Paint a Watercolor Galaxy with Astrological Sign Constellations

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Irina Traskos watercolor artist and illustrator. I film online watercolor classes. Also, I teach workshops in person, and I love illustrating children's books. In today's class, we will be painting a small personalized galaxy with astrological constellations in it. In my galaxy, I painted the constellations, astrological signs of me, my husband, and our son. But you can paint just one constellation in your galaxy or you can paint two constellations as a gift for a couple, where you can paint an entire family as I did. If you're new on this channel, thank you for joining. Press the follow button. You create up on the button, and let's get started. 2. Supplies: Into this class, we'll be painting a personalized little galaxy of zodiac signs constellations. As an example, I use the constellations of my family. And what you'll need, you'll have some constellations for every zodiac sign in a project section of the class. So you should print one's head. Then you'll need watercolor paper. We'll need a board because it's a wet on wet technique. We'll be using whatever board you have for taping your paper on, and we'll need a masking tape to do that. If you don't have a board, you can try to tape your paper to the table. But we'll need them. Waco. Paint palette. A Warcol paint beson we paint from the tubes today, a blue violet and mon y then we'll need a huge brush. Need a pencil, eraser, a white pencil, a white acrylic paint, and a brush for acrylic paint. And I think this is pretty much it let's get started. 3. Drawing and Painting the Constellations: So first, what we have to do for this project, we need to transfer zodiac sun constellations into color paper. I for my project, I decided to do zodiac signs of me, my husband, and our son. So there will be three constellations on my artwork, and I transferred them just the circles. So you'll find all zodiac sign constellations in a project section of the class. And you can do just one, or you can make several to make a present for someone or artwork for yourself. So I transferred just the circles of the stars. And then I taped the paper into the board, and next thing I'll be doing, I'll use acrylic paint. Just any acrylic paint you have. Or maybe you have some other watercolor resist solutions. I don't like removing the Waco resist solution from a paper, so that's why I'm using acrylic. And with a brush which is not a war colour, well, maybe it's watercolor brush, but I don't use it for watercolor. I'll be applying acrylic paint to every round of the stars. And then I'll let it completely dry before we move into the next phase. 4. Painting the Galaxy: All right. After our acrylic paint is completely dry completely dry, and we can move into the phase of wet on wet technique. So I put my paints in here this time. Usually, I use watercolor and paint sat. But today, because we'll be working wet on wet, I'm using the paint from the tubes, and I'll be using violet, blue, and the lemon yellow colors. And when I pick a big brush I can find in the house. And then we'll be just playing with those colors while we go. Also make sure you have a paper towel next year to absorb the excess of water if it's necessary. So we'll be just applying water on the paper over the circles and everything. And I want apply it on the entire surface because it's winter and the heat is on, so it will be drying anyway, and it's a big surface here. So for the composition, I moved my constellations kind of to the center so I can make a darker areas on the edges. And also, I left some space on the bottom in case I want to write something or names, or I'll decide it later. But I left with space just in case. If I mix some violet with some blue I'll get this beautiful blue dark blue color. I'll do that in this corner. Then I'll take just blue. So this is the creative part, you can just uh see how you feel and just go with your emotions and apply the colors you want. And don't forget to keep ing water. Okay. Especially to the edge. So you can see how watercolor is not covering acrylics. So that's what I was looking for. So we can we should work pretty fast. Can see I'm alterating blue and violet with just blue. And where I will decide to put some yellow, I'll use mostly blue because the violet with yellow would create some muddy unwanted color. So I'm going with a blue next. Need more water. More blue. No, I wash brush as well as I can. And then I'll add some yellow here and there to create aqua tones. So I don't want it to be yellow, yellow. I just want it to be like aqua blue. That's why I'm going with a blue over it. I like the motor violet than blue. You can see how our stars are shining because of the acrylic paint. So we have to add more water because to let water color flow, but at the same time, once we get water on, it gets lighter. So I'm trying to combine heating water and going on and dry. This area needs a little more color. So we have to work pretty fast. That's for sure. This needs more color. And I think what happened, my blue here just got all covered by purple. So let me take some more blue. Here. So we can do this, as long as the paper is still wet, we can keep edging. More hues color layers. Mizer is still very wet, so we can play here. And usually I wouldn't worry about these kind of areas, but this time, I really wanted to create a water drying on paper effect, which only watercolor has. So I'm kind of work to even emphasize it with some dark underneath. Obviously this area is getting dry so I with more water. And now I think it's time to stop. And also, if you want, you can add some splashes, so it's not just those stars. There are some splashes of water on these wet surfaces we create extra stars besides our constellations. Alright, so now we should stop and let it dry. 5. Connecting the Lines of the Constellations: So after Ara, personal galaxy is completely dry, have to carefully remove the tape. And then we need to connect them with lines, and I'll be using a ruler and a white pencil. You don't need to use a ruler if you're more confident. Like for small lines, you can go just like this. Also, I think a metallic paint could look very cool. Maybe I'll try the next. So for longer lines, I'll use a ruler. And for shorter lines, I'll just go without the ruler. I'm obviously looking at a reference where I do this. I'm in the first constellation. And then I'll go and get my metallic paint. That's a decision. 6. Finishing Touches: So after we removed a tape from the edges, I made the lines with a pencil between the stars with pencil and the roulette. And then I experimented a little bit with metallics. So I tried to make the stars with meta ink, but I didn't like it. So after I just covered them with acrylic paint again. I will say may I write our names on the bottom or not. I will see it when I will try to frame it, but I really like it passages with bright white stars, with subtle lines like very creative watercolor galaxy. 7. Thank You: Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I hope you had a chance to paint your own galaxy and also studied wet and wet techniques with me. If you're posting your art on Instagram, please check me so I can see your beautiful artwork, and I'll see you in my next class. Bye.