Northern lights : Let's play with watercolours

1. Introduction: Aurora Borealis, also known as Northern lights are so fascinating. For sure, watching these dancing lights is a dream for so many people. In this class, let's join together and paint these Northern lights using watercolor. Hi, I'm Suchita, your instructor for this class. Here we are going to paint three beautiful Aurora landscapes, which are not very complicated and don't demand too much of your time either. In this class, I have talked about different watercolor techniques, how to achieve depth in our painting, different exercises that would help to improve, et cetera. I would say this class is more for an advanced beginner or an intermediate artist. But even if you are an absolute beginner, still you can join because I'll be guiding you at every stage of the process. I'm very excited about this class. If you are feeling the same, come and join me here. 2. Materials Needed: Okay, let's talk about the materials needed for this class. I'm starting with a watercolor paper. I'm using arches 100% cotton watercolor paper, but it's a big block. So I have cut that into smaller pieces like this, and I'm using this in our class project. Then I'm using this cardboard as a support to my watercolor paper. Next, let's see the brushes. Dawnci size four brush for initial washes, Dawnci size two brush for painting the sky and other details. I'm using silver black velvet brush for painting the pine trees. I'm using Brasto size two brush for smaller details, and also I'm using this rigor brush from Princeton. I'll talk about the colors in the beginning of each project. Don't worry about the brand or the exact shade. Just try to have a similar shade that I'm using. We need a palette to mix the colors. I have also used a porcelain plate, as palette in this class, a jar of water for initial washes, for cleaning the brush, et cetera. Using a pencil and an eraser for the sketches. You can also use a scale if you prefer. I haven't used it in the class. I'm using this masking tape to attach the watercolor paper to the cardboard. A pair of scissors to cut the masking tape. We need a cloth towel to wipe off the excess water or to clean the brush. You can also use the paper towel here. I think that is all we need. So grab your supplies, and let's start with our first class project. 3. Yellow - blue aurora : background : Hey, guys. Welcome to our first class project of this North and Light series. Here I have used a masking tape to attach the paper to my cardboard. So first of all, we shall see what colors we need for this project. I'm using Hansa Yellow Light. It's a cool yellow color from Daniel Smith. Next I'm using halo blue. This is also a cool blue shade from Daniel Smith. Then I'm taking Indigo. This is from the brand white Knights. Next, we need quinocridon red. Again, it's a cool shade from Daniel Smith. Then I'm using paints gray for detailing. That's all for the colors. We shall start with a simple pencil sketch. I'm using this mechanical pencil, and we shall draw a straight line by leaving almost like two to three centimeter space at the bottom. This is the line that separates the sky and the ground. You can use a scale if you prefer, but this line doesn't need to be super straight. Next I'm taking the Dawnci size four brush, and I'll apply the clean water to the whole paper. Always use the clean water for the initial washes, because if the water already has some pigments in it, then we might get muddy colors in our painting. As this is 100% cotton watercolor paper, we have to spend a good amount of time in wetting the paper, as we are working mostly wet on wet here, so our paper has to stay hydrated for long time. I have made sure that I haven't left any spots, and the paper is evenly wet. Now let's add some colors, okay? I'm taking my Dawnci casano sized tu brush. So I want to start with the lightest shade, which is hansa yellow light, in our case. These cool yellows, when they get mixed with the cool blues, they create really nice green shades. Now I'm picking the yellow, applying it from the top, and then moving downwards. You see? I'm making these big wavy strokes. Also, I'm adding some smaller ones. If you observe, all these wavy lines are kind of converging at the right bottom. Now with a clean brush, I'm picking this to blue color. This is a cool blue color. So when this cool blue color mixes with a cool yellow color, which is hansa yellow light, they create nice green shade. See, the green it is creating. Next, I'll pick the quinocradon red. This I will add at the bottom right corner and try to blend with the other colors. Okay, my brush has picked up blue colour. I'll wash my brush and pick the quinocradon red again. I'm keeping this red shade mostly to the bottom part because I want this yellow color and the green colour to be more prominent in our painting. Next, let's take the indigo. We have some white areas on the sky, right? So I fill those areas with indigo. Again, my brush has picked up some red shade, so I'll clean it. Now taking more indigo and I'm adding it like a filler between other colors. You see that? On the bottom part near the horizon line, I have kept this area lighter. I haven't added so many colors because we need to have some room for details. Do you see those hairs that are formed? I want to soften it. So I'm dragging my brush all the way from the top to the bottom and blending some of these colors. I lift the board now and help the watercolor to flow downwards. But before lifting the board, just make sure that there is no water on the masking tape. Otherwise, the water from the top, as well as from the sides can move onto the painting and spoil it. I should have done this before as well, but it's okay. There wasn't much water on my masking tape. Now we shall add some colors to the bottom. I'm using the same colors as the sky but more lighter shades. I'm starting with the Hansa yellow, adding some halo blue color, then some indigo. It's like the snow covered ground slightly reflecting the colors of the sky. We have to do one last thing before our paper dries. I'm picking the gray color, and I'm applying some vertical strokes here. The horizon line we added is our reference point. So I'll keep adding these vertical lines all the way. As I mentioned, my paper is still wet, so these lines would smudge and they become blurry. So this way, we can show that they are far away trees. At this point, if your paper has already dried, then wait for the paper to dry completely and rewet the paper. But if you don't prefer to revet, then I would suggest adding these trees with a very light shade of gray. That way, they won't be too prominent. I'll not add any details to these trees, maybe just vary the height and tonal values. Now the tree line we added is bleeding towards the ground. I want to fix that with a clean damp brush, picking that extra color from the paper with my damp brush. Now we don't have those hairs anymore, right? We are done with the background. After this tries, let's add some details. 4. Yellow - blue aurora : details: Welcome back. It's time to add some details. I'm using silver black velvet brush of size four for adding some foreground pine trees, picking this gray color. Now, I want to add a pine tree here. So starting with the vertical line. Then with a tip of my brush, making these quick strokes. You see? They are to suggest the leaves and branches. I'm keeping these leaves smaller at the top, and as I go down, they get slightly bigger. It's like a cone shape. It is broader at the bottom, and it tapers down towards the top. Let's add another small tree beside this. Again, draw a vertical line. Then you can start from the top or from the bottom, but make sure to have bigger base. And as it goes up, the leaves and branches get smaller. Adding some thin lines in between to fill those gaps. Now, I will pick my Danci brush. It's a clean, damp brush. No extra water in it. With that, I'm softening the bottom of these trees. You know, it gives that feeling that they are attached to the ground. On the right side, I'll add a big pine tree, again, with a gray color. I'm drawing a vertical line. It is bigger this time, so it's more prominent and detailed. Like before, I'm adding smaller leaves on the top and slowly increasing the size of these leaves as I move downwards. You know, while painting the pines, not all brushes give the same results, right? I would prefer to use a brush with more pointy end, which would help to create those thin strokes. But then I won't pick my rigor brush, which has a really pointy end because we need to paint those bigger leaves, too, right? In that case, a brush like this, which has some thickness in its belly, but has a pointy tip as well, would be helpful. I've tried all other brushes from my collection to paint the pines. There are only very few brushes that are suitable for painting the pines in my collection. So I would recommend you to try different brushes that you have and see which would create the best pine tree. Our big tree has taken shape. Again, I'll take a damp brush and soften the bottom edge of this big tree. Remember, no extra water in the brush at this point. Now, with a rigger brush using the same gray color, I'm adding a small bear tree. I thought it would be interesting to add a bear branch with no leaves. I'm not going to make this too big. Our main tree is still the pine tree. This one would be in the back and part of it would be covered by the main pine tree. I'll add one more branch that is going behind the big pine tree. Adding some thickness to the trunk part. I think that's all for the tree. Next, let's paint some grasses on the ground. If you observe the gray color that we are adding is spreading. That's because when I soften the bottom of the pine trees, I move the damp brush all over the ground region. That's why it is wet, which is making the pigment to spread. I like that blurry effect anyway. It gives that fluffiness to the grass. Now, again, with more gray pigment, I'm adding some highlights, some darker lines. This I'm doing only for the first one, which would be more near to us and would be more detailed. That is all for our painting. I'm removing the masking tape now. It's always a relief to see the colors haven't seeped out, and we have a clean border. Even though I'm using a good masking tape, sometimes the colors still bleed. This is our first painting. It turned out nice. Now let's meet in the next section to start with the new project. 5. Coral - red aurora : background: Welcome to our second class project. Now let's see the colors quinocldon red, coral, pains gray, u gamboge, and indigo. I have all the colors in my palette, quinocridon red, coral, new gamboge, indigo, and pains gray. Basically, we start with a quick pencil sketch like some small mountains. I'm going to take my mechanical pencil, then draw these small mountains side by side. I'm keeping them quite small. It's only three to 4 centimeters from the bottom. Then I want to add some trees here, but I think I'll keep them loose. I don't want to add a detailed pencil sketch, only like some lines to have an idea where my trees would be, maybe one or two big trees and some smaller trees on the sides. So this is sketch. Next step is to wet the paper. I'm taking my Danci size for brush, applying the clean water. It's important to wet the paper well enough so that we get longer time to work on the painting. This is so true when we use wet on wet technique a lot. For example, when painting these auroras, we have to keep adding a lot of colors and let them blend. If the paper is dry, the colors won't blend. Instead, they create these hard edges. Each and every brushstroke would be visible. That's not so nice, isn't it? So I usually spend quite some time wetting the paper, especially if I want to work on the wet paper for longer time. Remove the extra water from the edges if you have any. You can either use a damp brush or a tissue to do this. I'm taking my Dawnci sized to brush and picking the first color, which is coral. This is a special color from the brand white knights. I know if you don't have coral, you can mix this tiny amount of red color to white to get a similar shade. Now I'll apply the coral at the center. Here I'm making these curvy strokes, and also I'm not touching those mountains that we added. Mm hm. I have talked about mixing colors to get coral in one of my skill share classes, green galaxies and globules. You can check that if you want. Next I'm taking the quinocridon red. Let's apply it around coral on both the sides and also let's add some highlights on top of the coral. I think they both go very well together. Then I'm taking the new gambos. I'll add it on both sides. Let it mix with the red and coral. This will create this orange shade in At sky. Now, let's blend these colors, okay? I'm somewhat mixing these colors and creating smoother transition, but don't mix them too much. We have to make sure that the lighter shades like coral that we added in the beginning is still visible. Next, let's take this darker indigo color. I'll mostly apply on the sides on top of the yellow. This indigo when mixed with the yellow creates this greenish shade. But in this case, our painting has more orangish yellow, so we are getting some brown shades in between. Next with a clean damp brush, I'll slightly blend the colors. You see, I have kept this lower right region quite light. That's because we'll be adding arteries, and they should be visible. If it's too dark in the background, arteries will not be visible. So I intentionally made this pthama above the mountains lighter. You see, I have been working so long on this and still be able to blend all these colors. This is because I added good amount of water to the paper in the beginning. That has kept it wet for long enough for us to work. I'll take some more indigo and add some highlights. You see, the left top part looks more yellow, and I want to make it more blue by adding some indigo. Okay, we have completed adding the colors to the background. Let this dry and then we can add some details. 6. Coral - red aurora : details: Okay. Now let's give some colors to these mountains. Using my size to brush, I'm picking the indigo, more of a lighter shade this time than applying it to the mountains. I'm softening these edges with a bit of water. If you observe, I'm changing the tonal values of the indigo by varying the amount of water. This will create lighter and darker areas. Now I'll pick more indigo and add some highlights. When I say highlights, I'll make sure that the darker color we are going to add will not cover the underlying lighter color entirely. See, I made it darker only at some areas, adding more darker values now. Here we can absorb three different shades of indigo, lightest shade, middle tone, and then some darker tone. Now, this has to be dried before we add further details. Our mountains have dried. I'll take my rigor brush and pick the gray color. Remember those tree lines we added. So I'm going to take that as the base for our trees, painting the skeleton of the tree with some branches, starting with a vertical line. I'm making the lower trunk region more thicker, and as it goes up, it gets slender. Some branches emerging from the tree trunk. Oh, I'm leaving some space here. That is to add some leaves. One more tree to the left side. We will be adding a bunch of trees. Some are more prominent and some are in the background. I'm taking my brusho size to brush to add some leaves now. We are using the gray color again. But this time, I'm adding more water and very less pigment. It is quite light. Now I'll add this watery gray mixture to the tree. They're like leaves of the tree. My leaves are mix of both smaller and bigger dots. So when I want smaller dots, I only use the tip of my brush. If I want to cover the larger area, then I usually use the belly of my brush and apply more pressure. I'm picking the gray color with my rigor brush. I want to add more branches to these trees. So I'm loosely adding some branches. If you feel you have to have a sketch for these trees, I think you can add a detailed sketch in the beginning itself. I have attached a pencil sketch for this in the resources section. If you want, you can use that. I'm going for some background trees now. You know, this rigor brush I have, it has helped me a lot to develop this loose style. I really like those thin lines it creates. I feel this brush is a must for me when I want to paint trees like this. I have added some lines at the background with lighter shade of gray. Here, the front ones are more darker, and the ones in the background are of more lighter gray. Picking darker gray this time and adding more branches to the front trees. The leaves we added here are very light, right? So you might be thinking why plan here is to add more leaves on top of it with darker gray color. So these lighter colored leaves represent the background trees, and the darker leaves that we are going to add would suggest the foreground trees. I have added enough branches. Now with my brush row size to brush, I'll pick the darker gray pigment. Then I'll add it as leaves to these trees. You see, as those previously added leaves are not completely dried, we get a smoother blend at many places. Like I mentioned before, if you touch the paper with a tip of the brush, then it will make smaller leaves, and with the belly of the brush, it will be bigger leaves. Do you see why have I kept the right bottom region above the mountains lighter? As we have some trees and leaves with lighter shade, they would be visible only if the background is lighter. With the darker background, we cannot make these lighter colors to pop. Adding some small grasses at the base. We are done with our class project. I'll go ahead and remove the masking tape. I'm carefully lifting the tape outwards so that it won't tear off the painting. This is our completed project. We made it this far. Let's meet again in the next section to start with our final class project. 7. Scarlet - yellow aurora : background: Okay, let's start with our final class project. First of all, I list all the colors that we need today. I'm using four colors Pyl scarlet, Pains gray, indigo, and Indian gold. I already have all these colors on my palette, Indigo, Indian gold, Pyl scarlet and paints gray. I'm starting with a pencil sketch. I will leave around two thirds of the paper for the sky and add a straight line. It's our horizon line to separate the sky and ground. I'm not using any scale here. I thought I can manage without scale. Now it is time to wet the paper. So I use my favorite pig brush, which is Danci size four brush. I'll apply the water to the whole paper. You know, I'm using this cardboard to stick the watercolor paper. I think it also absorbed some water and started stretching. Now it's not flat anymore. It's very uncomfortable to work with this because if the surface is uneven, we can't control the moment of the colors, right? I do have an acrylic board which is very useful, and I use it quite often. But the problem is, while recording, I do have some lights on the top because it's somewhat dark here. And then it would get reflected on this acrylic board. That's why I avoid using the acrylic board while recording something. Hopefully, this will be solved soon because I'm planning to set up my new studio, which is quite exciting. We have added enough water to the paper, and now it is time to add some colors. As my first color, I'm picking the Indian gold, nice and thick consistency of Indian gold. Then applying the Indian gold like this, like a spiral shape. You know, the best thing about painting the Northern lights is that we can go for any shape. It can look like anything and still it would look good. Next, I'll take the Pyl scarlet, then apply it on top of the yellow, more like highlights. They both get mixed and create this orangish shade. Now let's take the indigo. I'll apply the indigo mostly in between. We want to keep the shape of the spiral. Also, other lighter colors like orange and yellow should be visible. So I'm following the same spiral shape and also making sure that the lighter colors are visible. Defining the shape of the spiral by moving and adding more colors. I'm trying to stick with the initial shapes. Picking the indigo, darkening some places here. Like we discussed before, these Northern lights can be of any shape, and also here I have taken the freedom to choose the colors that I like. They might be far from real, but, you know, I get to see my imagination on the paper. That's awesome, right? My suggestion for you is to play with the colors, take different colors, let them move, mix, and create their own shapes on your paper. Don't control the movements of those colors too much. This will help you to understand more about colors, contrast, water control, et cetera. See, I have kept this lower part lighter because we are going to add some mountains there. Now for the bottom part, it would be water, so we need to use the same color as that of sky to show the reflection. I'm taking the Indian gold, mixing a bit of pyral scarlet. I'll apply this to the bottom part. See that? Next we are taking indigo as our next color. This would go on top of the yellow orange layer, more darker tone at the bottom, some lighter areas as we go up. Let's quickly blend these colors. With my clean damp brush, moving these colors, I'm letting them to mix with each other. Lifting some extra colors from the paper. If you see the colors on the sky region have moved down as if I have lifted the board. That's because the board is not flat. It has stretched a bit and it is making the colors to move. But we can fix this. I'm using my clean damp brush, removing those hairs that are formed. Okay, this is all for our background, but we are not done yet. We have to add some details. So meet me in the next section. 8. Scarlet - yellow aurora : details: Welcome back guys. Paper is dry now. I think we can start with the mountains. I'm taking the gray color. This time, mixing a lighter value of gray with more water and less pigment. Then you see this white space, right. I'm going to add mountains there. So let's apply this light gray color above the horizon line. Trying to keep this bottom line straight and filling the colors. I recommend starting from the lighter tonal value and then add darker values on top of it because it's hard to work from darker values to lighter values when it comes to watercolor. If you apply the dark gray color in the beginning itself, we will lose all the highlights. Here in our painting, as we started with the lighter tonal value, you will see how we are going to build upon this. Now we added the mountains. Let me take a smaller brush, that is silver black velvet brush of size four. With this, I'll take the darker gray color with less water. Then adding some lines. As our mountains haven't dried yet, these lines will smudge, and we won't get any hard edges here. I'm trying to keep the horizon lines straight. Don't want the colors to go outside of it. Now let's blend them using this clean damp brush to soften those lines. Make sure to keep the contrast between the lighter and darker areas. You can add more pigments if you need, or you can pick up some pigments from the paper. Here you see, I'm lifting some colors to make this area lighter. Now, let's add some flat ground. With my size to brush, I'll pick the gray color again. Then we're going to add some land area, starting from the left, quickly making these horizontal strokes. You know, as I don't have a sketch, I'll pause and take a moment to decide. When we are working on a painting, it helps to pause and decide what is missing and what can be added. Again, with the tip of my brush, adding some more horizontal strokes, applying more darker gray tone to the front part. I want to keep this area wet because next we are going to add some grasses here. So adding the colors again helps the paper to stay wet for longer duration. Applying some more gray color to the front area then adjusting the shape. Now we have our sky, mountains, water, and the land area. Further, we shall add some grasses and trees. Next I'm taking my Bastro size to brush. Is bristles are very suitable for painting grasses, you know? Now with a dry brush, I'm dragging these colors outwards. See, this creates grasses for us, easy, right. But, you know, this works only when the colors we added haven't dried yet. So that's why I wanted to keep this area wet so that we can drag these colors out. Next I'm picking the gray color directly with the dry brush, and with that, I'm making the same upward strokes. This creates some textures. You see? It is to suggest some leaves or flowers. Now without much effort, we painted these thin grass blades. Now I'm taking the silver black velvet brush of size four to add some pine trees. I prefer to start with a vertical line so that I would know how big my tree would be and where to add the leaves, starting from the top, adding uneven strokes. There the branches and leaves for the tree. As I go downwards, I'll increase the size of these branches. If you are new to the watercolor and not yet comfortable painting these trees, then I would suggest you to practice these trees beforehand on a scrap paper. This can be applied to your other projects as well. So try to practice individual elements from a reference beforehand if you are not comfortable painting them. For example, it could be rocks in a landscape or a boat in an ocean or a car on the road. This would help us to simplify the painting process and be more confident. Now with a darker gray color, I'm highlighting some leaves. This gives some volume to tree, you know. By making few leaves darker, we are suggesting lighter and shadowed area, which creates some depth to our tree. I'll add another tree beside the first one. This I'll keep it shorter. Again, starting with a vertical line, adding branches on both the sides, wearing the size of these branches as we go down. Adding some small lines in between to make it more uneven. I'll not add any more trees here. I think if you had too many trees that would take our focus from the sky, I was about to remove the masking tape, but notice that I did not add the reflection of the mountains. This should have been added before adding the trees, but it's okay. Mistakes happen. Now I'm taking the lighter shade of gray color, slowly applying it as reflection of these mountains. See how light this gray color is. We want to differentiate between the ground and the reflection, right? So I'm keeping it lighter. Now with those trees in between, we have to be careful not to disturb them. I'm trying to match the shape of the mountains. This we should keep in mind. Sometimes it can be difficult to paint the exact copy of an object in the reflection. Try to match as much as possible, but it doesn't need to be perfect. Also, if you don't feel comfortable painting upside down, you can rotate the painting and then add the reflection. It's all right. Yes, that's it. We have completed the final project of this class. Now I'll remove the masking tape. Here is our finished painting. Not very complicated, right? I hope it was easy to follow along, and the tips that I gave were useful. Do try these paintings. If you have finished projects, please upload them in the project section. Thank you so much for joining. I'll see you soon.