Transcripts
1. Introduction : Hi, my name is Kolbie, and I love to paint
and to letter, and to use calligraphy to create beautiful artwork that
speaks to my soul. You are probably here right now because you are
interested in learning how to create beautiful
night sky paintings like this guy or these
lovelies right here. Whether you've seen
these paintings, you're just searching
through Skillshare and he came across this class, or you following me on
Instagram @thiswritingdesk and saw some of my videos or
postings of these paintings. I'm here to teach you
all of my secrets. I never imagined that
I would be an artist. I only started lettering maybe two years ago and one year
ago I started painting, and it just has become an
obsession and part of who I am. The reason I'm
telling you this is because you don't have to have any experience to
start these paintings. If you want to learn starting
at zero, you totally can. The more you practice and
the more time you put in, the better you're going to get. In this class, I'm
taking you through my process step-by-step
for painting these gorgeous night skies, and the best way for you to learn how to do it is to
paint them along with me. The videos are
hopefully ordered in a way that makes sense and makes it easy for you to join me as we paint a
beautiful night sky. Hopefully, you will end up with something that looks a
little bit like this, or something that you can be proud of to keep for
yourself or to give away, or to keep on the shelf
and to keep practicing. At the end of the class, I would love if you
posted your work on the project gallery so
that everyone can see it. I would also love to see
see work on Instagram. If you tag me, thiswritingdesk, I will give you some love and I may even re-post
some of my favorites. Without further ado,
let's get started.
2. Materials: Like I talked about in
my introductory video, this class is all about making night sky forest scenes
like these ones right here. You should have
already seen them, but just in case, I'm going to show you how I make these
beautiful paintings. I will say that these paintings
have been the ones that have increased my engagement on Instagram and I've gotten
so many people excited. I'm excited, I love
making these paintings, I think they're beautiful. They are not so hard
to get so beautiful. This video is all
about talking about the different supplies that
we need really quickly. Then at the end, I'm going
to have a picture that lists all the suppliers
that we talked about here. First, paper, the two different
kinds of paper that I use for these
specific paintings. Bear in mind, I don't always use these paper for
every project that I do. I talk a lot about that in my blending class
for calligraphy. But the two kinds I
use the most are, arches is my favorite. This is professional-grade
watercolor paper, which means that it is made
from 100 percent cotton. It is 140 pounds, I believe that's 300 grams. It is the best in my opinion, at absorbing the water and maintaining the quality of
your paint and your layers. I use arches, that is my favorite. Arches is expensive. There's really no
getting around it. It is more expensive
than regular paper. I buy 140 pounds instead
of 300-pound paper because 140 pounds
is less expensive. If you just don't know that you can spring for
arches right now, which I totally understand, the best comparison
I found to arches professional-grade in terms of student-grade paper
is Strathmore. Now I believe Strathmore also creates
professional-grade paper, but that is also probably priced at a
professional-grade price. But Strathmore
student grade paper has a similar texture to arches, though arches is more
textured because again, it is made of 100
percent cotton, and Strathmore is likely made of some cottonwood pulp
combination, I'm not sure. But Strathmore is the
closest in all of the student grade papers
that I've tried and I haven't tried them all,
but I have tried a few. These are the two choices for
paper that I would go with. Next, I'm going to
talk about paint. I would either go
with tubed paint or pan paint, pan watercolor. I would not use
liquid watercolor on these pieces mostly because to get the contrast in colors, you can do this with just
one color if you're using the right paint and it's really hard to get this really deep, muted color with
liquid watercolor, in my opinion, that's
just my opinion. Your choice, but for
landscape water coloring, I much prefer to use pigmented, professional-grade
watercolor that's either tubed or that's in a pan, and that's what all
of these choices are. Really quick. I'm
just going to go over prima watercolor confections
are really affordable. They come in different palettes. I have organized mine
to be my colors. These are from lots of
different palettes, but they're really affordable
and they're artist-grade. I probably for
cost-conscious people, these are the ones that
I would recommend. I would do say that while they're
affordable on my end, they're my favorite in
terms of cost to quality, my very favorite
paints to use for these are Winsor & Newton. I most often reach for indigo. It's blurry, let's see if
we can focus that a little. I most often reach for
indigo and Payne's gray for these pieces. It doesn't really matter
what colors you choose. I have these night sky paintings that are green or
this is more purple. But if you really
want to get the sky, how it's supposed to look, indigo or Payne's gray, is the way that I would go. I also really love, this is my Greenleaf &
Blueberry calligraphy set, and I have a couple of
other colors in here. These are handmade paints by Greenleaf & Blueberry
and they're awesome. They're a little pricey, not over expensive because
they're totally worth it, but these are also higher end. I have lots of other handmade. I love working with
contacting makers. But I'm just going to go back on tubed watercolor for a second. Usually, when I do
tubed watercolor, I squeeze it onto a
palette or an empty pan. I have some empty pans too. I squeeze it onto a palette
and then I wait for it to dry all the way and then I use it like it's pan watercolor. Now, not all watercolors
recommend doing this because pan watercolor
that's initially in the pan, there's a different
chemical makeup that makes it specific for pan watercolor and you can more easily
activate it more often. It's recommended that if you're going to use
liquid watercolor, you use a little bit at
a time in a palette, but that's not always
available for me. I don't paint all day, this is not my job. I have found that this
works really well. I've had these colors in
here for a few months and I haven't really
had any problems. That's what I'm going
to say about paint. This is the paint that I use
for my stars, it's Dr. Ph. Martin's bleedproof white and when we to get to
the stars video, I'll talk more about that. Then I also use this Sakura Gelly Roll pen for the stars and particularly
the shooting star. Finally, brushes, I
would recommend getting watercolor round brushes
specifically for watercolor. These sizes are the ones
I most frequently use, 16, 10 and 0. This specific brand
is series 228 from Utrecht and Sublet means it
is synthetic sable hair, so it is not real hair. This is synthetic sable hair, and I actually prefer synthetic sable hair over
sable hair brushes because I think that it bounces back to its original
rigidity easier. That's just my opinion.
I picked these up at a Blick Art materials store that I live across
the street from. These work really well for me. I also like the Princeton
Heritage Series, but these probably are the
closest that I've found to the Princeton Heritage Series that are a little bit
more cost-effective. There you have it. Those are
all the materials that I use for my night sky paintings. I encourage you to either
get these materials or to find something similar
before you embark on the rest of these
videos so that you can do your project along with me. That is your
homework assignment, is to gather your materials
and see where you might need to make substitutions or make
a trip to the art store, which is always
fun in my opinion. There you go, can't wait to
start painting with you.
3. 1. Prepping the scene: Now that you have hopefully gathered all of the
materials that you need, I want to talk about
a couple things, and that has to do with water and it has
to do with paper. Number one, this is part
of the materials I didn't mention in the last
video because I felt like it was
self-explanatory, but I'm going to
talk about it now; you need two cups of water. You might ask yourself,
why do you need two? The answer is because
one cup needs to stay clear and clean
the whole time, and then the other cup
you're getting it dirty cup, so it's going to be super muddy, and especially for the techniques we
are going to be using, it's really important that
you have clean water. You also are going to
need a paper towel just when you need with
all water coloring. Number 2 is paper, and what happens when
you put water on paper. One of the most common
questions I get is, Kolbie, how do I keep
my paper from buckling? The answer is, it's really
hard not to unless you have really expensive
£300 watercolor paper. But fear not because there are techniques
that we can use. The number one technique that
I would recommend is using painter's tape to tape down your watercolor
paper or masking tape. I think sometimes
masking tape is a little more gentle on the paper. But I usually use
painter's tape. If you'll notice in my pieces, they're
like brushstrokes. It's like the night sky
is painted on there. That's definitely a
method that you can use, but I did not use
painter's tape on this. If you look at my
videos on Instagram, I just had this
piece of paper down and didn't use any paper
and quickly did my wash. But especially as
people are just starting to do these
night sky videos, I would really recommend
using painter's tape, so I'm going to show
you how to do that. I'm just getting a string
of tape and taping down. First, I have to
make sure I'm on the right side of the paper. There is always a
correct side on watercolor paper for
you to paint on. One side is the back and
one side is the front. Usually, what side has the
most texture is the front. I'm just having a
thin border here. You can put the tape
down however you want depending on what kind of border you want to
round the painting. Thick or thin, it
doesn't matter. The thicker you do it, the more stable the
paper is going to be, so that's something
to think about. But this is how I am doing it. I like to do top-top side-side because that way when
I take off the paint, which you'll see later
on in the class, my tape pieces don't
stick together, and I have more control, and I can take off the paint. I'm doing top-top side-side. I usually have a pretty
good eye for sizing, but I also don't really
care when it comes to loose art like this in terms of, oh, is this the
exact size as this? I think that some
people care a lot, but I think that imperfections
make art what it is. But you can size it
up however you want. There you go. That's how you tape down your piece of paper, and it is ready
for you to paint. Typically, with this method, you would go straight
to the edge. But you can do, with tape, what I did, and just make sure your strokes go not quite to the edge
so you can see them. That's up to you. For this class, I'm going to go right to the edge to show you
what it looks like with a border since I don't really do that a lot
on my Instagram. Your homework after watching this class is to decide
whether or not you want to tape down your paper or whether or not you
just want to go loose. Just be aware that
when you go loose, the paper will buckle and it's trickier to get it to do
what you want it to do. Make sure you have your water, and make sure you
have your supplies, and let's get going
in the next video.
4. 2. First wash of water: This is a quick and easy video. This video is all about
the initial wash. By wash, I just mean putting
water on the paper. For this first wash, I'm going to use my
Size 16 water brush, my paintbrush here because it will allow me to get
water on here a lot quicker. I am just going to get started. I'm dipping my paintbrush
in this clean water. Since I have this painter's tape down and it's nice
and taped down, you always want to make sure that the edges are
nice and done, I'm just going to go
straight from edge to edge. One of the most common
questions I get is, what is that stuff
that you put on the paper before you
put the paint down. The answer is water. It's just water. It's not any special liquid. I mean, water is special. You don't have to buy it, you just get it from the sink. As long as it's clear
and it's clean, then it will work for you. Honestly, just as
simple as that. That is what we're going
to do in this video. I know that seems simple, but keep in touch and watch the next video to see
what happens next.
5. 3. Painting the sky: We don't want to
put too much on. Now that we have
our water down on the paper, it's time to put down our first drop of paint. You can either stick with the 16-brush or sometimes
I move on to the 10. I go down to the 10,
but it looks like we're going for
the 16 right now. What you're going to
do is start at the top and get the darker
color on the top. It's not going to
be the darkest. It's going to be right now. But what we're doing is just creating a very light gradient. This first kind of night
sky forest is honestly, I often just use one color. Sometimes I use another
color on the bottom, but to make it as easy as possible we're really
just going to use one. I'm showing you
how, using water, there's a lot of
water on this brush makes it so it creates
this nice smooth gradient. At the bottom this page is really light and at
the top it's darker. Now, to make it even darker
I'm going to dilute. I'm going to use my
10-brush actually. This might be common
sense. When you use water it dilutes the paint. To get the paint as pigmented
as we want it to be, you want enough water
so that it's liquid, but you want not so
much that it's diluted. Here, this is not quite
as dark as it can get, but it's dark enough
for our purposes. I am putting just another
quick layer on there. But now it's starting to get where this is a lot
darker than right here. I don't want this, the bottom to be as
dark as up here. Now, I washed off my
brush a little bit. I'm starting from the bottom and I'm just going to
knead it at the top. If you want to keep the
shade of a lighter shade, the best technique I can
tell you is to go from light to dark because that maintains the gradient
and it also makes sure that this part doesn't get any
darker than it needs to be. For the rest of
this, I'm going to again take off
water and see if I can get this really
pigmented right here so that at the top I
can get it really dark. That's definitely darker. Sometimes you can
even put black or dark gray on top and
mix it with this blue. I think this is
indigo. I'm using Prima watercolor
confections right now because I really like them and they're
the most cost effective. I imagine a lot of
people are going to be using these though, you could be using
whatever paint. You could even be using
paint I didn't show you. We're just honestly creating this gradient is just doing
the same thing over and over. But be careful not to
put too much water down because the more
water you put down, you guessed it, the more the
paper is going to buckle. It doesn't have to
be exactly smooth. If you want it to be you
can definitely get it to be to get the
gradient so smooth, but that's going to require
a lot of work on your part. It's okay if you want
to call it good at some point because the
night sky isn't perfect. It has flaws. Sometimes my night sky goes
all the way down here and sometimes like right now
it's all the way up there. I might see if I can
get just a little more pigmented. This is what I do. If you watch my
videos on Instagram, and that's why you're
here, which is great, you watch my videos
sped up by like 24 times usually so that I
can fit it into one minute. I'm really excited that
I have the opportunity to film this class and show you exactly in real-time
what it takes to get the effects that I do
in my night sky paintings. I think I'm almost done here. I don't mind if I get this
bottom a little bit more dark, a little bit darker, so I'm just going up and down. Sometimes you can't tell if your gradient is smooth
until it's already dry. But there you go. I'm going to call
this good for now. If you're doing
this along with me that's your homework,
that's your project. The next step is to put
down your wash with your night sky water for
this specific night sky. Next time on the next video I'm going to talk
a little bit about drying techniques and what I
do wait for my next layer. Sounds good. Can't wait to
see your progress on these.
6. 4. Drying the first layer: All right everyone. We have the washdown and now it's
time to decide how we're going to dry this layer so that we can put
on the stars and put in the trees because
that's the next step. You may notice in most of my Instagram videos that I use this little
thing right here. It's a Darice heat tool. I bought it for 9.99 on Amazon, not sure how much they are now, but there are lots of
different heat tools typically used for embossing, but I use it to
dry my paintings. You don't have to do that. If you don't have one
of these, that's okay, you can wait for it
to dry on its own, it's going to take a little bit. I can't give you an
exact estimation, but you'll just have
to keep watching it. But for the purposes
of this video, I'm going to show you
how I use this tool. It's going to be loud, so maybe turn down the volume
while you're watching. But I'm going to tell you that
sometimes I go like this, like shake it a lot
to avoid burning in one spot because if you keep
it in one spot for too long, it will burn the paper, so just be aware of that. Also note that usually
when I dry my paintings, like I'm sure I used
it to dry this one, I do the top first and
then I do the bottom, and sometimes I even dry the residual liquid
that's on my table. Because this is taped, we can't really do that, so it's still going to
be a little bit wet, especially on the bottom once I've finished
drying the top. That's just something
to be aware of. I usually dry the top and the bottom when I
don't have tape because this paper is so absorbent that it
is wet all over. That's a bad way to describe it, not wet all over, but you use so much water to create this wash that
it needs to go somewhere. I also found the drying
it on the top and on the bottom sometimes can reduce buckling or not
really reduce buckling, but I can shape it into
what I want it to be. Sometimes that means like even just going like this after, you'll notice that this
is pretty straight, it was not so straight
when I first did it. Enough talking [LAUGHTER]
I'm going to dry this, and if you don't want
to hear the sound, please turn down the volume but you can watch while I dry. [NOISE] But you might still be able to hear me
but you'll notice that it takes a little bit longer than it might
seem like in the videos. But if you watch
closely how the light reflects off of the painting, you can see when parts are
dry and when they're not dry. Interesting. I think I left that out there. [NOISE]. I don't know if you've noticed, but the paper is still
starting to buckle. Just because it's down
in tape doesn't mean it's not going to buckle
because like I said, it really depends on the
weight of the paper. But now that I've
mostly dried it, I'm going to keep the tape on. It's not all the way dry, it's probably still
damp on the bottom, but now that it's mostly dry, I'm going to move on. Watch the next video for when I do the stars,
that's my next step. But I did want to note that I put a little bit of water up here and it looks like my
night sky, the darkest, darkest right along here, this isn't always
how it happens, but I really like it. Let's see how yours turns out.
7. 5. Painting the stars: Our next step here is the stars. There are two different
methods for the stars. My favorite way is to
use this paint, Dr. Ph. Martin's Bleed Proof White, to splatters the stars
onto the paper like that. I like the splattering
because it's randomized and that's how I feel like stars really look when
you look up in the sky. But if you don't have this paint or any other kind
of similar paint like it, you could use a white gel pen and draw in the stars yourself. I've definitely done that before and you can make it
look really nice. But for the purpose
of this class, we are going to use Dr. Ph. Martin's. One thing you
should know about Dr. Ph. Martin's Bleed Proof
White is it's not the right consistency
when you first open it. It's more like a paste
and you need to add water to it to make it
the right consistency. I like to use my lid as
a little mini palette. I don't know if that's
weird, but that's what I do. I take a little bit of the paint and splattering stars can be
tricky and it can be messy. So that's also another
question I get is, "How do you do it
without making a mess?" The answer is, I don't. [LAUGHTER] I'm making sure to cover up my paint
because I don't want this white paint in my
other paint and I'm moving anything else that I wouldn't want the paint
to get splattered on. It's really key when
I add water here to add some clean water. I don't want to add some muddy water to this because this
is white obviously, and if I add even just
a little bit tinted, the white is going to be
tinted into something else. I also want to say stars can be tricky because you have to get this paint exactly
the right consistency. If you get the paint too thin, then it will more
easily come off of your paper and be huge blobs. For example, this one, see how big these dots are? That happened because my
paint was a little too thin, which seems
counter-intuitive. You'd think if it was thick,
it would be like that. But no, it was because
it was too watery and it came more easily
off of my brush. It looks more like snow
than stars, which is fine. I went with that. If
that's what you want, that's a technique that
I would recommend using. But if you want stars, you have to have it. Honestly, there's not really, a, it's about having it
not be super watery, but b, also not having too
much on your paintbrush. If you'll notice, I'm
mixing it in here, but then I'm wiping
it on the side. It's just going to take
practice for you to figure out what the right
consistency is for you. See even that, if
it's not thin enough, it's hard to get off. For the record, I'm using
a size 0 brush here. But sometimes for stars, I actually like to
use bigger brushes, maybe like a three or a four because you can get
more paint on there. For now, I'm just
going to do this. I'm going to actually
switch to that. I think that's what
I'm going to do. I'm taking this off. I'm switching to
a different brand of paintbrush that
I've used in the past. This is Royal and
Langnickel paintbrush. It's one of my very first brushes that I
used as an artist, which was really
good for a beginner, but I now use it
mostly for stars. We'll see if this is too thick. Looks fine. If you're wondering
what I'm doing, I'm holding with
my left hand and just pounding on this
with my right hand. Some of you have said, "You could use a
toothbrush," and yes, you can use a toothbrush. Some people put paint on the toothbrush and then
flick the bristles. For me, that's a lot more messy. See how these are really thick. I put a little bit too
much paint on there, which is fine. It's all good. But just be aware of that. For me, this is the way
that I like to do it. Thank you to everyone who
suggests different things. This is just the
way that I've found is the easiest for me. Already I can tell that
my consistency here is a little thinner than I might want it because some of the
pinks comes off in blobs. But that's fine. It's not all over and there
are tons of little stars. I usually do the
stars like this, three or four rounds and
then look into places. It's really hard to control, so it just takes practice. But I look into places
I see that might need some more gaps filled in and I fill them in until
I feel like I'm satisfied. I feel like that
looks pretty good. You might ask why
do the stars first? It's because I'm afraid of the stars splattering onto the trees if I do
the stars last. I think that sometimes they even do the stars last anyway. [LAUGHTER] But for this class, I'm going to do the stars first. That looks good to me. I am going to prepare
to do my trees next. This paint dries
usually pretty fast. So I don't always like to do the dryer before I
go on to the trees, but it could be
something that you do if you want to or wait
for a few minutes. Actually, I forgot one thing. I use this to do
a shooting star. For a shooting star,
it's really easy. You just pick a spot
on the side and draw a dot and then flick
out like that. Sometimes it doesn't go. Gel pens can be
finicky little things. But it's okay if it's not
all in one line because shooting stars are
supposed to be ethereal. So I'm going to call that good. That's my shooting
star right there. Looks pretty good. Great.
Thanks for watching. I would love to see how
your stars turnout. Let's now go on to
the next video, which is all about
the tree silhouettes.
8. 6. Painting the trees: So we've put our wash down, we've made our sky, we have created our stars, and now the next step
is to create our trees. Because as I pointed
out, in these paintings, I have just little
bursts of forests along the bottom to create
a forest silhouette. For my trees, I use black watercolor. This is from Prima marketing
watercolor confections. You could also use
lamp black if you have Winsor and Newton or any other
professional watercolor. But honestly, just
any black will do. Sometimes I've used black
acrylic or black Sumi ink, but with these, I found actually like
watercolor is the best. Trees can be really simple, or they can be really detailed depending
on how you want, but for this class, I'm going to go
with really simple. We're just going to
go along the bottom. Honestly, if you think
that I have a plan for how the trees are going to go when I first started, I really don't. I just let it go, and I feel like if anything that this class is teaching is that art is all about creating what you feel and creating
what feels good too. I'm going to start with first, when you do a tree, you do the trunk and you want to
get it as thin as possible. Because these are
supposed to be a little, this is going to be one
of my tallest trees. I'm here, I'm using a
size zero paintbrush, and I could even go
smaller than that, but this is what I'm
using right now. I'm drawing the trunk, and then really I'm just fanning out the branches based on
where the trunk is, and it doesn't have
to be perfect. Trees aren't all filled in. Trees are definitely
wild and nature, and don't always look the same, and aren't always symmetrical
or anything like that. Honestly, I would just practice and figure out what technique
works best for you. This is how I've been
doing it lately. I've also done a method. I can even do one in
a different method. That method was me putting down the trunk and doing it
one side at a time. It's a little more realistic, but I've also done
trees like this before, where I'm going to
do a little trunk, and then I'm just
going to go like that. Just do some stripes
along the bottom. Those can look really cool too. It's about not being so nervous about where your brush lands
or where the branch lands. But just feeling where
you think it should go. I'm going to keep
creating trees. The trick with making
it look like there's some depth here is to make sure that the trees
are different sizes. I like to put some in the
back that are just so tiny. I'm using barely any pressure here to put some happy
little trees down. You've ever seen Bob Ross, which I'm sure all of you have. You can barely even
see that tree. But that's the whole point. Is that it's supposed to
be far in the distance. I'm going to put some
more trees down, and they can be like that, barely have any branches, because some trees in the
forest look like that too. These are all like pine trees. But you can do any tree
is really for this piece, it's all up to you. I'm doing similar pine
trees, some smaller ones. Now, maybe I'll do
some over here. I just visualize where I
think the balance should go. You could do trees
all along the bottom. You could very easily do that. Now look really nice, I've
done that lots of times. Or you can just put trees randomly where you
think they should go. Again, I'm really just letting my
paintbrush do its thing. I don't have a
plan for the tree. I've painted a lot of trees and so some of it could
be muscle memory. But I am drawing a trunk first, and then just putting in some branches and
just dotting my way. I don't know if that's
the right phrase, but I'm just moving
my paintbrush in the direction of where
I think branches would go, and it looks like a tree. It'll take some practice. I think that is always my biggest piece of
advice when people ask me how to get
better is to practice. There's no shortcut. I wish that there was, but there's really not. I got better by practicing, but I will say that if I can
figure out how to do art, I never thought I'd be
good at this stuff. You can figure out how to do it. If you practice and you care
and you put in the time, I'm sure you can
get really good. You probably are already really good and you
don't even know it. Then I might do a few
in the middle here. Like I said, I just put trees wherever I feel
like they should go. I'm sure there are lots of composition techniques
that you can learn that are a lot more professional
than what I'm doing. But this is a skill that
I've taught myself. I mean, also by watching
other people do it. But I've never taken any
classes or anything. I just tried, and if I can do it, I know that you can too. For now, here's one thing I will say
about the trees is, you want to make sure you
don't have too much water. You want to have more
paint on here than water. Because when you
have too much water, it blobs, like I
did with that tree. That is a technique that I've
learned through experience. You want to have a little
bit of water because you need it to activate
the watercolor. But you want to have
definitely more pigment on there than water. That's why I recommend not
using liquid watercolor, especially for trees like this. I'm just filling in
where I think they go. Maybe one like here on its own, maybe a couple
here on their own. There you have it.
Those are my trees, I've done my stars, I've done my wash, and you're almost done. The next step is to, a, decide if you want to
letter something or, b, be done. If you want to letter something, go onto the next video, if you like put
some words on this. If you want to just be done, probably skip two
videos to where I carefully take off the tape. Yay. Can't wait to see
all of your projects. These are my favorite things.
9. 7. (Optional) Add lettering: If you're watching this video, it means that you decided you
wanted to letter something on your night sky video and you're just not sure
how and that's okay. It took me a little
bit of tries too because painting over the
top of paint can be tricky. The first thing that
I would say is decide what color of paint
you want to use. I would recommend
either black or white depending on how
dark your sky is. If your sky was really dark, I think that white lettering, for sure all the way. But if it's light, then black lettering
would definitely show up. It looks like my night sky turned out to be
a little lighter than other night
skies that I've done. For this specific one, I think either black or
white would work fine. Because black lettering
is pretty easy to figure out, maybe not easy, but I would either use
a Tombow Fudenosuke to write on the sky, or I would use a pointed
pen with some ink, or you can use watercolor and just watercolor right on it. I think trickier than black is putting white
lettering on something, mostly because a lot of white paint doesn't show
up and when it does, it's hard to maneuver. I'm going to show you how I do this white lettering with Dr. Ph. Martin's
Bleedproof White. Like we talked about before, you have to manipulate this ink so that it's
exactly how you want it to be because it's really
pasty when it comes in the pot at first. For stars, it needed to
be a little bit less. It needed to have a more dense consistency
but when you're lettering, it should be a little bit more liquidy like your
lettering with watercolor. I'm just going to test it out. It can be so hard because
it's hard to get thin lines. The key with this and
with painting on is to use as little
pressure as possible. I'm going to do my best and
we'll see what happens. I'm using as little
pressure as I can. There's my stroke. You have to be aware that
when you're using arches, especially your paintbrush, will want to catch onto the paper so you have
to be really careful. Similar to how we're
doing the stars, I want my paintbrush
to not have blobs. I want to be able to
see my paintbrush, but have enough so that I
can still paint with it. So I'm just going to keep going. I might have to take
my strokes in parts. That's how I do it. See
if I do it right here, my paintbrush has way too
much paint on it right now, it's going to be blobby. I need to just take a little bit off and that's a little better. Because if I have
too much paint, it doesn't matter
how much pressure I put down or how little
pressure I put down, it's always going to be blobby. We don't want that. At least I don't want
that on my things. I'm going to keep
doing that technique. I'm just writing the word believe because that's what I think when I
look at the stars. You have to be careful
because sometimes this paint, you have to go over it again
if you get it too thin. I'm going to keep doing this. I dipped it in water to see
if I could get a little bit more of a liquidy consistency. That's a little blobby. I almost done. This is real-time lettering. This is me going fast. This is not a quick hobby. You have to take
your time if you want to get it exactly right. There's my lettering on top of my night sky. There it is. I just decided to do one
word because as you can see, even with this tiny paintbrush, my letters are pretty big. If you're using a paintbrush, it's difficult to get
really small lettering. If you wanted to put a poem
or something on top of here, I would recommend either using a Tombow Fudenosuke pen
or using a pointed pen. You can also do pointed pen
with Dr. Ph. Martin's. You just have to let
me get out of nib. I'm not going to
letter on this right now but I potentially will, in a later video. What you have to do for this
is you get out your nib and you pick up the paint and literally paint it
on the nib like that. I'm not painting anything on it. That's why you
can't see anything, but you'll paint
it on the nib and then use your pointed
pen like that. It's more time-intensive. Perhaps in a later video, I'll show you how to do that, but that's the way to
get small lettering. Like I said, it can be finicky when you already
have a painted background, but it can be so pretty
and worth it I think. As far as this night
sky painting goes, we are just about done. So head onto the
next video to watch as I untape everything. We can see what
yours looks like.
10. 8. Finishing touches : You've made it. This is the final step to seeing
your finished product. I love taking tape
off of things, but it can be tricky
which is why it gets its own video [LAUGHTER] because sometimes the paint
here acts like a glue. If you're not careful, you can rip off some of the
paper along with the tape. My trick is to take it at
an angle and to go slow. If you go fast, you might not be able to hear
when your paper catches. I've already heard
my paper catch a little bit but it looks fine. Great, one side done. Remember how I did
top-top, side-side? I did that specifically so this tape wouldn't
catch off of here so that I can
take the tape, the pieces of tape
off one at a time. I'm going slow. See it bled over here where I wasn't done long enough
but that's okay. I'm going slower but it
looks like it's fine. I will say that
professional paper doesn't catch as easily as student grade paper when
it comes to painting. I'm using arches right now
and that's potentially why it really isn't catching. Strathmore does catch a lot. That's the downside to painting with Strathmore so I
would be really careful. If you decided to use
Strathmore paper, I would go really
slow and at an angle. Just as an example to show you. I'm not sure if this top
piece is going to catch, but if it does, if you hear it catching and you see
some paper coming up, then stop and go to the next side and start
from that side because then you're not
perpetuating the rip and the paper and you'll
potentially have minimized it. There it is, the
finished product. I love these little pieces and I'm just blown
away by how gorgeous they always turn out and I mean, it can be time
intensive sometimes, but it's honestly a simple way to get a really gorgeous piece. I love selling these,
I love making these for people and now I am loving teaching
you how to make them. I'm proud of you [LAUGHTER]. I'd love to see any
of your progress. Makes sure to tag
me on Instagram if you're posting these
because I'd love to see that. Maybe share some of your work. I'm also going to have
future classes on maybe a more advanced
version of this that has lots of
different colors or different kinds of silhouettes, different kinds of sky paintings like I've done in the past, but this initial basic class was so fun and I can't wait to see all of the
beautiful work that you have completed so feel
free to message me and let me. I hope you had a great time. Thanks for tagging along.
Kolbie Blume, Artist
