Watercolor Aurora Radiance: A 15-Day Challenge to Master Northern Lights Paintings

1. Welcome back!: Henry Ward said. Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his nature into his pictures. Hi, I'm Swati, a watercolor artist by passion and a product manager by profession based out of Bangalore, India. I go by the handle tinted turtles on Instagram. I welcome you into this vibrant journey of ethereal beauty of Aurora, often referred to as nature's own light show. The Aurora is a mesmerizing display of colors that dance across the night sky. Think of it as universes canvas, painted with strokes of electric greens, deepest purples and radiant pinks. The colors of aurora are so livid and breathtaking, it's as if they were tailor made for watercolor palette. Speaking of watercolors, this medium is perfect companion to capture the essence of the aurora. Its fluidity and transparency allow for a seamless blend of colors, creating that luminous effect that mirrors the real thing. Plus the unpredictable nature of watercolors adds on to our advantage. It perfectly captures the dynamic and ever changing patterns of Aurora. Now, why is there a 15 day challenge? Developing a habit of painting regularly not only increases your skills, but also deepens your connection with the subject. It's like building a relationship with Aurora one brushstroke at a time. With my tips and techniques, you will be able to paint any Aurora band you see or experience. For this challenge, we'll be using 185 GSM watercolor people, a steady yet versatile choice that can handle the wet on wet techniques. We'll be exploring, gear up, grab your brushes and get started with me on this challenge. 2. All about class projects: Welcome to the watercolor painting challenge. For 15 days, we're diving into the mesmerizing world of aurora painting in Aticolors to capture the dance of flights in the night sky. Why? Because it's not just about painting. It's about expressing the awe inspiring beauty of nature through vibrant hues and all those vibrant shades in an Aurora band. Get ready for daily dose of creativity. I'll be uploading one class every day, five days a week, into a journey that unfloads, gradually allowing you to savor each moment and build your skills consistently. After the three weeks, you'll be having an incredible collection of Aurora paintings. Each of it showcasing diverse landscape and color combinations, unleash your creativity, and feel free to use the colors that resonate with you. I'll be covering all the basic concepts and techniques required for a watercolor painting on 185 GSM paper as well. Since 185 GSM paper is not traditionally preferred, I will be teaching you techniques and tips on how to overcome and use the same paper in under 30 minutes. Daily, you will learn how to create the beautiful and vibrant bands of Aurora. It's a quick yet impactful way to bring these celestial wonders into life on your canvas. Beyond the art, this challenge is an opportunity to build a daily habit of watercolor painting. Let the mesmerizing theme of Aurora be your guide. As you develop your skills and fall in love with the art of watercolors, get ready for a journey of self exploration, creativity, and joy of painting. Grab all your supplies and meet me in the techniques class. 3. Supplies needed for the class: Let's look at all the supplies that is required for this class. Starting with, I have masking tape. This is to take down the sides of my paper. The smaller size I have used in one class project, only this is optional. This is one inches of height and this is half an inch. Next up, there is a transparent block for giving some elevation for my painting so that all the colors can flow in one direction. A needable eraser so that I can erase any extra or excess of graphite from the reference drawing that I'm doing, pencil for drawing the images. Most of our projects are going to be freehand drawing, but for some where I'm drawing a reference, a pencil will be required brushes. Here are some of the brushes that I have used. This would be a flatwah brush from Princeton, this is of size three fourth, and from Princeton, Neptune. This is very good for applying all the washes or even the first coat of water that I apply. It's really good for all of that. This is a synthetic brush of size two. You can use any other synthetic brush. I mainly use it for adding stars or basically the white splatters because it will not hold too much of water and I'll get those crisp stars that I'm looking for in the painting. Next up is two round brushes from silver brush, okay? One is of size eight and the other one is of size four. These are black velvet series 3,000 They have a finite tip and it is really helpful while painting. I preferred this and they hold good amount of water as well as color whenever I'm painting. This is Princeton Aqua Elite Liner brush of size one. This is very helpful for adding finer details in your painting. The branches or any finer details for that matter. Okay, these are all the brushes now coming to paint. Um, I'm using different brands of paints here, starting with cobalt green from the brand. They and bright rose as well from the brand. The next up is balter cis, dark blue shadows, lemon yellow. This shade lemon yellow. I have used in most of the paintings, wherever we have a greener shade of aurora band. This really helps with the blending because the sky is going to be blue. When you're mixing that with this lemon yellow, it forms a very beautiful, vibrant green that resonates with our aura band as well. Then indigo, cadmium red light. Other shade is a pastel shade called mint green that I have used from the same brand. Okay, next up from the brand, Mission Gold, I'm using composed blue. This is also I've used for the band part mainly. Okay, from Schimike, I'm using tundra violet. This is only for one of the class projects that have used. It turns out to be a very good granulating pigment as well for adding any of the textures that is required from Brand Celine. I'm using dthrine blue. This is very good for painting Northern light sky because this blue resonates very beautifully with the colors that are used in your brands, in your bands, I would highly recommend to use indthrane blue, acrodone magenta. This is from Q, R. This is also for all the pink, vibrant bands that I'm using. White wash from hemi. You can use any white wash or a white opaque watercolor as well for adding the stars and details mainly. Okay. Some of the other colors that I have here which are not part of the tube, it is part of my set. Let me bring that up. Yeah. Okay. The other shades that I have used here are carmine. Bright blue and paints gray. Okay? So these are all the shades that I have used for the class project. You can use any of the brands of your choice or you can also take some substitutes of these colors if you're familiar with the sky and the colors that we are using. Okay, This is all about the colors. Next up is the paper I'm using. Arches, watercolor paper. This is cotton, hundred percent cotton papers. But the weight of the paper is 185 GSM. It is usually thinner than traditionally use, which is a 300 GSM paper. But what I've observed is it works fine with harmony ever washes that I'm doing for these class projects. Since the washes won't go about two to three numbers, I think the paper retains the panes and the water beautifully. And it works for my work, for this entire class. During the class as well, I'll be telling some techniques in which you can make sure that the paper holds everything properly and how we can use the buckling of this paper into our advantage while painting the northern lights. I'll be sharing those steps as when we go through the class. Okay, this is a cold plus paper. I'm also using a palette knife for separating the paper once the painting is done. Next up is mixing palette. I'm using a ceramic one because I like how you can see that I can just activate by adding some water and it works beautifully. And I've also squeezed out some of the mostly used paints into one of these wells. This is a transparent board that I'm using for sticking the paper. Most of the times I'm using it directly from the arches block itself. But whenever I'm not, I'm sticking it onto this acrylic board, paper cloth. This is very much important for removing excess of water so that you don't get blooms from the edges or even to remove excess of water from your brushes. I would highly recommend to keep a paper cloth or a paper towel. Okay, and more importantly, water. I'm using a jar of water for this class. Along with all these supplies, I'm also using a spray bottle. This is completely optional. This helps you to keep your paper hydrated at certain times. If I feel like my paper is getting dry from a corner, I'll just pray some water onto it and this helps. Fifth water controlled. Okay. You can see that it's not activating all of my pigments, but just a little bit here and there. This avoids creating any harsh edges. That's the reason I'm using a spray bottle, but this is completely optional. You may choose not to use it as well. These are all the supplies that are required. Um, now that you have all the supplies with you to getting started with this challenge, let's go through the basic techniques required. I will go through all the water color, basic techniques as well as somewhat curated for using it on the 185 GSM arches paper. Let's get started with the techniques. 4. Techniques: Welcome to the techniques lesson. For this particular class, I would be mainly covering ton wet and ton dry technique of water color. This can be covered in multiple different sections of dry, dry, or control ton wet or how to retain more water and mixing colors directly during the ton technique, et cetera. I have covered it in different ways in the other classes as well. For our current concept, which is um, the Aurora Watercolor Ton wet technique will be used intensively, along with all the blending and how to retain water better. Also, because we're using a 185 GSM paper, it is important to understand how quickly and how to make the paper stay wet for a longer duration of time in case the paper starts to dry off from side. How do we manage to keep it wet without forming any watercolor blooms or any harsh edges? I'll be covering those concepts a little bit during the lesson. To get started with the wet wet technique, I'm going to take some water and apply it here. This is a technique in which the paper is wet as well. We will be using the paint, which will be in its wet form. That is, it will have water in it. The pigment will have water in it. Okay. I have applied water for watercolor paper. This is a cotton paper. The water needs to seep into the paper so that it can retain that water and stay wet for longer duration of time. What happens when we get more time to paint? What happens when we get more time? The painting becomes easy, blending becomes easy. The pains that we apply, they blend together easily without forming any harsh edges. That's why retaining of water becomes important in the watercolor technique, I've applied water and I can see a light thin glaze on my paper. In fact, I am seeing more than a glaze. Okay. With this consistency itself, I'm going to get started, I'm going to show you all these techniques with the shades that I'll be using mostly in the class, one of which is in the threin blue. Okay, So you can see that here I have not applied water. As soon as I come in touch with water, how it disperses. Right? This is the ton wet technique. I have water in the paint, I have water on the paper. Once it completely dries off, we can see a very smooth blending between the paint and paper. Now let me just show with one single color. Okay. If I want to add more depth, I can just keep on adding more values of the same pigment wherever I need depth. Okay, so this is Ton T. Now for the controlled Ton wet and how to retain water and how to do the blending. I'll show all that in this segment. Again, I'm applying some water. Okay, so next up, control on technique in which I will apply water and I want to retain some of those sections or some of the breast strokes that I'm applying. Say for example here, even though I applied A.it got merged completely with the background, right? But I do want to maintain it and retain the dot. This section, I'll keep it for showing control. Ton, I let it dry for about half of it and then come back. Now for blending techniques. Let me start with the lighter shade. I would start with a lighter shade, something like lemon yellow. Okay. Next to it. Another color. Just for the sake of showing, I'm taking the same colors of the band. I'm taking some of cobalt green. Okay. I'm applying completely here. And the next color I would take is composed blue, a darker shade. Okay? Now, this section of the paper is very small, but our actual size of paper is going to be double the size. Consider that from one end of the paper, the water has started to dry off. Right, until you complete adding the bands, it has started to dry off. In such cases, what you have to do is do not worry because you still have to finish your band first. Now I'll start with adding more of water onto the next colors here. The water has started to dry. Okay. With more water on my brush, I'll start bringing that in. Okay? And I'll bring it here. You can see that here there was more water. So I need not have this much dilute water here and keep it everywhere. Okay. Now, I do not want all these strands that are coming. What I would do is I will take a paper cloth, apply some pressure, and blend these color directly on the paper itself. Again, remove all the excess water in a brush onto a paper cloth. Apply very gentle pressure and mix these. Take those excess paint onto the paper cloth as well, and continue to repeat this process. Okay, Say here, let me cover up the controlled wet on wet. Now the paper is damp, it is not having too much of water. Say I want to add a tree here, You see how it is not spreading too much. Even if I paint a tree here, it will make sure to retain that tree structure, whatever we need in order for you to get beautiful Aurora band linings. You can follow two approaches. One is to place your paper in this direction where the blue that you will be adding will mix into the green. But sometimes it might merge too much. What you can do is when the paper is still damp, you can, with very swift motions, add these breast strokes. Okay? You can follow this as well. Okay? So the next tower technique is wet. On dry, the paper is completely dry. Right on this, we are going to take some paint which will have water in it. So that is the wet part and we will start to apply. Okay? You can see that here, the intensity of these colors are much brighter than how this will end up. We can use dry for blending the pigments asphalt directly on the paper. Like how I'm showing here though, I have not used this technique for adding any of the bands. I have used this for some of the mountains or to cover up the other elements of the paintings. Okay, it is extensively used to add the finer details or the landscape part which is usually a silhouette in these paintings. There you can use now, even within this, the techniques which is used is Db stroke and the stars as well. For Db stroke, say you have good amount of painting in your brush. You have started to paint, you see all this water. This has to completely cool. This is basically also called as dry. On dry, you have absolutely equivalent to no water in your, or the paint also is too much concentrated and your paper also do not have any water. In that case, you will get these beautiful strokes. This is nothing but all the tooth of paper that has been highlighted by pigment in your brush. Okay. In order to test, you can always use a paper cloth to check if you have obtained that consistency and then go about doing it on your painting. You can also use a synthetic brush for dry brush technique because that is much easier. Whereas in this brush where it is squirrel brush, it will be a bit difficult because it retains a good amount of water, which is actually a very good trait. But for just this technique alone, you can go ahead and use it. Once all this is added, you can still use a spray bottle. Just spray like this. Now, what happens where initial stroke, initial pigment where added? It will still retain but disperse on a very limited quantity into wherever the water has been sprayed. This also gives a very good texture once the painting is complete. You can use this for adding mountains, terrains, wherever you want to show some of the terrains on mountain. You can add these B strokes first and then some water. Then it will beautifully merge with the background. You don't have to redo the terrain part again. But since having a spray bottle is optional, I am not using this technique a lot. Okay, the next step is stars. I have used white wash for stars, but for techniques purpose I'm going to show with help of the blue itself. There are multiple ways to get few people use toothbrush. Whichever way is comfortable to you, I would recommend you to do with that. But for me, how I do is I'll take a brush. It is having a good amount of water. Okay. Now I will start to dab on this part of the brush. I see that the stars are splattered. Now, if I want bigger stars, I can take a bigger size brush or more water in the brush and it will form bigger stars. But it just looks bigger. But once it dries off, it will again dry with a diluted, um, state itself, it will be lighter. What you have to do if you want a bigger star with a concentrated pigment, you have to switch the brush to a bigger size brush. Now, this type of splattering happens randomly, wherever the water wants to go. If you want to do a controlled splattering, what you can do is take some paint in your brush, take the help of another brush, and now you can control where you want to add. Let me just for trial purposes, I'll add this line and I want to make sure that all my drops stay within that. Okay. Now I'll take another color. Okay, Now I go a little bit nearer to paper and try to maintain in those two lines itself. You see I'm getting very tiny stars, which is very important because in this kind of aurora or northern lights painting, you see very minute stars which are very far away. Adding this definitely helps your painting. Say if you want a bit bigger star, I'll take more water and continue the same very carefully. I'll first observe where it is all going, right? Then if I do the same, if I just try to dab with my hand, you can see it can go anywhere. Right? This is one se that I use. You can try out that as well. These are main techniques that I have used in all of the paintings. In this challenge, you can practice some of these with different color combinations. But mostly this particular band color that we have used. I'm going to be using it a lot. Even if your blue mixes with the green, it is totally fine because that is expected. Definitely practice all this. Let's get started with our day, one of the challenge. 5. Day 1 : Mountain Chain: So I have the paper block here. I would start by covering four sides of the paper with a masking tape. So I'll go in a clockwise or anti clockwise direction because I feel then it's easy to remove as well when we are done with the painting. Okay. Is it straight? I believe so. Okay. So I have taped it down on all the sides. Now, next step would be to first apply lots and lots of water. Before that, I'll take down all the colors required onto my palette. Okay, to get started, it would be a free hand painting, so I'm not drawing anything here. Now. I'll start by applying water onto paper. I have a spray bottle for seeing. You can use just the brush and water that you have. Okay. Once this matter is here, let me even out this water to create some elevation. I would be using a glass block here. Okay, This looks good to get started with. I will be using the lighter sheets in my paintings first, so that would be a little bit of cadmium yellow. Okay, this is one of the Aurora lines. And the next one is here. Okay, on top of it, I would take some compose blue and cobalt green. I'll run it along the same. This is cobalt green that I have taken and it is in a very much liquid consistency. I'll run it along in the same direction, mixing it with this cadmium yellow that I have added. Okay, on top of it I will add compose blue the same here as well. Okay, once this is done, I'm going to take a good amount of indithrain blue and mix indigo to it and start applying it on all the other sides. You can see that a paper is drying up at some places. I'll again use spray bottle to keep the paper, we taking some more X. Okay, So now, once this sort of layer is over, what I'm going to do next is I'm going to spray water randomly so that all the pans merge with each other without any harsh edges beautifully, and we get a very nice transition. Okay, the water is not running means it's not too much on my paper, but it's in good amount so that it can make all this mix with each other nicely. In order to add some contrast, I'm going to take a pastel sheet, pink here. Okay? With this, I'm going to add to make some more carmine onto it, okay? And here as well, wherever I have this white, a little bit lighter sheet, I'm going to add it here. You can see that here the water is too much and it is flowing. In order to avoid the creation of a crease or a line on here, I'm going to tilt my board in such a way that I'm going to tilt my board in such a way that it doesn't form a crease and just flows neatly. And u gets mixed with all each other. Okay? Now I can also take some extra color here where I feel like there is too much of blue and mix it. Now I'll take some bright pink and just give a little bit of nunca. Okay, we have to do this until all those water collection that has happened moves across and creates a complete flatly on the paper. I think this looks good for now. If there is too much of water as well, what you can do is you can lift off some of that water. So you can take your dry brush and lift it off like this. Okay. So I'll place it again here. The next step is my paper is still wet. I will take a smaller size brush, this is size four, and try to remove all these harsh edges that are getting created here. With this fifth kind of motion, I'm going to there is little to no water in my brush in fact. Okay. So please be mindful of that here what it has already done its work. I'll not touch that much there here I feel I can mix a bit more. Take some more of the mix that you have and you can add it here. You can do this only if your paper is having water. If not, I would highly recommend that you just stop however it is looking. It is Northern lights, so of course, it will look gorgeous no matter what. Okay, so now that this is getting, I would just draw what I would say I would just draw the outline of my mountains here, so. So now with this outline, I can just add more paint wherever required. If somewhere it's dried up, I would be more cautious on that part for sure. Okay, this looks good. I'll take a very thin wash with the same brush. You can see how diluted it is. With this, I will be adding random strokes here. We can definitely come back once it's completely. But I do want this soft edge for the mountains as well. After a point, I'll also take cobalt green that we have used so that we can depict there is a reflection on the snow that's happening from these northern lights. Okay, so this looks good. Let's come back once it's completely dry and see what can be done next. Okay. If the paints are seeping in onto your mountains, don't worry. We will just cover it up however weight that flows. Yeah, let's come back once it's completely dry. Now it's completely dry, I'll just go ahead and add the mountains part. For that, I'm going to take a smaller round size brush of size four. Okay, I'm going to take some paints, gray or black, whichever that you have, and mix it with a little bit of the mix that we have here, which is in the thin blue and indico. And I'm just going to add the mountains, you can see that already. The lighter shade of snow that we have tried to show is already there. All I have to do is add the dino texture on the mountain. I'm going to do a semi dry brush technique here based on how all these shades have turned up. You can randomly change the way that I'm adding these terrain. Okay, It doesn't have to be exactly similar or something like that. Wherever there is some good amount of white space like this one here. I have not added the boundary or the outline, so keep it that way. It looks good once the painting is complete. If you have a lot of paints that has come down over already and you don't have this much white tone, do not worry at all. Just take white guash and add all these highlights later on onto your mountains, okay? Okay, so this looks good. Now for the last part, it's the stars and I'm going to take a synthetic brush here. Okay. For stars, I would be using pastel shade of watercolor or white quash. Okay, let me do both. For starters, I'm going to take some white quash onto my brush. I'm taking directly from the tube here. Okay, dip it in some water and start with this plating. You can also splatter using a toothbrush or any other way that you are comfortable with. In fact, I have shown there is a detailed lesson in the Milky Way Galaxy Project Skillshare class, wherein I teach how to easily create all these stars using toothbrushes. Okay, more the water in your brushes. It actually dries up a little bit darker, I would say. Once all these stars are added, I'm going to just remove a few of these from the top of my band. Okay? Just it because they are still there but behind the band. Okay. Next I'm going to mix it with the mint color. Okay, this is mint water color shade. This is a pistol shade, and I'm applying stars. For the final one, because I want more minute stars, I'm going to just take another brush, and this is a controlled way of adding stars. Okay? So take some more, okay? And here, since this is a big one, let me just add a shooting star as well. Okay? So this looks good for me. And if you need any additional highlights with white course, you can add it on your mountains. But for me, this is looking pretty much good. So now I'm going to remove the masking tape. And this is the last of the table that I had added, so I'll remove it from this end. Okay, this is done. So let me open up the block here. I'm taking a palette knife for that. Be very careful because this is 85 GSM paper, so it is a bit thin. And you can see that it's not completely, like, crisp, dry. It needs a day, right? That's why be very careful so that you don't tear it off. In fact, you can remove it after it's crisp and dry. So this is the final painting of how it looks. We can see that even though the paper thickness is 185 GSM, I think it worked out pretty well in this. Okay. Make sure I love the colors in this. Has a touch of pink and the other classic aurora colors in this. So once you are done with the painting, I would really request you to upload it in the project section so that we can all see and admire your works. If you have any other doubts or inquiries, you can reach out to me on the discussions as well. Meet you in the next class with another project. 6. Day 2 : Aurora Swirl: Welcome back to the next class project. In this we are going to paint another mountain. Highlight of this particular painting would be the shape of aurora that I'm planning for. It's going to be one single band but spread across almost the entire sky part here. I'm excited to see how that would turn out. In the end, I'm going in one particular direction while applying the tape so that it's easier for me to remove as well. Okay. This looks good. So this would be primarily technique entirely even for the mountains this time. Let me first the reference, just the outline for our mountain. This part I would be covering with the mountain range here. There is one peak of this mountain, this is completely covered with snow. You can see there is another mountain a little bit in the background that will start from here. Here, I have kept it a bit straight, you can see from there itself. I will go ahead and this is the entirely smooth surface on the mountain peak. Okay. Yeah, this is good enough now to get started with. I will start with the sky part first. I'm taking a spray bottle and applying water, I'm not applying water onto the mountains part. Now with a flat brush, I will start to spread the water that I have sprayed. And continue this until you feel that the water has seeped in completely onto the paper. And you can see a very thin line, shiny layer of water on the surface of paper. Okay. Since this is 185 GSM cotton paper that I'm using, I would be careful not to over do the water part. That is, I'll not add excess of water, but I'll keep adding water whenever required with the help of a spray bottle or along with the paints itself so that it doesn't get completely dried off. Okay, I would need some support for all this Northern Lights band to neatly flow in one direction, but that would not be in the middle. Usually we keep it here, right, so that everything flows in one direction. That is towards down. But for this particular painting, my entire Northern light will be starting from here. It goes onto a beautiful swirl. There is a complete blast here on top. I would keep it in this angle a bit, just so that I can get some additional lift that is required for the band. Okay, adding some more water. Make sure to add good amount of water in the edges, mainly because that's where it starts to dry since I'm following the approach where I'm adding lighter shades first and then I go on towards the darker shades or the sky shades. The end of my papers tend to have dried up by then. Okay, for this, I'm going to start by taking some lemon yellow itself. I'll just draw that big swirl that I was talking about. It is going to start from here. Okay? It will be this, I would say the entire sky. I'm just adding a little bit more paint here. Okay, next up, I'm going to take cobalt turquoise and add it long. Okay. Next I will take some walled green as well and just add to the top part here as well. Okay, Next up I'll take some composed blue. Okay. This also I'll add just to the top. Okay. Now I'll quickly get started with painting the other parts of the sky. First to get started with, I'm taking good amount of bright blue or intense blue. And I'll first add that entirely here. I'm making sure to not mix it completely with the lemon yellow that I have adding for the upper part as well. And here also. Yeah, I'm adding for the curves in this will as well. I'll gently mix it with the composed blue that I have here. Okay, now that one layer is over. Next up is I'll take the stray bottle and Okay, with this, I let water do its magic. In the meantime, I will take a smaller size brush and try to add wherever blue is required. Okay, now I'm going to take this flat brush and remove excess of water from it. And take some water and just start going in this particular swril motion which we have created. I can see how I'm twisting my hand in the same direction itself. I'll remove this green that is on my brush and repeat it again. Remove excess of water, and I'm not applying too much pressure. If I apply too much pressure, what will happen? I'll show in a while. I'm just very swiftly moving this across. Okay. If I move too strongly, what happens? There will be a white scene. This will get created and we don't want that to happen. Okay? Okay. Now, very quickly, I will just make sure to see if there are any other corrections I would need to do. So I'll take a smaller size brush and take take some lemon and see if I need to add highlights anywhere. Okay. Now I switch back to the bigger size brush, taking some bright blue because that's the only colors that we have used for the sky. Right? I'll just increase the intensity here, if you can see that here the paper is. Almost right. This was a good time for me to add. But if it was completely dry and I'm adding, that would have created harsh edges. So be careful and add it only if your paper is semi wet or having some water in it. I'm just fixing all this here. Just take some more and make this curve a bit more evident. With this, you can try to define the shape, even any other shape that you like. Removing excess of water. And slowly with not much pressure, more pressure, you'll get that white grease, which we don't want. Now, I'll take some compose blue and okay, this looks good. So I will wait for it to completely, I see that there is too much water here on the masking tape. And while drying, it can go back and create blooms. We don't want that. I'm removing all this excess of water here. Okay, this looks good. I wait for this to completely dry and then come back for painting the other parts. In fact, I think here this is completely dry, is it? Yeah, I can get started. I'm taking a small brush and very carefully applying water only to this surface which is here. That this flat surface. Okay. On this, what we have to see here is this is a reflecting surface. This part of the mountain. This is the reflecting surface. It is reflecting these aurora colors of it. This particular mountain range which is here. This is particularly in shadow, which means it should be beat. Any color of sky that you're using, you should use a darker tone for that here. Okay, So now for this, since this is a reflecting surface, I will take this compose blue a bit and add it here. I'll take some lemon yellow as well. The same should be done here as well. So carefully I'm going to apply water, making sure that it doesn't come in touch with this particular space here. I'll take cobalt green for this and start adding it randomly here, now some composed blue, and add that as well, and finally, mellow. Now I want to take of our bright blue. And the same for death. I'll also make sure to leave some white spaces here so that we can see some snow settlements here and there snow, obviously everything is snow, but fresh ice settlement here and there. For this part, I would like to add a darker shade of this blue here. So what I'm going to do is take some intense blue, add a bit of compose blue to it, some more intense blue. I'll start from here. I know using a bigger brush would have been much, much easier, faster, but I want to be very crisp on this details here. Okay. Onto this I'm going to also take some indigo. Add it to the edges. It will create the depth that is required for us here. Okay, so the same indico color. I'm also taking and adding it here. I'll remove all the excess of paint from the brush and just adding it randomly at some places. I'll remove all the success of, uh, paint here on the masking tape and keep the same in, um, indigo, we have to add here as well. So adding details like this gives it a very good texture in the end. And we get somewhat realistic paintings without just the plain blue color or green color added. I'm happy with both the mountains as well. All that is left is adding the stars. Okay, for adding stars, what I would do, I would take a smaller size round brush. This is a synthetic brush. I'll take some white quash. I like to squeeze out the fresh batch of wash every time, but if you are comfortable using the existing from the pants or anywhere else, you can try your preferable way as well. I'll take the heck of another brush for all the minute stars that I need here. I will remove all these white quash from the mountains. Okay, I'm happy with how this has turned out. And after completely drying, if the starts here gets a bit dull, I'll add one more layer of star. But for now I think this is good. So let me start to remove the tape. There is some water here on the masking tape, so I'll remove it with the help of tissue paper before peeling it out, because I don't want that to come back onto my paper and create any more blooms from the side. Right? So this is how it finally looks. This is how it finally looks. In case you're painting along with me. Make sure to post your works in the project section on a daily basis. I will love to see all your works and all your color combinations as well. I absolutely love how this rill has come out and this combination is my all time favorite. Thanks for joining me on this class project and see you in the next class. 7. Day 3 : Milkyway Aurora: Welcome back to last project. In this we're going to paint a very simple mountain range with pine trees and a beautiful sky with a twist of So with the twist of adding a milky wave band. Yes, that's right. A milky wave band along with northern lights. If your question of this, I have seen photos and definitely I believe as a natural phenomenon, it is possible, but there might be some edits, et cetera, done. I'm not sure if it is visually available to see with our eyes. Okay, this looks good. I'm going to keep some elevation here, so I will use a transparent block. Okay, this looks good for rough sketch. I'm going to draw a simple mountain here. Okay? This side we will have all the Northern lights coming in. From here to here, I would have a Milky Way band. Okay, so to get started with, I will apply water with help of a spray bottle. Okay. Next I'm going to spread this water with help of my flat brush spray bottle is completely optional. If you want to use, I just keep it handy for this particular painting because we will need to add retting the paper at certain places I'm using this. If you are using 300 GSM paper, you can just apply good amount of water, any number of codes. You may not use the spray bottle at all altogether. Okay, this looks good to get started with. I'm going to start with lemon yellow for this. Okay, here entirely, I will add lemon yellow. Next up as well, I'm going to take one straight line up until here. Okay, next I'm taking some cobalt turquoise and adding it here. Okay, next up I'll take some cobalt green and run it along the pant as usual. Okay, next step, I'm going to take composed blue and just mix everything here. I'm going to extend this as well a little bit. Okay, I'll switch back to Mike Walter Coy and add a small layer here. Okay, this looks good. Before I come back and fix the other places with different tonal shades, et cetera, I will get started with adding the sky part. Okay, for sky, I'm going to use mix of bright blue and in blue. Let me first take it. Okay. This side, wherever I had to cover. Just a little bit. Here and there I have covered with right blue. Now I'll mix it with dithering blue and just start applying it here. Here you can see that I'm applying it in the straight lines itself so that even when the paint dries, I can get the band effect with this. As soon as I come here I will. So curve the brush to go in the direction of the band. I'm just going to extend this here a little bit. That now that the paper is semi dry, I can add additional clouds or other textures onto here. I'll take a small brush and remove excess of water from it. And this movements here. Okay, I'm going to apply some water here. Okay, this should be good. Now for the Milky Way band, I'm going to take dark blue shadows, because it gives me a darker tone. And start adding it here. And end it right about here. Okay? Even that gets lost within this curve that we have here. What you have to do is I'll switch to a smaller brush so that it's easier. I take good amount of this paint and start to add it randomly at places here. You can see that I have left some wide space and that's on purpose, so I'll just use that negative space and add it here. Okay. Now I'll switch back to dethrone blue, but stronger mix, not too much dilute and just try to mix it along. This one here can see that when I'm going nearby this curve, I'm reducing the pressure on my brush. This helps in two ways. One is the mixture will be very much lighter in shape because I'm not applying too much pressure. Also, it will be very thin, giving us the illusion of the Milky Way band getting back into the horizon. Okay, I'll just take some more in death, in blue and come back this side for adding a bit more depth. What I'm doing here is just applying pressure like this, when it dries off, it won't be too dark, but it will definitely give us the illusion of some clouds, structures happening there. Here I can see definitely a bit of space, so let me add some. Composed blue. Okay, so this looks great. It's just that here I feel there is too much of a thicker band. So let me see how I can manage that. Next up what I'll do is I'll just try to merge these all together so that there's a very smooth transition. We're here as well. Okay. Okay, this looks good. I'm happy with how this has turned out. Just for this last bit of darkness, I'm going to take consistency of endthrine blue and just add it to the grooves of my milky way band here that once it completely dries, we can see a very beautiful transition from the groove to the other sides. It creates a outline where I can accumulate more stars. Okay, until the sky dries off. Let me start with the mountains. For mountains, I'm going to take the same mix that we had that is bright blue and dothrine blue. But add a and a lot of water to it, basically. Okay, This is good. Now, I need to make sure that the paper is a bit dry here before I start because I do not want the paint to merge back with this. I'll be very careful of that. Okay, I have an outline here now. Just mixing it with just lots and lots of water. Okay, of course, here also we need to add some additional depths, adding a little bit more pigments in the borders. Okay, next up, I will take our dark blue shadows and use the granulating property of it to add very beautiful textures onto my mountain. I'm just adding this randomly, but I'm making sure to press my brush in at certain places so that once it dries off we will get some granulation over there. Okay, so I'll take a smaller size brush and dab off excess of paint water from it and just merge it with here. This is very controlled way of doing because we won't have too much of paints on either of the sides, so it is good. At some places I would like to add some reflection of the band as well. I'm taking composed blue and Adding it here and there. When this is very dilute, I must see. Okay, so for this style, I'll take some bolter cols and just add it here as highlights. Okay, this looks good, and somehow there is a big drop of water, so I'm just removing it. Okay. Overall, this looks very good. I'll come back once the paper is dry in order to add stars and even some texture on our mountain. Now this is completely dry and I'll start to add stars first. For that, I'm going to take a round size brush, which is a smaller size brush, a synthetic brush. I will take some white wash onto this, directly from the tube itself. I'll start to add wherever there is blue sky. Okay, I'll take a pot off, another brush to add. Okay, I'll take some more. Okay, now for this Milky Way band, I would need a lot of stars. So I'll dip it in some more water and take it nearby. This first let me try. If I'm getting tiny stars. Yes, I am. I'll take it to here and start adding the stars. Okay. You can see that it's completely in this direction itself. Okay. I feel like I would need more stars there. But let me first cater to the mountain and come back to that later. I'll keep it here for mountains. I'll take the smaller size brush and I will add some texture onto it. For texture, I'm going to take indigo itself. I'll take this paper cloth and remove excess water from it. Here, there is still excess of water. Okay, so now starting from here, let me just a bit of texture here and there. This is purely dry brush technique itself. Wherever I had initially added dark blue shadows, only there I'm adding this texture and not to completely, just some places to show more depth or grooves in the mountain. I'll go along this outline as well. You can see that it looks like there is a slope here. Right? And that's exactly what we wanted. Okay, for the tip, I'm definitely going to add more. Okay, this looks very good. Now, I do want to add one pine tree here, the side it is looking completely plain. I'll take some more indigo and mix it bit with blue as well. And start for a pine tree here, I would say, from here, starting up with a tiny point, next few lines here. Then I'm first drawing the outline for my pine where all the boxes are coming. Now, for the other places, I'm just extending a little bit here and there. First completing the Yeah, this is good. So now I'll add the other parts as well, extending a little bit here and there. Just make sure to not make this one bigger than though languages below. Okay. So this is one of the detailed pines I'm painting in this series. I'll add one more small one here. You just have to practice with the strokes of how they are coming up. It is a gentle swift and the brush, I would highly recommend for you to practice it on some other paper before directly coming for this detailed pints. Because you just have to make sure that every branch is coming somewhat similar. Whichever way you take, be it round edged pine trees or the pine branches that are going downwards like a Christmas tree, anything is fine. All you have to do is just maintain that particular rhythm throughout. Okay, I'll take some more indigo. I do want to add one more here, so let me just go ahead and do that. I'm just making sure that the triangle that I had drawn before is not completely visible. It should be randomly, just branches coming out of that. Okay. So this looks good. Even the stars that I had added has dried up and they're not lighter. So I'll go ahead and just add a few more. Okay. Now I'll take support of another brush. Okay. So this is it. Now, I'll start with the tape peel. I do love the Milky Way a lot, and this is my first Kilshare class, even that I have published last year. If you're interested, you can go through that. It does follow a very interesting approach of crawl, walk and run, where you will be painting first painting with just one shade and the second one with two shades, third one with three shades, and the fourth one with multiple colors. This definitely makes you understand the entire concept of the paintings with monochrome up until using multiple colors for your painting. So you can give it a try if you're painting along with me. I would love to see all your works and your different combinations that you are using. So make sure to post it in the project section as well. If you have any further doubts, you can reach out to me on Instagram or on Discussions. Okay, so this is our final painting. I just love how beautiful this Milky Way has turned out. Okay, see you in the next class project. 8. Day 4 : Cosmic Night Sky: Welcome back to next class project. And in this we are going to paint a mountain with some beautiful colors of aurora in the sky. It also includes other shades like red, orange, pink. Let's get started. I will start to take down my paper. One thing different in this painting is the colors that I would be using for the sky. I'm using granulating pigment, but you can definitely go ahead and use the existing colors that you have and not worry of the perfect shade that I'm using. If you follow me on Instagram, you would know that I love to explore different works with granulating pigments. How I can use, where all I can use. And this is recreation of one of my existing paintings. Actually, because I truly love it a lot, I thought of, why not teach that to you guys as well. Okay, good to go. First up, I'll start by applying some water onto the paper. Before that, let me just do a very quick rough sketch. So there will be mountains, much is the mountain ranges that you can have and this entire part is for the sky. Okay, so I'll start applying water and won't apply onto the mountains part. So for the sky, I'm going to use dark blue shadows from white nights, and this would be my granulating pigment. I'll mix other shades with this as well if required. Okay. So to get started with, I'm taking my round brush and I'll create some elevation here so that the pines all flow in one single direction. I'm keeping my spray bottle handy so that I can keep spraying water onto the corners wherever I feel that the pines and water are getting dried up. To get started with, I'm going to take some cadmium red light and apply it here. I'm applying this in this curved direction that once it dries off, you feel like there is a aurora band that is going in, uh, this angle, okay? It's coming towards you, kind of white, big heat with it. So I'm applying that. I'll take some of bright pink and apply that as well here. Okay, Next up I'll be taking cobalt green and add it, you know, next I'll take some composed blue as well and add depth to this. Okay? And I'll just extend this in this fashion. Okay. Now I'll take this dark blue shadows, it's a gorgeous sheet, I must say, and start applying that. You can see that here I am. Just with a very gentle touch, I am bringing all this back on to this band that I have here. I'm just doing that. Even on top, I'm doing the same. Okay. And for this I'll be doing the same with some little bit of cobol green in my brush. I'll take a small size brush, take some bright pink, and add these bands at the distance. Okay? The same with dark green, dark blue shadows as well. Now I'll take, I'll start to lift off the paints in this direction. Once I feel that the paint here has started to dry, I'll come back and extend this strands over to here. I'll take some more of cadmium red light, and now I'll take some blue again on my brush and just go on these both colors here, okay? Extending this here as well. Okay, looks great. I'm happy with how the sky has turned out before adding stars to it. I let it completely dry. Now coming to the mountain, let me apply some water onto it as well. I'm just applying water onto the parts where, I mean, I'm leaving a wide space here and not applying water to the entire part because I do not want the paint here to go back and mix with the sky. Now I'm taking another granulating pigment, Blood stone, genuine, and applying it here. You can use burnt umber or CP as well. For this just with some dry brush, I am trying to cover the outline. Okay, this looks good. So I'm going to wait till this completely dries off to add some stars and then we should be good. Okay, now this is dry. I'll start by adding stars onto it. Wherever there is blue, I'm going to add more stars for the other places. Also, only for this painting, I'm going to add stars throughout the sky. Okay, I'm going to take a round brush. This is a small one of size two. I'm taking some white quash onto it. Again, dipping it in some water. And splattering stars, this kind of a splattering. I'm getting somewhat good drops. Okay. And once I'm happy with this, I will dip again in water. Take help of another brush and start, so this has more water in it. So they will dry off a shade lighter, I would say. Taking some more white quo and continuing the same in this place. You can also add a MilkyV band if you are interested, when that is possible. Okay, looks good. Now I'll continue with the white and add some snow here. With pure dry brush technique, I'm adding there is less water in my brush and I'm just adding some texture here and there. I do not wish to use much of whiteh because I feel that it doesn't well with my style. But definitely you can add white as highlights in your other works as well. Okay, so I want to add more of stars for this painting. So let me take and Okay. So even though I had told that this is recreation of one of my previous paintings, I can assure you that it has not come exactly similar to it. And that's the beauty of watercolors. Whatever you paint each and every time, even if you are trying to paint your old works, you will learn something different, maybe because of the difference in paper or difference in weather. There are so many parameters to it, and I love how it always produces a different style and texture. Every time I recreate, let me show the granulation here. If it's visible, this is the final product. I definitely like how it looks. It has the granulation that is visible here very beautifully. Even the mountains have a certain good amount of granulation. If you don't have the same color, you can just use indico or dithrine blue instead of dark blue shadows. Even for mountains, you can go and use Sapia. I'm excited to see your work in project section, so make sure to post there and see you in the next class project. 9. Day 5 : Aurora Peaks: Come back to next class project. In this again, I'm going to be painting in the portrait mode. So let me start to take down the paper. This is another one of the mountains that I'll be painting, but it will be having a lot of beautiful colors and I'm also using red in this particular painting. It's interesting for me also to see how the end result will come out because some of it is definitely just in my imagination. Right? Okay, so this is done. I would start by drawing a rough sketch. So there is one big mountain that we are seeing here. Okay? And I'll just draw the slopes of the mountain as well so that when I'm painting I know where to add, which kind of breach strokes. Okay. This looks good to get started with. Let me apply water. I'm using a spray bottle here. I'm applying water only to the sky part and not towards the mountain. I applying good amount of water because I want the sky to be completed within the first layer of tone technique itself, okay? Until this water is seeping in, let me prepare all the paints that are required, because this has a lot of colors. So let me go ahead and prepare that. First up, Carmine. Okay? I would need car, mine. Next would be cadmium red light. In fact, I would mix carmine and cadmium red light later on. Then of course we have lemon yellow. Okay, next up we have the greens that we usually use. But in this I would be mixing up the same lemon yellow wit in the train blue to get the band color as well. Okay, now that the basics of this are ready, let me apply just one more layer before I start with painting. Okay, this is all good. Now just make sure to follow one particular line in whichever line you choose to initially start with. I'm starting in the straight direction. This entire part would be the band starting with lemon yellow. I would start from here and it goes all the way till up. Make sure that there is a good amount of paint in your brush, else when it dries off, it will be very light and you will not be able to fix it then, okay. Next up, mixing the same laminyl, which I have a bit into, cadmium red light and carmine. Okay, once this is done, I will take just carmine directly, and. Apply here. I'm still maintaining that outline that we have drawn for our mountains. I'm still keeping that. I'll take some more cadmium red light and try to apply here more of car mine and just a single strand here, like it's going that way. Okay, I'll stop with this shades right now. Now, I'll come back to painting the green part of our band. With this shade, I have mixed in the trim blue with lemon yellow, and I'm adding it here. I thought I can use the same green for the band as well. But that is looking more like the night sky, so I'm going to use cobalt green here. Okay, I'll take cobalt turquoise. Let me take it and add that as well. I'll take this mix here, which is available, and add some strokes here to give some depth else it becomes too plain once it dries off. Right, So I'm just adding some lines back. Now, I do see that the paints here are getting mixed. Let me try to lift it away before it's too late. I will also take some lemon yellow and apply it here. This should stop the paint from mixing it with lemon yellow. Okay, this looks good now. Good amount of carmine. Mix it with a little bit of derm blue. You see this gorgeous purple violet shade that we get. I'm going to use that dab off excess of paint and add one line here. Okay. I'll come back to this later. Now, I'll continue to add the same here as well. Just apply the same mix everywhere for this much of space. I will take just the in the three in blue and okay, now mainly I want a sharp edge to be visible here. Let me just bring back some of this paint. I have to make sure that there's not too much of water in this, else it will create a bloom that I'm not interested to. I'm just being very careful there at some places, I'll also mix more carmine onto this and use the same shade. I'll take another round brush, which is a small size round brush, and try to lift off. So you can see that with equal to no water in my brush, I'm just removing all these strands which are getting created because I do want a straight line kind of the band here. Okay. If required, I can add more of these shades wherever it's required. Continuing with the same mix. Hell, I will take just some car, mine because I do want to add here. Okay, this looks good to me. And once it dries off, we can come back to see how beautifully all mixed together to form this band. But make sure in the intervals to check if some of these blooms are very big and evident so that you can remove it and fix it again. I'll show how I'm doing. I'm wiping off the excess of water from my brush onto a paper towel. Wherever I feel like there is too much of paints coming and mixing on with the other one, with not applying too much pressure, I'm just moving the brush across whatever paint has come up on the brush. I'll take it back onto the masking tape, the tissue paper, and continue doing the process. Make sure to do this only when your paper is still wet and not when it has dried off. See, this part has dried off. Now, I'm not going to touch or do this lifting because if I try to do a strong lifting here, there will be a white line created, which I don't want. Okay. I'll take this sheet and add some because the paper was still a bit wet. Okay, This looks good. If you want, you can also add a bit more darker shade here. I will stop here and come once it's completely dry, to add stars and the mountain spot. Now this is completely dry and look how beautiful this has turned out. Right? Coming back, I will start by adding stars to it. I have taken round size brush, a synthetic, one small size. I will take some white quash onto it, directly from the tube itself, dip it in water again, come back here. I don't want the consistency to be too thick because then it will not drop on paper easily. It should be a semi liquid. A consistency if it has having too much water, then we will get a good amount of stars. But it will dry very feed and we won't be able to see it. Anyways, I'm dipping it in water a little bit. Yes, this is good. Now, I'll take help of another brush for splattering of these stars. Okay, I'll add some here as well, very tiny ones. But it's okay if we just skip that. I'm happy with these stars now. I'll get started with the mountain. Okay. To get started with, I'll take the same mix which is available here. To this, I will be mixing Blackstone, Genuine. Okay? To the same mix. That means the mix of carmine and thin blue. Mixing some blood stone genuine. It's a granulating pigment. Expectation here would be that it'll granulate a bit more on and create the texture required for all the grooves of my mountains. I'll start covering this Po, okay, some places I'm keeping it blank, sorry, white. Now along with these reference lines that I have, I will start adding all these textures. I'm just randomly adding all these textures. So I'm starting with the tip here and gently pressing my brush and just dragging it along here. I would be using layering, that is, with different shades of the paint I would be applying once it's dry, even when it's wet with layering, I'll be just adding some depths onto all this. Okay. Going back. Okay. So very carefully I'm going to just spray from the top. If there is any water here, I'll just remove it with this. What will happen? The granulation that I'm expecting to see will be clearly visible Along with this, I'll also use some tundra violet for granulation. Okay. What I'm doing is I'm just trying to add additional layer of color contrast here. I have not mixed this with the carmine and dethrine blue mix. It is just directly. I'm taking and applying it some places. I'm taking a very light shade here and adding some highlights here. Okay, to this, I'll also take some very light shade of car mine and add it here at places only. Okay, that should be good enough. Now, I'll continue the same for the other sides. Just make sure to put this in the same direction that the previous strokes were so that we can see that continuity for this. I'll take some of this red and take some orange here. That is sorry, cadmium red light. And yeah, that should be good. Okay, now again, I will take the spray bottle and dress, just applying one last layer wherever I feel is necessary. I'm not liking how these harsh edges are created here. So since the paper is now wet, let me just drag them along a bit and mix it. I'll take some bloods stone genuine. And with just dry brush or the dry brush strokes, I'm going to add some highlights here. This is just for the texture because it's too plain. It's just for that I'm adding here. For the final part, I'm going to take some blood stone genuine and splatter it very carefully, even if it goes onto the sky. Just quickly dab it off with help off a tissue. Let me take help off a tissue here. Right. I'm happy with how this has turned out, so let me start to peel off the tape. If you don't have the exact shades that I'm using, you can completely skip and just use the other sheets, like Spa or bright violet, et cetera, for adding these. I'm happy absolutely with how this has turned out and you see the granulation that's getting created here. Once it completely dries off, we will be able to see even more granulation. The sky part also you can see that there are all the stat stands and not much, um, shades have mixed or merged completely onto the other one. I like how this has turned out as well. Here also though we have used the shades of green, it is not just completely green, we have some shades of blue coming in. This gives a very realistic look to the sky as well. Okay, if you're painting along with me, make sure to paint your projects in the project section. And if you have any other doubts or queries, you can reach out to me on discussions or on Instagram as well. So see you in the next class project. 10. Day 6 : Color Blast in Sky: Okay. So for this, I have kept the paper here and I'll tape it down on an acrylic board. Yeah. This is the front. I'm just checking before I start painting. Yeah. Okay. Now, I'll just apply some additional pressure to make sure along with the outline of my paper here. Okay. Looks good. So I would need elevation. So I'll already keep this here. I'll start by applying water. I'm taking a flat brush and evening out the water that I have applied. You can use a Mob brush or any other brush of your choice. For this spray bottle is completely optional. But for painting this kind of blended skies, I would definitely try to keep the spray bottle handy because I can just apply water onto specific areas without disturbing um, or creating any harsh edges or watercolor blooms. In case of using brush, sometimes we will dilute the paints that are available and we tend to create blooms. That's the reason I have kept spray bottle, but like I said, that's completely optional. Start applying all the paints to get started with. I'm starting with lemon yellow, and that ends here. Okay, Next up I'm taking some cobalt green and adding it here. I'll also take some leaf green. Okay, Leaf green, or a very lighter shade of green. And add it. If you don't have leaf green, no worries. You can just directly mix your cobalt green onto this as well. Okay, next I would take some compose blue and add it from here up until here like this. Take some cobalt green again and add it here to the mix as well. Now I'll take some Quinacodone, magenta, and add that onto this spot. Okay, next up I'll shift to bright pink and apply it here. Next I'll take some car mine and add it just at some random places here. Okay, next I will take some ended in blue and mix it with Quinacridone magenta to form a beautiful purple sheet. And I apply that over here more of clone magento and mixing it here. Okay, and for here as well, I'm going to take ended blue and apply it. Okay. Now that all the colors are here, I'll take my spray bottle and just pray everywhere. Okay. So now we can see that it has the water has started to do its magic and the pigments are all flowing here and there. This is the good time for me to add a little bit more depth wherever required. Now I'll switch on to a lighter shade. Okay, take some lemon yellow in it. I would start to merge all these together with just this kind of strokes. Okay? So taking some more Connacridone magenta, and here as well we can do the same. I'll take some more car, mine. You can see how beautifully and bright it is. I'm going to add strokes again here. For that, I want to retain this curve that it is forming. I'll keep it as it is. Make sure to just move your brush in one single direction. Okay, that's the main thing here. Here I can see that there is too much of water, so I have removed excess of water and I'm going to just merge all of this. Okay? And here I would add some of the cadmium red light because this is just the sky part and somewhere in the horizon we can see the color. I'll take the same and just apply it a bit here as well on top. Okay, this looks lovely. I will let it dry completely and come back to add a lone tree that would be standing here in the sky. Okay. Before that, if you want to add any particular depths with any of the color, you can go ahead and do that. Uh, the lines that are coming from the aurora. You can do that as well. For me, I think this is pretty much looking good, or let me just stand back a bit and see what else can be done here. I think I would like to add some white lines effect here. For that, I would take a liner brush, add some water to it, and yeah, once it dries off, it will come out beautifully. Yeah, that should be good. The same for here as well. Again, this is completely optional and you don't have to do this at all. I'm just doing it because I really just want to see how this will turn out. Yeah, Okay, perfect. So I'll stop it right now and come back once it is completely dry in order to add stars and other elements. Now this is completely dry, let me show you it's completely dry, and I just love how it looks. All the colors are beautiful. Okay, so I'll go ahead and add the object here. And that's a lone tree. So either we can add from this site or from this site. This is a good decision point for you guys. If anywhere you want to cover up some of the mistakes or any blooms that are created, you can add your tree at that side. For me, I like both the places, but I think I would be adding two trees, one small one here, basically two trees. Let me see how it goes. First one I'll be adding here. Before that, make sure to add stars. Wherever we have purple or the blue sky is visible, we need to add stars there. For that, I'm going to take some white gush and a small brush. Okay. And okay. So once I have it with the help of another brush, I'm going to splatter very minute and detailed stars. You can see how these stars are getting currently added. It should be this tiny. Okay. And for here as well. For my next step, I will take some mint green that is a pastel shade of water color and continue the same. Now, when this dries off, it won't be this evident. It will be a lighter shade because it has a lot of water in it. So, I'm going to add quite a few. The reason we do have stars, it's just that because of the nutilized layer, we're not able to see them evidently. I will go ahead and add the lightest shade of stars. Okay. This looks good. If you want to remove any excess of stars, addedge just go ahead and wrap it off. Okay, good to go. So now forward, the trees part. I'm going to take some paints gray Onto this, I will add some bright violet. Okay, this is the sheet. So let me start from here first. I just want to add the outline here. And with another brush, I will be adding all the details. Okay, this is my one tree. I want to add another tree. So for that, let me again mix paints gray and bright violet. I will add it this side, so starting from here. Okay, this looks good. So now with the smaller brush, I'm going to add all the details, all the branches that we can add. This can go as detail as you wish or less detail as well. Okay, the next step is even smaller branches that are coming out. So I'll take a liner and just extend all of these endings that I have here. You can use any other small brush that you have for this. You see in the angles in which I am moving the brushes that definitely helps for getting this rigid texture. Or they will be all curves and the branches are not that curve. It should have some harsh edges here and there as well. Okay. Now the next part is of course the splatters some splatters here as well. So I'm going to take I'm going to splatter with the small brush itself. Yeah, I think this looks good. I'm happy with how this has turned out, and I believe the stars added here have almost dried off to be completely not visible. So let me take some white quash again and drop it in. Okay. Looks good. So that is it. I'll start removing the tape so it's from the side. Make sure to wipe this excess of water and paints which are here, else it will come back and it may ruin your painting. Okay, so the next one is here. We can see that these lines that we created here have come out very beautifully. Even this lines, it does seem like those bands of Aurora just moving around in a hurry perhaps. I'm happy with how this has turned out. I would request you all to post your projects in the project section as well, so that I can see your variations and how and what colors you have used. Thanks for joining the project and see you in the next class. 11. Day 7 : Glimmering Canopy: So for our next painting in the Forest series, I will tape down the paper first I'm following the clockwise kind of a direction, or the anti clockwise anyways, but just in a circle so that when I'm feeling off the tape, it is easier for me. Okay. So this looks good. Now, I would need to draw a basic horizon here, so this would be my horizon. In fact, we can go ahead and just start painting and make it a free hand painting as well, but this is for my reference only, and this will be my horizon and we'll have trees all over here. Okay? So this is like from the bottom angle of a photograph. Okay. Next up is adding water, Lots and lots of it. Okay, Next up, I will start with painting. I will keep this for elevation. Okay? So now to get started with taking cadmium lo, and adding it onto here. Okay, next up, I'm taking, next up, I'm taking compost blue and adding it onto here. Here is some ca, bald green, and that would go here. Okay, Now I'll take some cobalt turquoise and add it over here. This is a granulating pigment, so you might have to not dilute it much while adding else it will create some wide spaces. Even that adds up to your painting, but just be careful that it's not too much diluted. Okay, a little bit here as well. Okay, so for this I'm going to take some indethrent blue and mix it with permanent violet and that would be okay. Next up I would take some bright blue or intense blue and I would be adding that here. See the angle in which I'm moving my brush here really matters because I'm not changing it in whichever angle I start, I'm continuing with the same angle here. When I'm coming down, I'm going in this direction. That is in the straight direction, but on top it's always in one single direction itself. Okay. This looks good for the horizon, the ground that we have here. For that, I would be using a little bit of mint green to start with. This is a pistol sheet. If you don't have, you can just use a very thin layer of bald green as well. That's totally fine. Okay, then following with cobalt green. Okay, on this as well, you can add some textures here and there. Okay, I'll take some pink here. This is bright pink and okay, so there is this wide space that I have created for that. I'll be adding a little bit of bright pink. I've taken bright pink. And very carefully I'm just adding it here. Okay. So I'm able to do this because I have water still on my paper. As you can just skip this step and keep it only with the colors that we have used initially. Okay, This looks good. Wherever I need to merge it neatly, I'm just going to move my brush in this direction so that it all gets mixed up very beautifully. Okay, this looks pretty good. Uh, now I'm going to wait until it's completely dry and then come back for adding all the foreground trees and the other details, even the stars. Okay, now I'm going to add stars. I'm a synthetic, A small size brush of size two and loading it with white gash directly from the tube. Taking some more here. Okay, now I'll be taking another brush for support and. Adding very tiny stars here. I would need this for a controlled view of adding stars. So I'm taking support from another brush else. I can add stars with free hand itself, taking some more white quash. Taking a little bit of water, not enough. So a little bit more water. Wherever there is blue in the thrym blue or bright blue, I'm going to add stars which should be prominent. And at other places I will not add stars so much. Now I'm going to take some mint green, which is a pistol watercolor, and add the same here. This will really add a lot of very tiny stars which is required. Okay, so this is a lot of stars and I'm happy with this. Next step is adding all the trees. Okay, So for that I'm going to take pre. I would start by adding some of the trees, so this is our land part. I would drag it and bring it up until here. And I would add a layer of some trees here. So let me take more of pins gray and Okay. And for adding all this, I will be taking another synthetic brush. So this is a synthetic brush, so I'm going to take I want to do a dry brush technique here. So I'm trying how to, you know, get that done. I'm just going to add some pine trees over here. In whichever angle you're adding, make sure to keep your strokes in that angle itself. Extend few, few should, can be ending here, a few can be end extending till you know someplace else. So keep that so you can decide to go how much ever in detail you want for adding these pine trees. I'll keep it a little bit minimal. Okay, This is mostly done, so I'm going to add some splatters here. Okay. So this looks good. You can go any much as detail like I said, you want for your painting. Let me start with the tape peel starting from here. Next would be this, and this is done. I will go ahead and open up this. Be very careful because it's just 185 GSM paper that I'm using. I'll make sure that the paper doesn't off. See, this is what you should be careful about. Okay, This is complete and you can see that all these stars and everything, they are so beautifully looking. Even I love how the ground has turned out. We have a very slight tint of this pink as we'll hear, which is adding a lot to our painting overall. I'm very happy with how this has turned out. Make sure to post your works in the project section so that we can all see. I would like to see if you have used any other color variants in your paintings as well. Thank you for following along and see you in the next class project. 12. Day 8 : Nightfall with the Stag: Welcome back to another class project. In this, I have already taken out the people from my block. And you can see that I've also traced out a very thin outline of the required element for this painting. It's going to be a reindeer. Or to get started with, let me this out, This will have a very beautiful sky and I'm using only the basic aurora colors here, restricting it to only shades of green. I have kept this paper on top of my mobile, or I can also use any laptop screen as well to trace out just the outline of it. If draw really well, you can also go ahead and just copy or you can just draw a reindeer or any other animal of your choice. Yeah, this is good for now. I'll just secure the edges as well with the help of a brush. I'm doing it. Okay. So this looks good. Now, I'll complete the other parts of the picture. There is land here. Okay. Of course it is. Standing on that. Yeah, this should be good. Now, you can also add some pine trees here along sideways of the deer as well. Those all we can definitely add to get started with, I'm going to create some elevation here and use the transparent block. Okay. So now I'll start by applying water. It's going to be a wet on wet technique. So now with another flat brush, I'm just spreading the water that we have already added. I'm making sure that the paper stays wet for a longer duration of time. So I'm applying multiple coats of water here. Okay. Now, so the colors that I would be using are U, starting with cobalt green. I'll just keep adding this sort of lines here. Okay? All you have to make sure is to take good amount of paint. It looks very bright now, but once the paint dries off, it will usually dry one or two shades lighter. We know that about water colors, right? That's why I put good amount of paint on the paper. For here, I will take mix of lemon yellow and compost blue. Okay. This is the green that I'm going to apply here as well as. On all the bands, make sure to keep just one particular direction in which all this is going. You can see that I'm maintaining one direction itself. Now, I'll take some more lemon yellow and just add it wherever I feel like additional touch of this particular shade is required here. I'm just completely going with the flu. I would say for you also to go with any direction you wish, a different combinations of colors you want. I'll also take some Baltercis and add it here. I'll take more of Compost blue and add it here. Next up I will take some bright blue and add that also in the same direction. Okay, it can be part of the sky that is visible to us, but I want to keep it very subtle and just the shade of it here and there, this blending what we are doing. I want to emphasize more on that in this painting. That's why I'm taking multiple shades, different colors and adding one worthy of other again and again. All through the while, the water consistency in my paint and the brush is minimal, too much. Because if I had too much water, it will start to flow in a direction and I want to avoid that. I'll take some more of bright blue and Okay. I'm happy with how this has turned out. I will wait for this to completely dry so that I can come back and add the elements as well as add the stars. Okay. So just make sure that there are no harsh edges that are going to get created. Okay. So I let it dry and it is on the elevation here. I will remove any excess of water on my masking tape as well, so that they don't create blooms. Yeah. Okay. This is good. So I'll let it dry and come back later. Okay, Now this is completely dry, and of course the outline is very much faded right now. So let me go ahead and add the boundary first. So for that I'm going to take some paints, gray. Okay. To this paints gray, I'm going to add some dark blue shadows. Okay, so with this sheet I'm going to start applying here. I'm just filling entire of this piece with the same sheet that I have created. Let me switch to a larger size brush. You can skip adding dark blue shadows and also add indigo. Or just continue with paints gray only. I'll come back to paint this. Before that I want to complete adding all the stars. Okay, so for that I'm going to take some white quash fresh from the tube and start applying it now for additional support, I'm going to take another brush and splatter. With the help of that, I'm going to add stars everywhere throughout the sky. Because all the aurora bands are really faded bands, the stars will be clearly visible. Okay. Also I'm going to add some bigger stars wherever I see that there are at random places, I'm going to add a bigger star here and there. Okay. I'll also add a couple of met yours for that. I'm going to take the line up brush and keep it on one of these big stars and just drag it. Okay? Say I'm going to do another one here. Keeping my hand on this is not a good idea. So here I have and that's it. Okay? I'll add one more here as well. I'll add one more in coming in this direction. Okay. Now, to add this part, I can see that mostly the pencil marks are covered by the colors. I just to see this part I had missed. Let me go ahead and add it here. Now, what I will do, before it creates the harsh edge, I will just dab it away. Okay. This matches with the colors as well. Okay, Let me start by adding the body here. First, this entirely. This also extends to the neck, and this becomes the ears. Okay? So for this, I'm going to add the legs. Now. Next up is here. Okay? So the next one is coming from the ending of this back side. I'll take it like this and just drop it here. Okay, there is one more leg that's coming like this. I will add a tiny curve. Okay, So this is here. I have to add the tail. Okay, this looks good. So I'll take some more paints and start with adding these horns. This would be our entire perimeter. Okay, within this, you can add any number of horns as well as in any direction. Just make sure to keep them in this kind of a structure, wherever possible. And to from here as well, these are its ears. Okay. This looks good here. I'm going to add some pine trees. So I'll take some more paint, scrape, and just add some zigzag leaves here. I'm adding a straight line next, zigzag lines here. How I'm adding is I will apply a little bit of pressure onto the belly of my, wherever I want to add the branches and then twist it. And this way it's complete having some tiny ones here, a tiny one here as well. In fact, this entire place, there are some grasses available, so we can show that here. Just adding some grass all over. Okay. Now, wherever we have these white dots, I'm just going to add some paint and cover it up. Okay, with the liner brush, what I'll do is I'll just add, um, Chris edges to all these to make it a bit more realistic. Okay, here as well, I'm just adding these tiny grasses here and there. Okay, this looks complete and I'm happy with how this has turned out. It definitely does look like the enchanted forest, and there's a deer. There's a meto shiver going on as well here. Okay. So now I have started to remove the tape. I hope you're painting along with me. And please make sure to post your works in the project section so that I can see all your combinations and what animal you have used for any other doubts or quieties. You can reach out to me on discussions or on Instagram as well. Here, there has been some spillage. What I will do to fix that is I'll take some white quash. Okay. Before that, the first step would be to add some water and see if that can be lifted off. So I'm going to try with the tissue itself. No, add some more water lift off. Since it's the blue color, it's always difficult to do the lifting. I would say, yeah, we can just go ahead add the qua should cover it up. I'll do the same for the other side as we see here. Here. This looks good. And this is how our final painting looks. You can see how beautiful the sky has turned out. Okay, so thank you for joining this class project. See in the next lesson. 13. Day 9 : Celestial Dance: Welcome back to another class project. In this, we are going to paint a very bright and pink dominant sky. That is, it'll have different shades of paint than violet. It would be a very simple forest scene. Or you can say that there are lots of pine trees. You can replace the pine trees with any other trees of your choice as well. And it is going to be a free hand painting, starting by taping down the paper. Okay. I will need some elevation so I'm keeping a transparent block beneath the paper like this. Okay, looks good. Now, I'll go ahead and add some water onto paper. I'm applying water also in a diagonal stroke like you can see. The reason being the aurora lines that I plan to draw is also in the diagonal stroke, though it doesn't make much difference. I'm just following my hand movements in the same so that when I actually start to paint the bands, my hand will be a little bit accustomed to it. I'm leaving some space here for the ground part. Okay. I'm not applying water there. Okay. Once this is done, I'm going to start by the lighter sheets. For starters, I'm going to take some leaf green and apply it in the bottom parts. Okay, Next up I'm taking some bright pink and applying it here. It's all in one direction only. That is in this entire direction of the band. Okay. So okay, next up I'm taking some car mine and applying it. Okay. Before this completely dries off, I'm going to take some more leaf green and just try to take it back like this. Take fresh batch and again, just mix it back. Okay, Even if these strokes are visible, that's completely fine. Now I'm going to take some lilac and apply that as well because it's a bit of a color that everyone probably has. So that's why I'm using here. If you have any other piecel shared, you can definitely go ahead and try adding that. Initially the band is a bit straight here. As it goes, it will be turning on to this direction. Okay. I'm trying to show that this is good enough. Now, before the pain completely dries off, let me go ahead and start adding our violet. For that, I'm digging in blue, mixing that with car mine to get a beautiful violet that should be warmer tone, that is towards pink itself. I'm mixing this mix with bright pink that I have. And starting off first with this side, you see I'm just keeping it in this angle and adding it here. I will add more of this shade itself here. Again, I'm going to start with the straight line and then slowly move it in this direction. Since I'm using page weight of 185 GSM, it is buckling a bit here. But nevertheless, I will just switch on to a smaller P brush size and start applying it here, some from you. Okay, this looks absolutely gorgeous, I would say. And I'm happy with how this has turned out before it completely dries off. I can see that this part of my paper is already, So I'll just go ahead and start adding pine trees. Instead of directly going with pains gray for the same mix. I'm going to be adding paints gray and Yeah, so this would be okay. I'm adding random pine trees here because first I want to make sure that all this, whatever white patch that we have here should be completely covered. So for that reason, okay, we'll come back to paint this once this is completely tried off. Okay, for this part I would like to add a little bit of, I'm going to give a snowy texture to it, so for this I'm going to take a very, let me just this first. This is bright pink. A very diluted shade. And I'm just running it like this. I'm bringing some of the other mix that we have as well here. Okay, this looks good. Even though this is leaf green that I have used here, it does look like some of the lemon sheet, which I think should be completely okay. Not an issue at all. Now, before it's completely dry, I would like to fix if any of the bands are too much mixing off with the sky or anything here a little bit. That's it. I wait till this is completely dry so that I can come back and add the pine trees. This is completely dry. You can see I'll start painting all these pine trees For that, I'll be taking the mixture of pain scray, mixing it to the existing mix that I have here. If not, you can just add some Tacon magenta in theran blue paint scray to it. Okay? This is good enough. I'll start by adding the pine trees. You can add pines of your choice. The direction or the leaves. It's all of your choice. I'm just adding some random strokes. The first one would be to add a line for the park of the pine tree and then starting with some tiny lines here on the top and then extending that into a triangular shape. You might as well mix and match on two different types of fines available, et cetera. This is the first layer that I'm applying. I'll come back to add ride off pine trees or just the barks part as well. Later on this side, I'm going to add some longer pine trees. So I'll start from here. Again just to street lines and then extend to a triangle. These are all just ground banks and there are no background on midground. They're just on the same level. Okay. Once done, I'm just going to extend some of the brush strokes on the side as well, though we can see that it is very busy. And that's why it's a, it's completely opaque. We still need to give some strokes so that once it dries off, we can see that trees extending to the ground, else it will not look much realistic. I want to give a realistic touch once the paper completely dries off. Okay, so for adding the box, I will just take some beans cream. And I'm doing all this with just one brush that is size four rod brush because it has a great, it has a great tip. But you can definitely use any other brush or a liner brush. Let me show how I can use my liner brush as well here. This looks good. So now I'm going to add stars wherever I have this violet color in the sky. Okay, for that I'm going to, I'm going to take a round brush and take some paint onto it. Now, I'm just going to splatter free hand. Okay. Next up I'll take some more with the help of another brush. I'll just platter this will form very small stars. I'm not squeezing out the paint onto my palette because it often rise off and if I add water to activate it again, it loses its consistency. As well as the brightness. I want to retain that brightness of white wash, taking some more here. Okay, this looks good. I'm happy with how this has turned out. I'll go ahead and start taking off the tape. If you're joining me and painting along, I would request you to post it in the project section on a daily basis so that we can all see and track each of our progress. I hope you're a few new techniques and also having fun while painting all this along with me. This is how the final painting looks. So you can see all these stars are retained very beautifully. I do love how the direction of all the aurora lines are in one particular direction. I guess the paper bloating that we had because of using thin paper, it worked in my favor because I did get a beautiful curved lines all over. And they are also consistent, right? I am liking overall how it has turned out and seeing the next class project. 14. Day 10 : Auroras Whispering Woods: Welcome back to next class project. In this we are going to paint a bit of trees that are usually having a white park for the winters. Okay. I'm going to add a tape for all the four sides of the paper as usual, but also for the trees. I'm going to use a smaller width tape that is 0.5 centimeter tape, a half an inch of tape, so that we can get those beautiful trees as well. I'm going to show how to add that. Okay. This is good for the trees part. Now for the trees part, let me get started with first the horizon line here. I do have the land part. Okay, here they will all be trees. I'm adding masking tape. Not to worry, if you don't have the smaller size of masking tape, you can also use a masking fluid else. You could also just leave that much particular space blank in your painting or in the end of the painting. You can also come back and add this with white quash. If I want a bigger tree, I'll just take another strand here and just a little like this. Okay. On top of another. Okay, so this should be good enough, um, to get started with. I'm going to spray water all over. Okay. I'm applying water only to the sky part where we'll be painting, the Northern light sky. Okay. This looks good enough. I'm going to start by taking some compose blue. Okay? And applying it completely over to this horizon. I lift it like this a bit, okay? Taking some more paint, some more compose blue itself. And I'm applying it here. Okay? So to this only to the place where there is horizon, I'm going to take some cobalt green and add that as well. Okay, Now for the top part, I'm going to start with lemon yellow. Okay. There is a beautiful band that is going and it has a swill motion as well. You can see on top of this I'll take some cobalt green and move it along. Next I'll take composed blue again and move it along as well. Yeah, so for next, the other remaining places I'm going to take some endithrine blue, just the direct mix. And I'm going to apply it everywhere. My paper is still wet of course, because we are going to do with technique, right? If you're not using masking tape, you can be very careful of where to not add the paints as well here. I'm just mixing this with the paints here on the bottom side, with applying very minimal, what you can say pressure, taking some more blue and adding it here as well. Okay, on this, what I'll do again, I'll take some lemon yellow and again go along with it. Okay. When the paper is still wet, I'm just going to do another small layer of composed blue as well here so that when it completely dries off, I get a very beautiful transition. Okay? I'll add lemon yellow here as well. A very dilute form. Okay? Here and there. Okay, this looks good. And whatever these paints are now, I'll just take some water in my brush and start to bring them down. Okay, you can see I'm just adding some random strokes and there are some white spaces here as well. So I'm just adding some random strokes and bringing all those colors down here. I see that there is a deposit of blue because I won't be able to fix it entirely. So let me just pick that color off a bit here as well. I'll just move that blue back to the band. Now, the paper was ser, it will not create any blooms, but it'll not have the distinct blue that was getting created. Since these are all are the same colors that we have used for the sky, we might as well say that this is a reflection from the snow, and we can definitely use the same colors. Okay. That's the reason Now that my paper is starting to get a bit dry, I'm going to lift off these paints so that they don't come anymore. Okay, so this looks good. I'm going to wait till this completely dries off and then come back to paint the details on the snow trees and even add the stars. Now this is completely dry. Before I start to add the trees, I'm going to also add some texture onto our land part. Okay. For that I'm going to take some dithrine blue. Okay. And mix it with our lemon yellow. And just start to add the border. This is a very light shade that I have here. Okay? And this much is more than enough. Just as an outline I'm adding and with the same paint, I will just add these dry brush strokes and extended till here. Okay, I'm taking some more mix here. We have two trees that are ending here itself. So I'm going to add some depth here for those two. Okay, so this looks good. Now I'm going to add the stars. For that, I'm going to take a synthetic brush and I'll squeeze out some fresh white quash. I'm going to splatter wherever we have though, blue sky, I'll take help of another brush for splattering. Okay. There is more of paint and less of water, so I added some more water onto it. Okay. In this space right here, I'm going to add shooting star. That is, just add a head to it and drag it across to make a tape. Okay? So some more stars here. Okay. This looks good. So now I'm going to start off peeling the tape. Will very carefully remove it. If the paper is not completely dry, there is a chance that it will affect your paper and there will be a tear. So make sure that it's completely dry and only then you start off to peel. Okay, This looks good. And I'm just going to remove if there are any wet paint. Okay, next up for these two, wherever you know we have these two endings happening, I'm going to take some more mix of dither blue with lemon yellow. Just add this here for now. Okay, we'll come back to that part later. Now, for adding paint to three tongues, I'm going to use a granulating pigment. Is this is tundra violet. First up, I'm going to apply some paint, some water. Okay, Next I will take this paint and I'll start applying it at random places trying to cover wherever if there are any things that have come in, I will cover all that and try to give a definite border to it. Because I have added water, it will very nicely cover all the places and it will beautifully disperse into water as well to show its granulation, adding some depths here and there. For the part where it is actually coming off of ground, I will just add some random here. Okay, so this should be good. I'll repeat the same four other 2 bars as well, adding water first. With this, you can also alter the definite sharp edge that our masking tape has created, right? So you can add the colors next to it, and if there are any visible blooms created because of the masking tape, you can cover that as well. Here also, I'll extend this a bit, and this texture can differ a lot, you know, by how we are adding and how much granulation it's getting created. So I really like how naturally it comes up at the end. You can also give any texture that you want. If you're following stripes, I can follow that as well. Okay. If you don't have tundra violet, you can just go ahead and use a CPR or even black. Okay. If you have any other granulating pigment, you can just add a violet shade to that. And I mean, just try to create a violet shade with that existing granulating pigment and you can use the same here. Okay, so this looks good as well. Now for the final one, I'm going to add and repeat the same process. You can see that it's absolutely random that I'm adding here and just dropping some random flea here and there. Okay, this looks good. And you can also add some branches coming out of it with the same shade as well as with white for example. From here I would just add some branches. So from all these groups that are randomly generated, you know, from there only I would be adding all this repeat the same here. I'll just switch to a line of brush for this. Switching back to smaller size of round brush. Okay. With the same shade, I'm going to add some strokes. So here and here as well, and some places here. Okay, so this looks done. I'm happy with how this has turned out, so I'm going to go and remove the tape. I love exploring granulating pigment. Sometimes I tend to use it in my day to day works. This is one of which, where the entire subject is not about granulation but just the effect of how it is getting created. If you're painting along with me, I would love to see what are your different colors used and your approaches. Make sure to post it in the project section. This is how the final painting looks. Even the band here has come out beautifully. I'm happy with how this has turned out. See you in the next class project, where we'll be painting another beautiful aurora. 15. Day 11 : Waterfall of Light: Welcome back to the next class project. So I'm going to start by taping down the paper. In this painting, we are going to attempt for a waterfall along with Aurora. I'll be using the negative painting method for painting the waterfall, which means the white of my paper, which is there. I will try to retain it to give it the look of waterfall in the night sky. Perfect. Okay, let me do a quick sketch. Okay, I'll do a quick sketch. Basically half of the paper, I'm waterfall, this is where my waterfall is going to be. This is just a reference that I'm drawing. This part, I'm going to add the fall. Okay, here we can expect that there is rocks. The land part, this is where the waterfall is meeting the river. We'll give some fog an effect here. And this is also water in the night sky. Okay, this looks good. I will paint it in two different parts. One is the sky. Once it's done, I'll come for painting the other elements. Okay, To get started with, I'm going to take a flat brush and apply water onto the sky part. Okay. I have applied good amount of water, so this is good to get started with. I'm taking a round brush of size eight. Okay. I'll also keep the elevation with help of this block of mine. Okay. Looks good. Now to get started with, I will take some lemon yellow. Okay? I'll start. This particular Aurora band is going from here to like this, okay? Keeping that in mind, okay? Now, it will converge here like this, and the other one goes all the way like this. Okay? Yeah, this is pretty much the band. You can add your own bands of the shapes of your choice as well. Next up I'll be taking some cobalt green, just about the same layout that I have added. Next, I'll take some composed blue and add it just to the edges that is in only in one direction. I'm going to add it here and cover up almost all of my lemon yellow. Okay, I'm adding these strands like you see here, but let's see if it retains once we add the sky part as well. Okay, this is good. Now for the sky, I want a very dark and good sky. So I'm going to take a very good mixture of indigo and indithryn blue. Okay. I'll start from here and apply it completely evenly. Okay? It's already getting dried up, so I'm just going to apply it here as well. One layer before everything dries up here, there is some water. I have some time to come back to this. I'm going to first switch to a smaller size round brush and start mixing it here. Here, I want to add those strands that we have. I'm going to go above the masking tape as well to give that effect. Okay, here as well. The same. Now, I'll come back to the remaining part here. Now switching back to the smaller size brush and just off excess of water, try to add these strands here like this. Keep the same one I have to do for here as well. I'm using the technique of control on technique for adding this, right? If there is too much water, definitely it will spread. And you see how it is spreading here. It will start spreading like that. You have to be in that state where the paint is controlled, even the water on your paper is limited. Add to strand here as well and slowly mix it. Once I have demo excess of water, I'll just continue to add these trans here. Okay? You see I'm going in one single direction. That is here, It's coming like this and here it's going this way. The same thing I will. Okay, this looks good. If you want, you can add more depths here and a darker shade of indigo or paints gray here. But I'm happy with how the filter out once it is dried, so I will stop it. Okay, so next is coming to painting the falls. So let me add some water as well. I'll make sure not to add water onto this part, which is our water fall. Okay. I'll apply some water here as well, for the edges of. Okay. Now I have to take lots and lots of paints. Gray. I'll mix it with the same indigo and in mix that we have. Okay? And I'll start when I'm adding this, I'm making sure to move my brush in this direction because once it dries off, it will dry in the same strokes. And we can see that there is a curve in this, in this area, which means there is rock which is in this structure. It gives a third dimension to your painting as well. And here I'm going to add rests in the straight strokes because this is where we have u, the ball is meeting the water. I'm just adding the straight lines here. Once it writes, we'll also get that water effect that we want. Okay, Now I'll remove excess of water. What I will do is I want to create that fog effect, so I'll take fresh batch. This is good here. Also, let me try to cover up. Okay, now I'll just lift off some of the, you know, paints which is still wet with the same. I've not taken any extra paint in my brush. I'm just going to merge it like this. Clean your brush, remove excess of water, and continue with the same. Okay. You see this gives this fork an effect. With the same one, I'm going to go up. Okay, Now I'll switch to a smaller size. Now it's the time to add o negative painting for this waterfall. Wherever I want the water to be available, I will leave it white. And the other places where we have the rock in the back, I will be adding black. And I'll take this very diluted form and I'll mix it back with Okay. I'm taking again this very diluted form and Also adding it here. Because even within our water falls, we will definitely have some reflection or the shades that is forming. So we need to show that. So this is our falls. Now I will mix into blue, to the same mix that I have here, and switch to a bigger size brush and add another layer. This layer is optional. Why I'm adding, I want to show the same blue tint here as well. So for that reason, I'm just trying to bring that harmony. If you're not following along with me, your mix that you initially, you can add more dithrm blue directly there. Okay. Okay. Now I'll take lots of water, more diluted form. Remove excess of water and just Okay. And the place where we have our false meeting, this river, I'm going to lift off some pains and keep that part particularly a bit dark. Now for the final touches, I'm just adding wherever we have too much of white space. Okay, this looks good. Now I'm going to add stars to the sky. For that, I'm taking a smaller size round brush, squeezing out some fresh white wash, a little amount of water, and with the help of another brush first, let me try it here. Okay, so now I'm going to add it. At the places where I have blew majorly. Take some more, we can drop it here. Good consistency. So I'll continue. Okay, this looks good. Now wherever we have these white spots here, I'm just going to take this mix that we have and close it up. Okay. So this is complete. I'm happy with how this has turned out. Let me start to peel off the tape. I will very carefully remove this with the tissue. Okay. Sure. As well. So this is our final painting. It is still wet at certain places, but I'm absolutely happy with how this has turned out, and definitely the sky could have been a bit more darker in. The blue is definitely overpowering here, which is an amazing shade. If it had more of indigo, then probably it would look completely like a picture. But definitely here we are, trying to express our colors through the painting. I'm happy with the color combination here because it has all my favorite colors. Yeah, let me try to remove this carefully with a paper with a palette knife. Okay, this is our final painting. You can see that the waterfall, the water is flowing with the force. And we have this all folk structure created. And we have a beautiful aro as well here with lots and lots of stars. I'm absolutely happy with how this has come out. Hopefully you're painting along with me. So make sure to post your works in the project section. If you have any doubts, you can reach out to me on Instagram or in the discussions. Okay, I hope you're having fun along with me. See the next lesson. 16. Day 12 : Aurora's Reflection: Welcome back to the next class project, and this would be a lake with the Northern lights. I would be painting a scene where we also have reflection of the pine trees as well as a beautiful aurora band in the sky. I would be using the shades of blue aurora for this, but if you want, you can switch to the shades of pink and purple applying tape to get started with. Okay, here you go. This one is all set. Okay, to get started with. I'm going to first draw the reference lines for my painting. It is going to be a free hand, but still we would like to have the reference for where is the horizon, where is the leak, et cetera. More than half of my paper, you can say 23 of my paper. I will leave it for the sky. Okay. This part entirely for the sky. This entire part is for the reflection that this is the river or leak and here we would have reflection from the sky. Okay. You can have all the pine trees, et cetera, here and the same reflection of pine trees. We will paint here as well. Okay. To get started with first, I'll create some elevation. Okay. Looks good to get started with. I will first paint, um, just the sky part. And I'll make sure if I mix any of the colors, I will retain that color. So that I can use the same shades for reflection as well. So I'm applying a good amount of water because it is going to be a wet on wet technique, like you would already know. Since we have the reflection and too many elements in this painting, I'm going to keep band to a minimal, that is just one curve, beautiful, elegant band here. Okay, this seems good enough to get started with. I will start with taking a pastel shade for this. I'll first start by taking some mint green. I will draw a reference for Aurora as well. So this would be my Aurora band. Okay, next I'm going to take some cobalt green. Let me activate this. Okay, I'm going to take some cobalt green and move it across in the same direction as well. Okay, to add a little bit more depth, I'm just adding some water here so that it doesn't get dried off completely. To add more depth, I'm taking some composed blue and mixing that as well. All these are going in the same direction. Wherever I have left these white highlights. I'm retaining that because I'm going to add the sky color there so that we get a bit of natural looking band. Okay, I'm going to take some more of compost blue and add it here. Just adding depth at a certain few places. Okay, this looks good. Now for the sky part, I'm going to start by taking bright blue for the horizon. This part would be for the horizon. Okay, Next up I will take my di thrym blue itself, and mix some indigo to it. And add that, okay, here where we have this curve, be very careful and just add some paint. I'll take some more indigo, the darker sheet. And add it from the top here as well to the side of edges. I'm taking some more of into three blue and just pulling it along. Okay. Now I would take the same shade and add it for the other parts as well. Because there are so many small small bands that we need to show that the risk here as well. That's the reason adding, and this is a very light shade of the color that I'm using here. Okay, I'm also mixing it with the greens available here. Since it's a pastel shade, it will merge very beautifully. Now I'll switch to a smaller size brush and try to add some more depth. I'll not drag it entirely just at certain places. Okay, here and there. Okay, this is good enough. Now, I'll take Cob, turquoise, cobal green again, and bring it like this once more. So I'm taking some cobalt green running it along here. Okay, again, one more time. Some cobalt green running it along till here. And just mixing this so that there are no harsh edges or the fur texture that it creates. I mean, of course, in some paintings we have done that deliberately, but for this one I do not want to have that kind of. Okay, so this band looks good for me. Next up I'm going to add some pine trees when the paper is still wet. Okay? So for that I'm going to take some indigo again and turn my paper around. Okay? This would be very easy. So I have turned my paper around and there is a line. And I would just just straight strokes. Okay? And for the middle part where I have left it a bit, there is a space here for that. I'm going to take indithrine blue and continue with the same. Okay. Now I'll take some more of dithrine blue and just make those pointy structures for the pines. Okay. This looks good. So I will turn it back. So now with the same Indigo, I'm going to add some pines. Okay? Just some zigzag lines here and there. And if there is too much water, I would highly recommend you to pause for some time, wait till the water is semi dry, and then only come and paint this part. Okay? So for now, this looks good. I will start with painting the other places. So first up, let me try to lift off this paint here. You can just spread the same. I will just spread the same. But, um, anyways, I need to show snow here. So I'm just going to go ahead and do it with the shade itself. Okay, good enough for this part of snow. I'm going to take a mix of cobalt green and compost green because I want to show the reflection of the aurora as well. Okay, very light dry brush kind of technique I'm using here. This can be completely up to you how much you need to add mixing this along with the shade here so that there is a smooth transition. Okay, This looks good. So I will start with the reflection part. Now, again, I will apply water onto this part. Okay, I have applied a good amount of water. I would say two to three layers I have added. Now I'll start with the same. I had started here with mint green. Right? I'll start with the same here as well. So here I have this layer of mint green going on. It covers the side, this portion entirely. This portion entirely is covered with those colors. The reflection of this bright blue which is here, that will be showing up here. Okay. So now switching to cobalt green, I will do like this. I will turn my paper. Yeah. Now this would be much easier. Right? So next up is composed blue. After the band is done, I will take some bright blue and start applying it here. Let me switch back to a break, a brush, so that I can, I can cover more surface area. Right. Okay. So this becomes the bright blue part. I will merge it with you as well. Okay, Next up is taking indethblue, Adding it here. Adding the same here as well. I'll take some indigo and indi three mix and add some depth here as well. Bring it all towards this band in this direction. Okay? The same one. Similar to how I have done here, I would like to do it. So if it is coming like this, it would be coming from here to here taking some more blue and okay, I will now turn it again. Okay. So I do have this particular reflection for this here, and a few of the others as well. Okay, This looks good. Now, before this completely dries off, you have to add the reflection for the pine trees. So I'm taking some indigo here. And I'll start by applying it from, you know, let me start at the place where we have water. I'll come back to this later. So here I'm going to add one major pine tree. So let me add the reflection for that now itself. Okay. And similar one here. Similar one here. Okay. This looks good And okay. Now for this part, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a very thin layer of my indithrine blue indigo mix and just take it across here and just mix it here like this, pine trees like this. Okay. Now I'm going to add, I will shift it again because I need to add the pine trees here. I'm going to add some structure to it. Same thing goes for the other 1.1 here. Just stop it here. Just moving it like this here so that there are no pointy harsh edges. For the Pines ending, Same I would do for here as well. Just take a little bit of the mix and remove excess of water. Just Okay. I'll turn it back. And now for the final part, the snow part which is left up is this one here. I'm going to take some Walt Green, and leaving a white space. I'm just going to add it here. Okay. To add a bit more depth, I'm also adding composed blue at the edges. This looks good. And I also feel like here I can add additional pine trees that I wanted to add. I'll take the indigo. This one, I'll make it a bit more strong, it's not too much diluted. I'll add one here from here. Okay, now I'll just go zigzag. I'm going to add one more here for this one, and again, just zag lines. Okay? So for other one, I'm just going to add one more and stop it till here. For this one here we can, any type of pine that you wish. Okay. I'm going to add a couple more here as well, but just up until the horizon. So the previous part that we added, that becomes the background pine when the paper was still wet. And now what we are adding becomes the four ground pines. I'm adding some pines without the leaves, just the bark of it. Okay. Now, for the next part, what we need to add is here. We need to strengthen this outline here. I'm going to take indigo and add the outline. Same for here as well. I'm leaving some spaces here and there. And making sure that the white space that we have left, we don't touch that. Okay, Here at the curve, I will not add. Okay? I'll just stop it here because we want to show that there is a reflection. And for the snow, we don't have to follow that entirely. This part of it. I'm not going to add the depth again. I start from here. Okay, this looks good For the final pitches. I'm going to take some indigo and splatter it here. Same for here as well. And I'm going to use my fingers and just dab them wherever the water has dropped. I'm removing it from my tissue. Okay. So this looks good. Now, for the final part, we have to add stars. Okay. So for stars, I'm going to take my white guash here. And. Dip it in water again, come back here and mix it. This seems good. I'm going to add some stars here. If I'm adding stars here, I need to add stars in the reflection as well. Okay, now that I've added all the major stars, I'm going to take another brush support and I will add small stars for that. I'll remove excess of water from my brush by tapping it on some other place. And now once I'm good, I'll come back with the consistency. Okay, I'm taking a synthetic brush. For this synthetic round size brush. Okay, so this looks complete. I'm happy with how this has turned out. Okay. I'll start by removing the tape. If you're painting along with me, I would be happy to see all your trials and your color combinations as well. So make sure to post that in the project section. If you have any further questions about how to handle thin paper for watercolors, you can definitely reach out to me on discussions or on Instagram as well. I would be happy to clarify all the doubts. Of course, I understand that we are accustomed to using heavier weight of paper, but since we do not have much washes in our paintings, I think we can definitely use a smaller weight paper as well. I'm not saying that this becomes the best result of it, but if I definitely try this painting on 300 GSM paper, it might come out even brighter. Or if I try this on a 300 GSM paper, it might come out a bit differently. But that's the beauty of water colors, every parameter counts, and each one of it has its own individuality, right? This is how the final painting looks. See how beautiful this reflection has turned out? Okay? I'm happy with how this has turned out. See you in the next class project. 17. Day 13 : Cabin with View: Welcome back to another class project. In this we are going to paint a cabin in midst of a snowy landscape and a beautiful aurora over it. For that, let me first tape down my paper. This particular painting reference is very warm and it gives the cozy cabin dreams that I would say that even that is in my bucket list for sure, to be in it and experience the aurora wherever and whenever I can. I have even kept the colors of aurora for this, the common ones, that is the shades of blue itself. Okay. So for the sketching part, let me start from here. This would be a horizon, kind of a line. This would be a pit kind of a thing where there is a ground and on this there is a cabin. So for the cabin, so this cabin is tilted in this phase. And of course there is collection of ice and snow. E, e, try everything here. Okay, so with a needle eraser, I'm just going to remove some of the references here. I would like this to be a bit more down, extending it here. Okay, so this looks good. Now let me go ahead and start applying water onto it. First I'll be painting the sky part and then I'll come back to painting cabin and the ground part. I'm taking my flat brush and applying water. I'm making sure that water is not applied on to any other parts other than the sky. That's because the snow here. I want to give it a different pistol shear. Okay. This is over. Next up. I'll start with painting the band for that first I'm going to apply lemon yellow. As you would already know. This is just for the outline of our band, like where it is coming, this would be the outline here. Also in the horizon there is a band. Okay, next up, I'm going to take Cobot Green and apply it over here on both the bands. Okay, Next up I'm going to take some composed blue and apply that as well. The other places there can be a very tiny tint of compose blue. Next up I'm going to take bright blue because that would be the sky that I want to use. It is this gorgeous blue. And I'm going to apply for the rest part of the sky. Now with this darker sheet, you can give the dimension to your Ada. I want this to be a tiny one here. You know, I'm bringing in more blue, adding a little bit more depth with the same shade. I'm not using any other color like indigo or anything else. Here it is just one plain blue shade. Okay. This looks good now. Let me just mix it all, okay? With just one swift motion with water in my brush so that now the water will try to mix both of this lemon yellow and blue and it creates that line effect that we would need. Okay, now I'll just take some paint in my brush that is bright blue and make some strokes here. Take some more and add depth wherever you feel like is required. Okay. The sky part looks good. Let me just when the paper, I mean, when the paints are still wet, let me just remove this, which is coming on here. Okay? And I'll extend the same, the same blue shirt that I had in my even if it is coming and mixing with here, that should be completely fine because even the color of the snowcapped mountain is going to be the color itself. Okay. Now let me paint this side because I do not want this color to mix with the mountain here. So I'll apply water. The main focus in this painting is my sky or somewhere. My ground and the cabin is definitely not my main part. Okay. That's why I'll give very less detail to it, but if you would like to have your cabin also with very much detail, you are free to do so. Okay, for the ground part, I will start by taking some cobalt green. Apply it here. Okay. Now switching back to the bright blue that I have, just a very light shade. Okay, Very light shade. And I'll mix it. Then I'll take some compose blue and apply it here. I'm going in a particular direction, like here, I am going in parallel to the end of paper. But when I come here, I'm doing it in a diagonal way that once the paint on the paper, we can still see that there is some texture created in the snow where it's all going towards the cabin, which is there. Okay. Now I'll take some bright blue, not too much because definitely snow reflects the color of sky. Right? So I'll just add some blue only to the edges. Okay, now let me paint this part as well. I'll start by taking this very diluted bright blue. Apply here, and then I'll take some compost blue and apply it to this side. Now next I'll take this walled green and apply it here. For those settlements that have happened in front of the cabin. I'll extend the same so that we can also complete painting this particular snow mountain here. I'll extend that with the cobalt green itself. We already have a base color here that is the blue. That's okay. I'll just apply some green here and there. There is some water here. Let me slowly pick that off. Hopefully, that will not create any blooms. If it does, will see how I can cover it while creating the mountain. Okay, This is the challenging part in water colors. We never know when the water flows, right? But all we should know is how to fix it. Even for here, I switch to a smaller brush and I need to show that there is a depression here. There is some depth for that. I will be taking some indigo and a light here. Okay, I'll take some more indigo. And just, okay, let's come back to this. Once this completely dries off, I thought this was dry here, but apparently not. In the meantime, I'll also cover up this mountain. I'm taking just bright blue and adding it here. Take some balled green and add that to the top part as well because there is a Aand just right over it and I want to show the reflection. Okay. So this should be good for the cabin. I'll be adding using burn and Indian gold. So taking some Indian gold first and applying it here. Okay, onto this next. I'm taking some burned Siena here. Okay. Now for this shadow part, because, um, we need to show some depth there. I'm going to use paint Scra itself, so just okay, once it dries off, it will have a very good shape. So that should be okay. And I'm just extending the same too, the other side as well. Okay. Now all I'm left with is to add the roof part. So for that I'll switch back to my bigger size brush and the roof I would like to keep it. I see there is some blooms getting created here. Let me see if I can. Yeah. Now this is not completely dry. So what I did is I just took a paper cloth or a tissue paper and try to mix it. This will avoid the bloom to be very much evident. That should be good. Okay. Yeah. Coming back to the roof, I would take Spa for that. Okay. On top of this I'm going to take some paint scra and add that as well. Okay. So this is good enough for my cabin. Now, I'll take back my smaller size brush. I'm taking some indigo and starting with, you know, I'm extending the scene to the other parts of the pit as well. Just adding some random strokes here and there. Okay, The same indigo. I'm going to add some details here with the dry brush, I will add the mountain and its rigged structures. Same for this side of the mountains, but I'll keep it very limited on the other side. Okay, this looks good. Now I'm going to add stars. Either you can cover this part of the paper. Then add stars, but for now, I'll just go ahead and add stars. For that, I'm going to take some white gash into a round brush, p it in water, and test it out here. The stars are good. Let me take support of another brush and start applying only where there is blue parts of the sky. If it goes on to the other parts, you can just dab it off. The more you take, the more precise it would be. But you have to be very careful because it might just get contact with your paper very easily. Okay. Along with this, I would also like to add some pastel stars, that is mint green color stars. I'm extending this also onto this lighter band which is available. This one has lots and lots of stars. I would say, okay, this looks good. So with the same that mixes that I have, I'm going to add some highlights. Okay, so this looks good. I'm happy with how this has turned out and let me start peeling off the tape. I hope you're liking this series and joining me along. Make sure to post your works in the project section so that we can all see and admired your work. This is how the final painting looks. You can see how tiny minute these stars are. There are lots and lots of them. Make sure to post your work in the project section and see you in the next class. 18. Day 14 : Dreamy Beach: Welcome back to next class project. I have already taped down the paper like I have shown in my other class projects, so you can do the same for this. I'm going to take in the landscape mode, and I'll start by drawing a very rough sketch. This is going to be a beach aurora, so we can assume that it's an island beach. We can say that here. I'm just going to draw a horizon line. This would be our. Okay. Here we have a big cliff that is near to us. Okay. And here we have a few distant cliffs. This is just for reference while painting. Actually, you can make sure that these are more relevant to the actual figure. This is the beach part, the wave that I'm going to draw. Okay, This is good to get started with. I'll start by applying water for full of my paper. I'm using a flat brush for applying water. And of course, this is 185 GSM paper, right? Definitely applying water helps a lot to keep the paper wet for a longer duration of time. Since I'm going to use it on with technique throughout it would help. If the paper is wet for a longer duration, I'll make sure that the paper doesn't buckle very swiftly. I'm removing water, excess of water wherever it is accumulated. Okay, this looks good. Next I'm going to take a round brush of size eight and I'll get started with bright blue. Okay. Taking some good amount of bright blue here to this, I'll also take cobalt turquoise. Okay? So this one I'm going to just start applying it here. You can see that this is a very big sky that we have got here. So we can add these multiple bands of Aurora. I'll take some compose blue next and apply that also here. We definitely need a tint of green shade, right? So for that I'm going to take some ball to green. The same for the blue band as well. Okay, this is good. Now I'll take this bright blue, which is here, and just add one small layer for both of these bands. Okay, next for the entire sky, I'm going to take dark blue shadows and apply it throughout. Okay, now I'm going to switch to a smaller size round brush. Take the same shade, that is dark blue shadows and add some strokes here and there in the sky so that once it dries off, right, We do get a good sky with a little bit of clouds as well here and there. A little bit of night sky as well as the Aurora band just adding a little bit more to the horizon. Okay, This good. I'll just take some more green here to mix this. Okay. This looks good. We have to replicate the same colors for the beach as well because it's the reflection. Instead of doing the same band, what I will be doing now is I'll take composed blue, add it to half of the sea. For the next one, I will take some cobalt turquoise and mix it with bright blue and use that for the rest. Other part, the beach colors go to the other. Even if the sea color goes to beach side, it is totally okay because we'll come back and cover it with a darker shade. Once we are painting the beach. It's completely dry. That should be okay. Once this is over, I'll again take some dark blue shadows and add it here and there. Okay, this looks good. Now what I'll do is I'll let it completely dry and then I'll come back to add these two rocks and the Mejor rock that we have, as well as the beach. Now this is completely dried off. What I'll do next, I will first apply stars onto wherever there is our dark blue sky. And you can see that I have not used or activated much of the granulating properties of this shade, which is dark blue shadows. Because I wanted to use it as it is within its darker shade and not just use the granulating properties. That's why I have not focused on adding more water or showing the granulation here. It is just a with whatever water I have as the base layer, it has activated and it has formed this some black spots here and there, which is actually adding a very good texture to my sky as well. If you don't have this shade, you can just use any other darker shade of blue, like indigo or dithrine blue as well. Instead of using dark blue shadows for adding of the stars, I'm going to first take white quash and I'll be taking some good amount. Okay. Once I have white quash, what I'm going to do is first drop it here itself. Yeah. And now let me just tap off this. Okay. Also if there is any water on my brush, I'll just take it away. Okay. Yeah. With this now I am just gently tapping on the brush to drop in some of the random stars here and there. Once that part is done, for adding stars in a limited line, like how we have learned in the techniques class, I'm going to start adding stars with help of a brush as well. The stars that are coming on to see, I'll just directly dab them off when they're still wet. Mix them off like this. Okay, You can also use another paper here to cover this region and add stars. Okay, so this is good. Yeah. Okay, so this looks good. Now, to start with the S, what I'm going to do is I'll first take a smaller size of round brush. Okay, now we have to observe that this part is exposed to the reflection from northern lights as well. Here, I'm going to start with the lighter shade, to the other side, I'm going to add darker shade. Okay. For both of that, I'm going to use dark blue shadows itself. I'll first start by Yeah, this is a good consistency. I have it here along the outline that I had drawn. Right. I'll just go ahead and once this much is done, I'm going to dip my brush in some water and I'm just going to drag that along, so Okay. And for the other one as well. So here is our dark shade. And next with the same diluted paint which I have here. I'm going to. Okay, now that we have added the blue, I want to reflect some part of the green here. I'll take some composed blue and add it to the side of the rock. Same with here as well. This won't be prominent much once it dries off. I'm good with how these both have turned out. Now to start with the big rock that we have, I will start by taking some dark blue shadows. Now I'll take the dilute form of it and use it here. Okay, so I'm just adding some drops here and there so that once it dries off it'll also enhance its granulation as well as it will give me the texture that a rock has. Okay. For this, I also want to add some of compose blue. I'm taking some compose blue and adding just a little bit here and there probably like highlight. Okay, this seems a bit too much, so I'm just going to lift it off by applying one more layer of dark blue shadows here. Okay, now let's come to the beach. Okay, so for beach also, I'm going to use the same dark blue shadows. So let me very carefully make this separation first. So for that I will take a smaller size brush and start by adding the outline. Now I'll just take fully the dark blue shadows which I have here and I'll bring it along. Since here we have some black sand, right? Because this is a black sand beach. I'll also add a little bit of paints gray here. I'm taking pains creer as well in this mix and very carefully. Okay. Now this doesn't look like that much of a wave on the beach. So I'm just going to add, take a small brush and fix that. So it's going to be just adding, you know, um, some very minute strands here so that it doesn't look very sharp. One straight line that is coming Okay. On this. What I would like to do is just sprinkle some water because there is a reflection. The black sand has a very beautiful reflective surface, right? For that, since I cannot show so much reflection using just water colors. In a 30 minute video, I'll just add some splats here so that it creates beautiful blooms. Blooms. And let's see how it turns out. In the end now with the same color, I would like to add a proper horizon line here. Okay, This same, we also need to have the reflection of it, but we're not focusing much on that part. So what I will do is I'll just take very lighter shade of the dark blue shadows and I'll just extend the reflection to the other side. Same for here as well. This is dry, right? My paper is currently dry, but still, I'm going ahead and adding this reflection. It doesn't have to be too much. Um, what do you say very perfect reflection. It is at the edges. Also, I'm taking some water and mixing it up with Y, with the background, so that it looks very subtle. And this is our background. Sorry, reflection. Okay. Okay, so this looks good. I'm happy with how this has turned out. I'll just see if I have to add any additional, you know, strokes or lines on the beach. But I think I'm happy with how this has turned out. So what I will do next is I'll start to peel off the tape. This is our fourth painting in the water series and I'm really liking this entire concept. And of course, loving painting, water color auroras. If you're joining along and paint along with me, I would love to see your works. So make sure to post your works in the project section. Let me show you the final painting, how it has turned out. Even the stars are very beautifully evident. Here we see the reflection as well, the stints of green also, they're coming across very nicely. It has not completely dried off, but you can see how this green reflects of these rocks. Instead of using white, I have just used the same shade that we have used here. Compost blue here for creating of the blooms. Though it has not created much, I do see some variation in the color shade that is good enough. Yeah, this is the final painting. So make sure to post your works in the project section and I'll see you in the next class project. 19. Day 15 : Mountains by the lake: Welcome back to next class project and I'm going to start by taping down the paper. In this one we are going to Paint Mountain by the lake or Mountain by the river. That scene of course with an aurora. Okay, this is going to be last of our series. I can't believe it that our challenge is coming to an end and this is last one. Okay, this looks good. I will draw the reference for my painting. Here is just, this part is the lake. Okay? So we are not going to draw the reflection of the aurora here. It's just the colors like how we did for the beach one, right? It's going to be something similar. This much part is my lake. Okay? And here I have one mountain and here I have another mountain. Okay? This is our basic reference image. I'm going to get started. I'll apply, I'll make sure to not apply water onto this mountains part. If you are familiar with using a masking fluid, you can go ahead and apply that. At least for the corners. But even without that, if you are very careful enough in adding water, I think that should also be good enough. Okay, I definitely need some elevation here, so I'm going to keep this. Okay. This is good enough. And I'll come back to the painting the lake later on a bit. Now I feel like this lake is not straight. Yeah. Okay. For painting the Aurora Band, I'm going to start with taking some cobol turquoise. Okay. Starting from here. This will be one of the strong band. I'll take some more of. Bolter is again coming from here. Okay, one more coming from here. You can see that I'm keeping in this angle, you can see. And I'm just bringing my brush like this, I'm following the same in all the three bands. Okay. Now I switch to a smaller size brush. Take cobalt green and do the same. Okay? Even here in the same direction, I'll do the same. And I'll extend it till here. Since it was starting to dry off. I have taken some water and I've applied it at the edges and dragged it along. Okay. Now. I'll take some cobalt turquoise again and repeat the same. Okay? Okay? Next up, I'll take this dithrine blue. Add good amount of water. Okay? To this, to this, I'm next going to add some bright blue. Okay, this is the bright blue first. Starting with the darker tone of dethrine blue, I'll mix it with some of this cobalt green as well, taking this cobalt green here. Now I'll mix with this and this shade I'm going to apply to the starting off our sky. Okay. Next I'll take the darker shade of dethrin blue and add it here. Okay. Now I'll take some bright blue that I have here and start adding it again in the same direction and in the same way I'm holding my brush, you can see that, right? So I will start flying that. Okay, Next step, I'll switch to the smaller size brush that I have. Take more of bright blue. This has more of water. So let me just concentrate it a bit more and continue. See all through this file, My paper is okay on wet paper itself. I'm adding all this now. I'm taking some dithrine blue and I want to add some clouds. Okay? Whichever is your favorite way of adding clouds, you can do that. My way is to bring it onto a, this will be a cone like this here. I just dab my brush like this to form those fluffy clouds that we have. Okay, one other cloud here as well. So for that I'll take some more of dethrine and just add it here. Okay. This looks good. Now with this dethrine, I'm just going to add at some places only, and of course, wherever there is some water on my paper, I'm going to add it. This is the cloud one. Okay. So I'll take the salter cos that I have and just add a few more strokes here. Okay, this looks good. Now I have to start with adding the mountains. Before that I'll start, I'll complete my, this reflection leak. Okay, so I'm going to mix balls with this blue. Okay, here we have the mountains. We don't have to do the exact replica as a reflection here, But what I would be doing, what I would be doing, I will put the paint. I'll put the paint and then I'll lift off some of the paint so that we can see the white reflection of the white mountains. Okay, to get started with, let me add a layer of water here. Okay? Now I'll start adding this color. Also I'll take some cobalt green. And for the middle part, I'll just spread it across like this. Come back to this mixture here that I have. And it's all going in the straight line, right? You have to maintain that straight line. We have added almost all the colors that we used. What did we didn't add? That is bright blues. I'm going to take some bright blue again, added to the mix here. And just a few strokes, I'll switch back to a smaller size brush. I'll take some cobalt green and I want to add good amount of cobalt green here. Okay, that's also done. Now for the lifting part, I'm switching to this brush, keeping the paper cloth ready. Now I will. There is no water in my brush. I'm just lifting of the paints here, applying some pressure. Let me show it. This side, I'm applying some pressure and pulling it, remove excess of paint onto the paper cloth. Repeat the same, apply some pressure, remove it. In fact, we could have still kept this one layer here. Okay. Now back to this, because even here we have to add it. This is because we do have the mountain. Doesn't just start here, right? It has its own shadows. I would say not the reflection but the shadow part. So we have to show that as well. Okay. Now, I'll keep it aside and continue lifting with the other around. Now, I'll also pull these pants a bit onto where we have lifted and that's because we want to show the water ripples as well. The waves of water for that I'm in the same to and fro motion. Okay, this is good. I'm happy with this. Okay, Next up to add our mountains. I'm going to start by adding some water. Let me take a big good rush. Only I'm going to add some water. And you can see that my water that I'm using is already having this blue tint, right? If you are using a fresh patch of water, then you can go ahead and add a very, very diluted form of bright blue or thr blue. Okay? But I do have it already in my water that I'm using, so I will skip that. Okay. Now, next I'm going to take some blood stone genuine and apply to the base of my mountain. Okay? The same. I'll also apply at some places. For the tip, I'll remove excess of water. And just you can also use CPR because if you're not working with any granulation particularly here, I didn't want to introduce a new color on to over palette. So that's why I'm just continuing to use this. I'm just adding that here and there. Okay, now I'll switch to this mix that we have here of our blue dilute. Okay. And remove excess of water. Yeah. Now I'll just add some additional depths with the color. Once it dries off, it looks like there are some shadows created. Okay. Okay. Now I'll wait for this also to completely dry and come back to add the final dry bred strokes on these mountains. Okay. So I think until that dries, I can add stars again. The stars for this will be limited and I'll be using mint green. Okay, I'll be using mint green for this. Adding stars, I want to add even where the paper is not dry because it will disperse a bit. That gives a good texture. Now I'll take another brush support and just add tiny stars. Okay, I'll wait for it to completely dry and come back to paint. Okay, the mountains are dry now. I'm going to take my synthetic brush itself for this, to add those dry brush strokes and removing excess of water. Testing it on the masking tape and adding here. Here. Also here. I'm still keeping in this angle, we can show that there is a slope. We have also done the same slope for other color as well, so I will retain that here. You can add anyways a bits and pieces here and there. You don't have to follow the exact same know places to add. You can take the reference of mine and you can add in your own way and I'm done. So I'll start by opening the tape. I really can't believe that we're done with our final painting of this challenge. That too, it has turned out so beautiful. I just love all these colors. How much I like blue, right? It has all those beautiful shades. A mountain and a water body as well. I had amazing time painting all this. If you're joining along with me, make sure to post your works in the project section. There is some water here, so let me just dab off. Okay. Make sure to post your work in the project section, and if you have any other doubts, please reach out to me on Instagram or on the discussions in Skillshare. You can take this challenge at your own pace. It need not be on a daily basis as well. You can paint and you can upload all your projects as in when they're ready. Okay, so let me show you how this finally looks. You see how beautiful this reflection is coming off the mountains. Even though we have not added the mountains, we definitely can see that there is some change in the color. That subtle is what I wanted to show. It doesn't have much stars and I want to keep it that way only for this painting. But if you like stars, you can just go ahead and add multiple stars with white quash itself. This is our final painting of the entire challenge. Meet me in the next lesson for thank you and some final thoughts. 20. Final Thoughts: Thank you each and everyone for joining this challenge. I had an amazing time painting all these beautiful aurora, night skies with different shades and different combinations with you all. Make sure to post all your works in the project section so that we can all see the different combinations and the different colors that you have used in your paintings. I'll be very glad to clarify any of your doubts. You can reach out to me on discussions or on Instagram as well, until I come up with something interesting and creative the next time. Bye, bye.