outside, keep applying the Payne's gray. Here I'm trying to apply the paint onto my paper quickly because I don't want my paper to dry. If your paper has started to dry, here is a quick tip for you. Let the paper dry. I mean, let it dry completely. Then using a flat brush, re-apply the water on the top so if your paper has dried completely, it would not affect the underlying layer much. Using a flat brush, run over your paper with water and then reapply these darker strokes towards the outside, that is towards the borders. You can also reapply the other colors when you're reapplying your water. Because now your paper is going to stay wet for a longer duration, again because you just have reapplied your water. My paper is 100% cotton paper. This is the reason why I don't have to go through that method. But this is what you should do if your paper starts to dry. Now, I have switched to my smaller size brush and I'm going to add those darker lines towards the center. You remember those spaces where I had left white and I had added black strokes on top of it. Black as in Payne's gray and perylene green. But now I'm going to darken them more and I want my strokes to be smaller. This is the reason why I have switched to my smaller size brush. Apply the strokes. This is totally random. I'm just trying to create a space or oral thing in the center of my galaxy. It is just totally random. There is no specific rule. I'm just trying to have fun with the blend of my watercolors. That's it. I'm pretty sure that you will also have fun while doing this. There are various types of galaxies that are galaxies in which it can be having a perfect blend. Then there are galaxies which doesn't have a perfect blend. There are names for these galaxies. I don't want to go into the technical details. Now I have switched back to my Payne's gray and going to add it again towards the bottom. Because as you know, watercolors will get lighter when they start drying. I don't want this to happen. I'm just going to reapply my Payne's gray and make it as dark as possible. I want to tell you again here that if your paper has dried, don't apply any more paint on top of it because you'll just be creating harsh edges. Wait for the paper to completely dry or you can use a hairdryer to dry it. Then reapply the water using a flat brush and then you can add this darker shade. The only thing that's going to happen is your galaxy is going to have multiple layers. But try that out. You will also see how beautiful your galaxy is going to be. Just because all those layers are going to add up to a beautiful picture. Here you can already see that my paper has started to dry and this is the reason when applying those Payne's gray strokes, some of it is moving the paint underneath and creating some white areas. This is a cue that your paper has started to dry, but this is our cheese so it can withstand the strokes, which is why I'm still applying. Now we're going to add some white into our galaxy. This is not the stars, but this is going to be some white areas in our galaxy. I'm using my white gouache paint here. As I always say, you can use your white watercolor paint as well. I'm using my size 4 brush, so we need a smaller brush. We're going to be adding some arcs with white. Remember the sap green that we added. On the top of it, we're going to add some white strokes. In my paper, this is still the wet-on-wet technique because my paper is still wet. But one thing is that if your paper is not wet and it has dried, you can reapply the water after it has completely dried and do this process. Or you can go for the wet-on-dry method itself, so adding these wide strokes in fact, it doesn't have a huge difference whether you're doing the wet-on-wet method or the wet-on-dry method. Both of these ways, the Alexi is still going to look very beautiful. Don't worry about that. Just add some random white strokes. We will also add some white paint to the center. This adding of white paint is totally random and I'm just applying at places where I think it would fit in. Now, we just have to wait for everything to dry to add in our stars 12. Green Galaxy - Part 2: Our galaxy has now completely dried so let us go ahead and add the stars. I'm going to be using this white gouache from Winsor and Newton. I have it in this small palette bow here. I'm going to load up my brush with this white paint, and we're going to add some nice splatters onto our galaxy. Make sure to load up your brush with nice quantity of white paint, and you can use the two brush method to add the splatters onto the paper. When you splattering using the two brush method, the splatters are more likely to go everywhere, even your hands, your board, your table. If you have any precious belongings like your laptop or your tablet, make sure to move it away before you do these splatters, otherwise, you're going to get a lot of splatters on them as well. Most of the splatters, we're going to be adding them onto the outside of our lightest area. The area where we apply, the green, we're going to have less stars there and towards the outer edges, we're going to have more stars. Try to move your brush across the paper, as in where you're holding the brush on top of the paper, and try to add the stars towards the outside. Now, we have added as much stars as we can. Next we're going to add some glowing stars. For that, we can either use a cotton bud or we can use a tissue. If you're going to be using the tissue, roll up your tissue like this, and try to make a point with that. Then dip that in water and dab on the paper. This is exactly what the cotton bud does. Just dip it in water. It's covered in water now, but that is too much water, so just dab it off in the tissue, and then we will just press this on the paper so that it will lift some paint off from the area of air it is touching. Dab onto the paper and twirl it such that it lifts off the paint at that area. You can do this at random places. I'm just going to add two of them here. This would create a nice blue for the stars. I'm going to add it only for two of the stars. The same thing as I said, you can do it with a tissue. Just use the edge of the tissue, roll it, and put it in water and try to lift off the paint. Then I'm going to take my rigger brush. As you can see, it has a really nice pointed tip and a very nice long pointed tip in fact. But don't worry if you don't have the rigger brush. You can use the smallest size brush like this one which is a size 1 brush. We're going to be adding the stars now. Dip your smaller size brush or your detailer brush in white paint, and we really need the tip of it, the pointed tip, and we're going to add the stars. First, we will do a cross shape. I'm adding this on to the area where I lifted, and then I will also add a cross shape on the top. You can clearly see now that my star looks like a glowing star because of the area that we lifted using the cotton bud. I'm just going to add two of these which has glows. The rest of the areas, I'm just going to be adding simple stars. Onto your galaxy painting, add as many stars as you want in varying sizes. Some of them can be very small, some of them large ones. It is totally up to you how you want them. You can see closely here how I'm adding. I add a plus shape and then I add a cross. It's basically four lines like a star, which makes it looks like the sparkling effect. Some of the stars, the tiny ones, I just add a cross on top of it. It is still sparkling but very far away. Add these at random places. All there was left to do in our painting was to add the stars. Once you do that, our galaxy is complete. I hope that you have enjoyed your journey into this beautiful, gorgeous green galaxy. Removing the masking tape to reveal the perfect borders, I hope you also have got perfect borders. Don't worry if not, because if you haven't got perfect edges, you can use a bit of white paint to cover it up, that is what I usually do. Here it is. I really love this one as well. Green is one of my favorite colors. Combining it to make a galaxy painting was really fun and beautiful process for me. You can see the beautiful white areas that we have got here because we added it on top of the green. I hope you enjoyed this lesson. See you all in the next painting. 13. The Yellow Nebula: From our green galaxy we're now going to travel to a beautiful yellow nebula. The colors we need for this are Indian yellow, Indian gold. The center part, that's what these two colors are for, you can see that it is very bright. Then we will also use a red shade. I'm using alizarin crimson here. Then for the darker parts outside, we will need sepia and to make it even more dark, we'll be using Payne's gray. You can also use black instead. Here's my paper which I have already taped, and I'm going to apply water using my flat brush. Remember, applying the water is the most essential part because most part of the galaxy is going to be on wet-on-wet. Apply the water evenly onto the surface of your paper and make sure there are no large pools or blobs of water. Take your time to apply the water that's what's most important. As you can see, I have now applied the water onto my paper, but I'm just going to reapply the water again. This is one trick to make your paper stay wet for a longer duration of time. That is to apply the water at first then let it sink in a bit, then reapply the water. When you do this, even the inside fibers of the paper will be covered in water. Or you can say, we'll have water in it so the paper will stay wet for a very long duration. Now we're going to start with our nebula. Nebula is like gaseous dust and particles in space. We all call this just galaxy paintings, but essentially it is nebula. I'm just taking my Indian yellow and I'm just applying some random strokes onto my paper. This is the most fun part of these so-called galaxy paintings. We're just going to add the strokes randomly. Everyone's galaxy is going to look different. That is the most fun thing about this. No one can create the exact same galaxy as I'm doing because my strokes are completely random. We're also letting the water do its job. The next shade that I'm adding is Indian gold and I'm applying it right next to the Indian yellow. Again, totally random. As I said, we're letting the water do its job and let it blend around, move around. This is the fun thing about painting galaxies because you can never predict how your water is going to flow. Then I have taken alizarin crimson and I'm adding it to some random areas, again, some in the center, some towards the outside. My alizarin crimson, which is like a pinkish shade, mixes with the yellow to form a red shade. You can use red shade directly as well, such as Scarlett or Carmine. This is alizarin crimson that I'm adding. You can see I'm mixing it with yellow to get a nice red shade and this is what we're going to apply towards the edges. Now, what I'm going to do is first, I'm going to cover the rest of my paper with this red shade or alizarin crimson mixed with a bit of yellow. The whole of my paper now I'm going to cover with the red shade. The reason why I'm doing this is that we will always have that red shade in the background when we're adding the darker dawns on the top. Otherwise, if we're just adding the black shade onto the top of it, we would still have some white areas. In order to avoid this, I'm going to cover the rest of the paper with the red shade. Now I have covered it with red all over my paper. Let us reapply some of the yellow sheets so that we don't allow the paper to dry. After that, you can start adding the darker tones towards the edges. The center part is the colorful nebula and towards the outside, we want it to be the darkness of the space. Here I'm adding sepia. Sepia is a very nice dark brown color. You can either use Van **** brown or you can mix burnt umber with black to get a nice dark brown shade. This is what we're going to apply towards the outside. I am still working on the wet-on-wet technique as obviously because my paper is still wet. But here's one thing, after you apply the red shade, if your paper dried, then do this trick. Let your paper dry completely and then reapply the water and add this darker shade towards the edges. Trust me, it will work and it will not ruin your underlying layers if your paper has completely dried. That the sport you have to make sure if you're going to reapply the water. The center part is going to be yellow and some areas are going to be red. The rest of the areas, I'm going to cover it with this sepia. When I'm applying this sepia can you see that some of those alizarin crimson shades, that is, the red shade, is visible through the brown shade. This is the reason why we applied the read at first. Because otherwise the red shade that we're seeing through the brown now would have been white instead and it wouldn't look good. But now here, through the brown shade, that means through the sepia, we can actually see some red shining through. This is why we applied the red shade at first to the whole of the paper. We want the edges of our sheet to be as dark as possible. Apply sepia and you can also add Payne's gray to the top of it. The edges is going to be the darkness of the space and the center part is the nebula. I don't know if you've heard of nebula before, but nebula is actually like the interstellar gases, such as hydrogen, helium, dust and all of them combined together in space and it results in various colors forming together. It's a very interesting thing to see if we have a very powerful telescope, of course. But since we don't have that, we can see that ourselves with our watercolor paintings. As I said, these are just different gases and dust formed together. They are not going to have a unique shape, they just going to be totally random. This is why your strokes can be totally random. Apply according to your freewill. You don't even have to do it exactly like me. I've applied the sepia all around. I'm just trying to add a bit more of the yellow sheets because I want to blend that area slightly. But again, also, I'm trying to keep my paper wet by reapplying the paint because the center areas which I applied it first started to dry. Another reason why we reapply the first strokes are when you reapply them, you will make your painting a lot vibrant. Now here I've taken my Payne's gray and I'm adding it to the outer edges of my sheet. Note here, again that my paper is wet, which is why I'm applying this. If your paper is dry, you know what to do. You just have to wait for the whole thing to dry completely, and then reapply water to add these strokes. It is just going to be in multiple layers, unlike mine. But that's completely all right. Towards the edges, I'm just going to add Payne's gray and make it as dark as possible. This is the space region outside of the nebula. It's going to be as dark as possible. If you look at my hand movements, you will see that it was totally random. Now we're going to add the interesting part. I'm taking my smaller size brush and dipping it into water. We're going to splatter this on our paper. We're going to create water blooms. You will see that the areas where the water splatters onto the paper, it has spread out the paint. Next, we're going to take a bit of our white paint and we're going to add this as splatters again. My paper is still wet and I'm trying to add some wet on wet splatters. This is not the wet on dry splatters, but rather the wet on wet splatters. When you apply the white paint on to the top as splatters, it would spread slightly, not a lot, but it would be so much different than the stars that we add later on. Now, we are going to add some more effects into our new overlay. We're going to be using table salt, and we're going to sprinkle this on a paper. Not so much. Just take a pinch of salt and sprinkle it all over. This has to be really little, not a lot, and make sure that they fall at separate places, not close together. That's it. Next, I'm going to take my white paint and apply it to random places at first. Just certain areas on top of the yellow paint. This is wet on wet stroke again, but don't worry if it has dried, it can be wet on dry as well. Then I will try to make a small line on my nebula. When I say line, just broken line trying to apply with the white strokes, just drop the paint onto the paper. You can see onto the brown areas as well and trying to form small line. This is again some gas in my nebula. We don't know what it is. It is just going to be totally random and fun thing to do. Once you have added that, that would be all for the background and we have to wait for it to completely dry. Here, now, the background has completely dried and you can see that there is no salt left. It has created these beautiful textures on my nebula. Also the white splatters. You can see how they have formed like a part of the background itself without standing out. Now we come to the most interesting part, which is to add in the stars. I'm going to be using my Winsor and Newton gouache again. Get your white watercolors ready and we will splatter our stars into the nebula. I'm going to be using the toothbrush method to splatter paints here. Make sure that you have all your belongings and freshy items out of the way of this painting because things are just going to get dirty. What I mean is you're going to have the splatters all over your hands, your table, and whatever object is, they're closer to this painting. Make sure that you move away the laptop or the iPad where you're actually seeing this. The brush in white paint and use another brush to tap onto the paper, and you will see the stars are forming on your nebula. That is enough for now. Let us now add smaller stars. I'm taking my silver black velvet brush. You just need a very small detailer brush with a pointed tip to add the stars. It is exactly going to be the same, just like we did for the green galaxy painting. We're going to add some star shapes. Just a difference is that with this one, we're not going to create that halo effect or the lifting with the cotton bud. Just add some stars at random places. Some of them can be the real star shape, and some of them add small cross at random places. We really need the tip of a smaller brush to get those thin lines. That is why I'm using my rigger brush, but I'm pretty sure that maybe you might have a brush which has got a pointed tip, and try to use the tip of that brush to get that small stars into your painting. Once you have done that, that is all for our nebula. This was our last destination. I'm not going to tell you how to get back to art. You figured that out for yourself. I hope you enjoyed this painting. I really had a fun time painting this one. Here's the final picture. It's looking so beautiful. Thank you all for joining on this painting and traveling with me. 14. Thank You!: I am already lost in space among the stars and all the galaxies around me, so I'm not going to tell you the way back to the Earth. I hope that this class will inspire you to take up more painting pictures like these and paint them. I want to thank each and every one of you who joined me in this class and painted along with me. I'm pretty sure that you have upscaled your watercolor skills a little by now. You can upload your projects into the project section and also add to social media and tag me. My Instagram handle is colorfulmystique. I also want to give credit to my husband here, who promptly created a galaxy-themed music for me. Lastly, once again, thank you all for joining me.