Watercolor Galaxies : Paint Awesome Shapes !

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hello, my name is [inaudible] welcome to the second part of my watercolor galaxy series. I'm a French artist and I love to create paintings that look realistic. In the first part of this series, I went deep on what goes into creating smooth and vibrant watercolor backgrounds. I taught my blending, layering, and lifting techniques with one background exercise and one galaxy project. In the second part, we're going to use these techniques and practice new ones to learn how to paint shapes. Feel comfortable with water control and how to paint a simple watercolor backgrounds, and you'd like to weave in some detail into your backgrounds, this class is going to be useful. Learning this skill will help you improve on landscape painting. You will better understand how to incorporate clouds to sky or repulse to seascape, for instance. To get there, first we'll talk about the supplies we'll need. I'll explain how to use contrasts and brushstrokes to paint shapes, and then we'll practice with several projects that will allow you to make shapes with all the techniques learned in this part of the series, and last, we're going to paint several different galaxy shapes. The milky way, the vortex, the tie-dye, the nebula, the spiral. By the end of the class, you will understand how I paint shapes and you'll be able to apply my techniques, to your own watercolor paintings. So, grab your paints and let's get started. [MUSIC] 2. Class Projects: [MUSIC] Painting shapes can feel a little confusing, even a little intimidating, but when you know how to leverage the techniques I use for my galaxy paintings, when you actually try and practice these techniques, you will realize painting shapes is not as hard as it looks. There are five projects in this class. They all represent a different galaxy shape. We will be using several techniques to get the effects we're looking for. If you're just getting started or perhaps you're not comfortable with how much water, how much paint to use to blend with backgrounds, I'd strongly encourage you to check out the first part of my Galaxy series first, then come back to this class, check out the product, all about creating shapes that comes out to the supplies, and finally, tackle the projects. In your final project, I'll be looking at how you use the two key techniques: contrast and brush strokes, to create shapes in your paintings. So please upload your projects to the Project Gallery here in this class and feel free to reach out if you need any help. For now, meet me in the next lesson where we'll look at the supplies. [MUSIC] 3. Supplies: [MUSIC] For the supplies, we're going to need watercolor paper. I tend to always use 100% cotton paper, 300 GSM, cold-pressed. You can see the cold pressed texture there. Cold-pressed cotton papers work great for backgrounds and landscapes in general since we'll use a lot of water. Next, we're going to need a few paintbrushes. I have a lot of them here for convenience and don't worry, you don't need that many. All you really need is a large one like this one. Large enough that it will be easy to paint on the size of paper that you choose. Then you'll need a smaller brush for detail like this one. Now, if you have more choice, you can use like me a bigger brush just to wet your paper. You can also have a second large brush. I have two because I use one for the light colors to avoid to have to wash them repeatedly and to waste time doing that. You can also use a paintbrush with a fine tip like this one for the details. Convenience is really why I have this many paintbrushes here. But keep in mind that two of them, a large one to wet and paint the background and a smaller one for the details are really all you would need. Now, for the colors, I'm using Art Philosophy, watercolor tubes today, you can use whichever brand you are used to. It's totally fine. The main colors we'll need are indigo for the dark parts, then a blue shade like Prussian blue for the lightest blue parts. We'll also use opera pink. It's a flashy pink that looks great on galaxy paintings, and then we'll need a red and a yellow shade. These two will allow us to get red, yellow, but also orange shades in the painting since when we mix them up, they'll turn into an orange shade. Other common colors you can use as substitutes are a couple blue in place of the Prussian blue, and for red and yellow, you can just use orange. That is if you're a beginner and mixing colors seems intimidating. It's an option, although I'd recommend to go for both red and yellow. You can also use any other pink than opera pink, and for indigo, you can use whichever shade of blue you picked and mix it to a black color to get a very dark blue. Now, for the splatters, the stars, but also some of the effects I'm going to use some white gouache. I like titanium white gouache, it's pretty opaque and it works well with watercolors. These are all the colors I'll be using today. I actually put the watercolors in these half pans and I'll mix the colors right here. I really like to recommend masking tape to tape the sheet firmly on a table like so, it really helps while painting. I also like to have some paper towels nearby because it's always convenient to remove excess water from the paint brushes. Two glasses of water also. One to rinse the paintbrush and another to wet with cleaner water and I'm going to show you my heat gun. I use that to make layers dry faster and if you don't have one, a hair drier works fine. Otherwise, you can wait for the layers to dry. Well, set. In the next lesson, we're going to look at what techniques can get you specific shape while getting your paintings to still look smooth and natural. Let's meet there. [MUSIC] 4. Exploring Ways to Paint Shapes with 2 Key Techniques: [MUSIC] To paint a shape and a watercolor background that blends in while still looking like it's distinct from the background itself, I use two techniques. The first one is contrast. In this painting, for instance, we can only clearly distinguish the Milky Way effect from the background because the background is so dark and the Milky Way is so light in comparison. Don't worry because we will explore this in depth with each project, and you get to apply this to several very different shapes to understand how to tackle this. The second technique, I combine to contrast to create shapes is movement. I use specific brushstrokes. Let's look at the reference photos that inspired all the projects in this class and you'll understand what I mean by brushstrokes. For the Milky Way, we're going to tap our brush lightly with color and white gouache to create this shape. Because if you look at it closely, you can see it looks like just little dots of color. Let's look at the vortex now. We're going to move in circles and half circles to help paint this vortex in a way that looks believable. For the tie-dye, we will mostly paint lines or stripes, however you prefer to call it. The nebula will be a combination of tapping the brush here and there and moving in circles. This one will be best painted using contrast as a key technique. But we'll use movement too because that will always give a better effect. Finally, if the spiral, we will use that spiraling movement, we will create small swirls and we'll pay close attention to contrast as well to make sure it turns out the way we wanted to. We're going to take each projects step-by-step, paying the ones you feel most attracted to and please share those in the project section. I'd love to see your progress. Meet me next for the very first project, the Milky Way. [MUSIC]. 5. The Milky Way Part 1 : Color Mixing: [MUSIC] Let's get started with our milky way painting. We're going to prepare our mixes for indigo, Prussian blue, and opera pink. Remember you can very well use another blue shade and Prussian blue. If you don't have indigo, mix it to a little bit of [inaudible] We'll need whitewash in this painting for the milky way effect. I'll be using all of my paintbrushes here. Again, you don't have to use as many, use whatever makes you feel more comfortable. We're going to mix our colors first. I'll start with the lightest color, I'll put pink. We want a very runny to begin with, just enough pigment to place our main colors on paper. I encourage you to check out the first part of this galaxy series if you haven't already since there I explain a lot about how much paint and how much water we need to paint smooth backgrounds and I take you through the different stages in the painting process. I'll remind you of what we want to do and how for each project in this class. However, the first part goes more in-depth on the matter with more exercises and a basic but beautiful galaxy project. Feel free to refer back to it if you think you need to. I just mix Prussian blue and now I'm mixing indigo. I always rinse my brush between colors. That's exactly why to paint, I'll be using a paintbrush for opera pink and one for my blues, it will be much easier to keep my colors clean and it will make the painting process smoother. We're done so see you in the next lesson to start painting [MUSIC]. 6. The Milky Way Part 2 : First Layer: [MUSIC] Welcome back for the first layer of this milky way. We're ready to start now we mix the colors and let's wet the paper so we can place our base colors on here. I go back and forth like that, and I'm going to do this for about a minute. One thing I haven't mentioned in the previous class and I find is a great indicator of how long you should wet the paper is that once it's very wet, the paper tends to lift off of the surface it has been taped to. You can tell it soaked and lost its stiffness. When that happens, it should be ready for paint. [MUSIC] I'm done now. With one of my large paint brushes, I make sure it's wet first, I pick up some paint from my opera pink mix, and I'm going to paint the milky way very roughly just to help situate it. I tap the brush and paper to do that. By the way, you can download the references in the resources section of the class if you need to look at it while we're painting, it will help you. I haven't mixed much pink, I'm comfortable mixing more quickly. Remember you always have the option to go with larger mixes of paint right away. Now let's apply prussian blue in the center. That's going to be very important to emphasize our milky way shape. Also all around the pink areas. I'm covering the areas where the darkest spots are with prussian blue, even though I'll paint with indigo there later. I'm doing this only because I don't want to give my paper a chance to dry. The quicker you can cover up your paper with fresh watery paints at first, the better. Since the background is made of blue shades only, I can use prussian blue to maintain the humidity and add indigo later. I add indigo mainly on the edges and in the center of the milky way. Our shape looks pretty strange for now and that's totally normal. Don't worry about it. It's going to be like this with all of our projects anyways. What we want in the first layer is to make sure we leave some of the light areas completely untouched. While also placing the darker colors where you can see them on your reference. To create shapes, we really want to see the rough shape on paper by the end of this first layer. It doesn't need to look perfect, it just needs to be there. With a clean and damp brush like this one, we're going to start and blend color together. I touched on that too, in the first class. It's really going to help you make the colors blend together smoothly. You'll notice our shape will look better after this. We're going to repeat all the steps again, apply our paints, then blend them. That's when I start using two paint brushes for convenience, one for pinks, one for blues, and we'll keep increasing the amount of paint in our mixes now. We want to overlap this darker pink onto the previous pink areas and also the blue areas. Let's be careful not to cover up all the light pink areas either. [MUSIC] Now, I'm mixing more of my prussian blue shade. We still want running mixes at this point, but not too runny as we want to make sure the color does not spread very far in order to create our shape. [MUSIC] Now let's add some more pigment to the indigo mix. If you want, you can take any extra water off of the brush like I'm doing here. White gouache will help us later to create the milky way look and emphasize its shape. But it's also very important to make this area there in the middle a bit darker. Gouache is just going to be a way for us to add bright parts of the painting and make it look more like a real milky way. I start blending colors with my clean and damp brush. The purpose here is to remove any harsh transition between two colors and it's already looking a lot nicer. You may use this paint brush to soak up excess water like I'm doing there in the top left corner. Let's call this our first layer. We're going to dry it now. We do have a nice plain background here. What do you think? It's much lighter than it looked before, hence the next layers. There are a few marks as well, but that's okay. We do have a milky way shape there, so that's great. We're going to keep building on top of it. Now let's head on over to the next lesson for our second layer. [MUSIC] 7. The Milky Way Part 3 : Second Layer: [MUSIC] Welcome to Part 3 of this milky way painting for a second layer now. In this second layer, we'll use white gouache and get it ready for later in the lesson. Let's wet the paper again. We're going to paint in the same way we did before. We'll just add gouache this time and we'll also wet the paper in a more superficial way since we already have one layer down. Make sure you get into all the nooks and crannies of it. I'm adding a bit more pigment to my mix. Remember to do this each time as you progress in the painting to get colors more vibrant and a better contrast between them all too. Let's start with this movement. We're tapping the brush on paper lightly like this and we don't want to cover up all of the light pink areas, otherwise, you would lose contrast, like I said before, in the first layer and it's hard to backtrack with watercolors once colors are dry. The paper is going to drive very fast everywhere else if I don't add any more color fast. I'm trying to get the pink on there pretty quick. Once we get done with the blue shades, we will have more time to work, add gouache, and so on. Now, I'm adding Prussian blue. I'm adding more paint in the mix. I see my paper is getting close to drying too much on those edges there. I'm going to apply that everywhere around the pinks. We can do that. Since indigo is also a blue shade, it will come on top just fine. After a while, you get used to taking shortcuts and finding little ways to make painting easier with practice. Watercolor is not so hard after a while really, it's really worth it to hang in there and keep practicing. I'm not afraid to overlap a bit. When you use a dark color like this on a light one, just be careful not to overdo it. Let's add indigo now on the edges. I overlap it there in the middle. Don't forget this section, there is really important. We're done with that. The paper should be wide enough at this stage that you can keep adding comfortably. Now with my other paintbrush, I clean it first. I saw the extra water off and I start blending colors, just the edges. We really only want to soften the harsh ones for this step. I overlap to make it look natural, but still, I'm leaving a lot of pink areas. I'm going to add more color on there because once I add white gouache, I don't want to cover it all up, so we're going to color this first till you're satisfied. You don't have to do as much as me just until you're satisfied. Then you can move on to the white gouache. See now, doing this gives me some shades of purple I didn't have a minute ago and that's the color variety that will make a background like this look deep with realism. I'll fast-forward this next part as I am just repeating the steps we just went through because I will mark color. We apply pink, then Prussian blue, then indigo, and we blend it to fade those harsh edges. [MUSIC] Feel free to start adding the gouache whenever you find a background looking colorful enough and keep in mind, we'll be adding a bit more color in the last layer too. It doesn't matter if it's not perfect now, the shapes should just be better defined and we should see dark areas starting to contrast nicely with light ones. That's it. Now I'm happy with my background being accurate enough, so I'm going to add white gouache to brighten it all up and create those milky way effects. Let's make sure it stays pretty thick. We just need a bit of water. That's it. The water from a wet paintbrush will do just so we can mix the gouache. That's really all you need. I don't want it to spread too far, but if it's too thick, it will leave harsh marks so I don't want that either. Even though keep in mind that, unlike watercolor, it's very easy to remove gouache. It's really not something to stress about. You can still adjust as you go. Something we want to watch for is to rinse the brush and pick up fresh paint frequently because you'll notice that every time you drop it on those dark colors gets dirty. We don't want too much of that. The best thing to do is just rinse the brush frequently and come back with fresh paint. [MUSIC] Right now it's looking Blache toy normal. Don't worry about that. We're going to blend those edges and to the rest with that same technique using our clean and dumpy brush. I'll just keep tapping my brush here in those areas to help me shape the milky way. Now it's time to blend the gouache into the paints. I'm careful to rinse my brush off and into damp in my paper towel so it's just damp because if it's too wet, you would have more chances of leaving blues on this drawing background, so just watch for that. If you do see a spot where there's a lot of pure gouache is the case here for me, I would recommend to blend that in because it will show a lot when it's dry. Look at how much more beautiful and subtle it is looking with just that. Let's try this layer. In the next one, we'll add color and more gouache to polish the looks of it even better. Remember, you can stop adding colors and layering now or whenever you feel your painting is looking good enough. Although adding one more layer will help you achieve more depth and realism. We're done with this layer and the shape needs more definition. It needs to get darker in the center and the edges as well. I do see some blotches, so you see for me it's not looking as I wanted to now. Let's meet in the next lesson and I'll show you how my third layer helps me fix all of this and end up with a gorgeous milky Way. [MUSIC] 8. The Milky Way Part 4 : Third & Final Layer: [MUSIC] First, we're going to wet this painting again, superficially like we did previously since we have so much paint on it already. What I like about doing that when there's a little bit of gouache on paper, is that we're going to smooth it out better. It works with watercolors alone and with gouache, it's a trick that's even more effective. I even do it sometimes as a very final step. Now I'm going to repeat the steps we went through before. The main difference each time is that we add more and more paint. I'm adding pink. You can see here very clearly that it's going to add color to this painting and that's why I love a third layer. Once we add darker colors and a bit more gouache, it's going to be a stunner. I'll speed up the next steps a bit till we add the gouache since we went through them before. But as a reminder, I add pink first without coloring all the light parts, then I add Prussian blue, and finally indigo. I go from light to dark. I add indigo to emphasize contrast with the light tones. I blend those colors together as a last step with a clean and damp brush to fade those harsh edges between them. [MUSIC] We can see now that those dark parts look good enough that some gouache will contrast with these very well and this time I'm adding a bit of a thicker mixture of gouache. It's even a bit too much up here. I'll need to blend it into the other colors later otherwise, it's going to look pretty harsh. I'll let you follow along with some music and after that we will try this layer [MUSIC] It's looking good. Still a bit blotchy so what I'm going to do, as I mentioned in the beginning of this lesson, is to wet this again just to smooth it out. We couldn't have done this before drying the sheet otherwise, we would have removed all of the fresh paints, including the watercolors. That's why I dry it first. I'm wetting it with clean strokes as if you were painting a wooden plank with acrylics or wood paints. We got to be ready for some splattering as a very last step. If you look at the milky way now, you can see that because the middle of it is very dark in comparison to the lighter parts and also because the edges are very dark, we really got ourselves a nice milky way shape here. Tapping the brush with white gouache enhances that and that's why brush strokes are important because now it's not just a shape, it's a milky way shape. Let's go add some splatters in the next lesson [MUSIC] 9. The Milky Way Part 5 : Adding Details: [MUSIC] Welcome back for the very last step in this painting, adding some stars. I'm mixing white gouache once more to get a great consistency. You don't want it to be too watery nor too thick. You'll need to test it directly as I'm doing here to see how the stars come out. No stars or tiny ones means you need to add water. Huge drops mean you need more paint. If that happens, you can always remove those drops with the paper towels. Don't worry about that. I tend to see some lines forming when I splatter like this. I switch direction in which I do it very often. It's looking pretty good. Let's add a few more stars directly with a paintbrush. They will look bigger this way. We can also choose where to place them to add balance to the painting. I'm done. I'm going to remove the tape and reveal. It's looking beautiful. You can see the gouache and the Milky Way itself is more subtle than the stars and that adds to the realism. Before you move on to the next project, remember for this specific Milky Way shape that the key brushstroke is to tap the paintbrush around for the Milky Way effect. Applying gouache for the second layer rather than the first because in the first one, color is still so light, it may not make much of a difference. Check the consistency of it so it's not too runny nor too thick. It will spread a lot of it's too runny and leave harsh bright spots if it's too thick. Blend it into the watercolor to get that cloudy, dreamy look. Add more of it in another layer to emphasize the highlights you get from it. Finally, don't be afraid to wet the whole background again to make it look softer. Great job on completing this painting. Please share with me in the project section of the class, I would love to see. See you in the very next one, the vortex. [MUSIC]. 10. The Vortex Part 1 : Color Mixing: [MUSIC] Welcome to the first part of our vortex project. We're going to go ahead and mix our colors for this, we'll mix indigo and red and yellow. As always, I start with a very light mix. I reactivate the colors that have dried. We have our three colors, indigo, red, and yellow. It's enough to get started, so see you in the very next lesson where we'll paint our first layer. 11. The Vortex Part 2 : First Layer: [MUSIC] We're going to paint our first layer. I'm wetting the paper generously. Is just like what we did for the Milky Way. Raw paper always needs more water for wet and wet work. [MUSIC] I'm going to be using a paintbrush for red and yellow, and another one for indigo. I'm starting with yellow and right away you can see I'm building our main vortex shape with circular motions and I try to find the center of the page too. If you don't get it right immediately, it's okay. Just remember that by the end of the first layer here, we want to have our rough shape on paper. [MUSIC] Now with my other brush and indigo I'm refining the circle for vortex hole, you can make it a bit bigger if you like and I'm going to add a little bit of paint on the edges too. [MUSIC] I have good shape already, so let's add some red now. I added on the edges of the vortex, I'm trying to keep the middle there quite light. My circle is fading away here and if it happens to you too, don't worry about it. It's going to be so dark, it will be easy to redefine it good. Now with my smaller paintbrush, I'm going to target that hole and I make sure to take excess indigo paint out of the brush just like this because I don't want the paint to spread outside of that space too much. I find that for this, circular motions really help to get the shape accurate and now as I move away, I press my brush more towards the end of the stroke for the curve to look thicker. You can keep shaping the center of the vortex to fit better if it's not right again, at this stage, as long as your paint is still wet and still light. [MUSIC] Let's pick up a bit more paint with a bit more pigment and less water and I'm adding it on the vortex. If you notice that yellow and blue make a muddy color, that's completely normal because they are opposite on the color wheel and personally, it doesn't bother me as long as I can get the light colors brighter at some point by adding paint in the mix. But if it bothers you, then it will be better to use colors that are closer on the color wheel, like blue and pink, or blue and green for instance. I am adding red on the edges. I'm getting the vibrancy back and an orange color. Now I'm going to repeat the steps. First, blend all the harsh separations, and keep refining all colors till I'm happy with my shape. Stop whenever you're satisfied with your shape. I always spend so much more time on the first layer because it's the foundation and a guide for the rest of the painting. Remember that if the shape is looking on is totally fine, a little bit of blending the harsh edges will do the trick. [MUSIC] I'm lifting a little bit of color there. We're ready to dry this layer. We're done with this layer. We have the shape right, but it's still very light and we need to add color, so see you in the next lesson for a second layer. [MUSIC] 12. The Vortex Part 3 : Second Layer: [MUSIC] We're going to paint the second layer in this lesson and intensify colors as well as the overall looks of this vortex. I'm wetting the paper briefly. There we go. Now, I'm going to add some of the lighter colors. I'm using a bit more paint. Remember to always add to your mixes a bit more as you go. I'm leaving a highlight in the middle. [MUSIC] Let's add a little bit of red. [MUSIC] You can see here it's drying already a bit, so I'm going to apply indigo on the edges quickly so I can keep working on this. [MUSIC] With indigo, I redefine the shape of this black hole in the center, and the swirls. Just like the previous project, indigo is really important to get the rest of the painting and brighter colors to pop. [MUSIC] I always overlap colors, that's what will get you that natural, realistic look, especially when you blend the colors as well afterwards. I'm emphasizing the shape of the swirls there with my red shade. I make those edges a bit darker with red and yellow mixed up. I still use movement a lot, it really helps in giving the shape, in particular, the impressionists moving. If you'd just get the indigo part and the orange part with a hole in the center but no strokes to show movement, it won't look as impacting. [MUSIC] I'm working on the edges of the shape to make them fade into the indigo area better. [MUSIC] Something worth knowing about is for me when I look at my camera as I paint, I get to see what my shape looks like from a distance, and taking a step back works just as well when you don't tell me your process. Either way, it will help you a lot to do that. I keep adding more paints and refining the shape. You may stop when yours look the way you want it. [MUSIC] You can use like me, a smaller brush to emphasize the impression of the swirl with some indigo curves. I don't have a specific sequence of what colors I apply, what order I apply them in, I just try and assess what might be missing and I adjust. [MUSIC] We want this dark hole there to be really dark, so I'm going to emphasize this now. It's looking good. I could probably overlap a little bit of indigo there on the edges of the vortex, but we can improve with details in the third layer, that's what it's for. If you're happy with how your shape looks right now, you could also head straight to the stares flattering, final part of this project. Let's try this painting. It looks great what I'm seeing, we'll just need a little bit more indigo to make it darker, and then maybe refine the shape here because it looks a bit odd in places. Other than that it's good, and then we can maybe add movement there too, and it will look great. Meet me in the next lesson for our last layer. [MUSIC] 13. The Vortex Part 4 : Third & Final Layer: Welcome back for a third and last layer on this vortex. I'll wet the paper briefly and in this layer we'll make the shape more polished, better defined, and with a stronger contrast. I'm going to add yellow. Remember we need to be fairly quick once we have wet the paper and once all colors are there, we'll find for a few minutes [MUSIC] I'm adding red now and this is really intensifying the looks a lot more [MUSIC] With indigo we'll want to make the edges and the center a lot darker and then we will blend colors into each other for nice transitions [MUSIC] Let's add some movements. A smaller paintbrush is more effective for that [MUSIC] It's really turning into a nice shape now. You can really see how this is a vertex, thanks to the high contrast and brushstrokes [MUSIC] I'll fast-forward this part of it where I'm getting my shape as accurate as possible. At this point, assess with chores, needs the most. More dark strokes a darker whole, a big mark color maybe. Adjust according to what you're seeing [MUSIC] I want to show you now that you can highlight part of the vortex whole and give it a cool effect with lifting. It's always a good technique to use to emphasize the separation between dark and light very much. I'm lifting a bit on the edge of the whole, not all around, otherwise it might be too obvious and make it look like the whole and the rest of the vertex are separate elements. I'm just lifting in two areas just as an accent you really ask the painting [MUSIC] Let's try this. Is looking beautiful, let's go ahead and paint the stars in the next lesson [MUSIC] 14. The Vortex Part 5 : Adding Details: [MUSIC] This is the last step in our vortex painting. We are going to be adding a few stars with white gouache. I'm going to try not to have too many stars in there. It's like that on my reference photo and it could also mean that on the other side of this hole there's some void. [MUSIC] That's it. We want to let this vortex shine so not too many stars needed, but acts on them with a few big ones. [MUSIC] I'm going to add a few there to suggest they're getting sucked into that hole. [MUSIC] We're done. It's ready. I'm happy with it. Let's take the tape off and let's take a close look. Great job on completing your vortex. Please share with me any other students in the project section of the class. Remember, overlap dark colors on the lighter ones for better color transition. Add small curves to give an impression of movement. Very dark areas next to light ones emphasize hollowness. Add more stars in key places to emphasize movement. Let's tackle the tie-dye shape next. See you there. [MUSIC] 15. The Tie Dye Part 1 : Color Mixing: [MUSIC] Welcome back. With this painting, we're going to use opera pink or any other pink you have, Prussian blue or any other blue shade, and indigo. Remember for indigo you can mix the blue shade you will be using with a little bit of black as well. I'm making more of my pink mixed and I'm just going to reactivate the other colors and we'll be all set to start. In this painting, there will be hence pink. But since pink and blue mix in two beautiful purples, I'm expecting more of a purplish painting. It'll be up to you to decide if you want to add more blues or pinks as accents. Feel free to be creative with the colors as we paint. Meet me in the next lesson for the first layer. [MUSIC] 16. The Tie Dye Part 2 : First Layer: Let's paint the first layer to place the colors where we want them and start shaping this highlight. I was a bit intimidated by this project when I first tried it and it turned out to be easier than I thought. Please don't feel nervous about it. We'll be moving step-by-step and because we always start with light colors in every painting, there are a lot of opportunities to fix mistakes. [MUSIC] Now the paper is wet and the water has penetrated the fibers. I can feel it has this lifting off of my mat as I was telling you in the last project. We can start placing our colors. I'm actually going to mix in a little bit of blue with my pink right away. Keep your spank if you prefer, it will be beautiful either way. I'll add pink later too to have lots of different colors peeping through in this painting. Right away, I'm shaping this tie-dye with these straight strokes that merge towards the middle. See actually with just a few strokes, it's already looking like a tie-dye, so it's not as hard as one may think. From here we'll just have to add color and watch with good contrast really. On the left side, I saw my reference photo, there were less of these strokes. I'm just going to tap the vapor with my paintbrush here. I'm going to add pink now. Actually I think we will need some of it in the final painting. You see here that because I'm using very light colors, I have no trouble switching things up in terms of what the base color will be. At this stage, I could even remove all of the paint with a paper towel if I needed to. [MUSIC] I'm adding blue now, but I'm not going to cover up all of the pink areas and that is what's going to make this tie-dye look cool with a bunch of colors showing. I'm still using the same strokes. Let's add indigo in places. Remember that in all of our paintings the darker tone is really key. That in the highlights is what will get us our shape. Make sure to merge your strokes towards the middle and to be spontaneous with them too. [MUSIC] Let's add some more color with pink again. I've added a little bit of paint. [MUSIC] Easily it's looking better. We're going to keep doing this with the other colors too. They're going to look darker and we're going to overlap them a bit. [MUSIC] Let's blend all these colors together with a clean and damp brush. [MUSIC] The fun parts, the highlights with the same clean and damp brush again. Make sure it's really clean though, rinse it, and soak up excess water from it frequently. I'm careful to make those lines merge towards the middle still. [MUSIC] We're done lifting colors, so let's try this layer. It's looking great, light but great. Let's meet in the next lesson for more color [MUSIC]. 17. The Tie Dye Part 3 : Second Layer: We're back for a second layer on this galaxy, and we're going to wet our background briefly. As always, I start with our lighter color, opera pink, then we'll use our blue shades. Notice here how spontaneous yet competent I try to make my strokes. I find that it helps to start where the masking tape is. I remember reflecting on being spontaneous as beginner and thinking my background's always looked better when they were like that. When I didn't overthink everything in advance. [MUSIC] Let's blend it all in. I also pull a light of paint from my clean damp brush onto the lightest parts to overlap. When you lift the paints, don't be afraid to press on the low. Don't worry if your background doesn't look exactly like mine. [MUSIC] I don't want very strong pinks in my paintings, so I'm mixing a little more purple. I'll fast-forward this part a bit as I'll just be adding color and lifting again and then we'll dry this layer. [MUSIC] We are ready to final layer, so see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 18. The Tie Dye Part 4 : Third & Final Layer: Welcome back now for the last layer. Let's put the background. I'm going to be adding pink. I'm going to mix it to blues and also use it alone to create various shades out of it. We did take a lot of the paint off in the previous layers to create this tie-dye effect. So as a final step, we're adding color in the places that need it and lifting where needed as well and then we'll be ready for the stars. [MUSIC] I want to show you here how I create a little bit of detail to polish this tie-dye. If you do have one of these paint brushes with a fine tip, use it now to make smaller final lines starting from the center. This will help both with contrast and to make the shape more obvious. Indigo is really dark now. It will look great next to the last highlights that we made. [MUSIC] It's time to lift. We're not going to overdo it since we already have marks that are left from our previous layers. In the last area, we're using this technique to accent the painting. [MUSIC] I'm going to play a little more with indigo and the highlights and we'll be ready to try this and paint the stars. [MUSIC] We're ready to paint the stars, so meet me in the next lesson to do that. 19. The Tie Dye Part 5 : Adding Details: [MUSIC] We're ready to finish this tie dye with some stars. Let's plot a few of them. We don't need a whole lot with such an interesting background, so we're just going to stay light on this. I'm also going to add a few spots directly with a brush. [MUSIC] It's beautiful. I really love how this is looking, and I love those colors, purples, one of my favorite ones actually. Let's take the tape off and take a look. I hope you enjoyed this painting. Share it with everyone in the project section if you'd like. It will be my pleasure to give you some feedback. For the tie dye, remember to mix and layer whichever color you want to use in different shades to give the painting an interesting look. Don't be afraid to lift too much as early as the first layer. Is how layers overlap each other, that is going to give you a gorgeous result in the end. Try and stay spontaneous with your strokes and use paint brushes of different sizes to paint and lift those streaks. Now let's head on over to our next lesson and project, See you there. [MUSIC] 20. The Nebula Part 1 : Color Mixing: [MUSIC] Welcome to the first lesson for our Nebula. We're going to mix the colors we'll need for it. We'll be using a little bit of red and yellow as well as Prussian blue and indigo. I'm just going to reactivate them since they're all dried up. Remember to keep them light. You are always welcome to switch the colors if you just want to use something else it's just fine. But I will still recommend to use something like indigo for the edges because indigo is really dark and it's really going to give you that look that's going to help that shape to pop. Yeah, that's a good one for galaxies. [MUSIC] We're done so let's meet in the second part for our first layer. [MUSIC] 21. The Nebula Part 2 : First Layer: We're ready to paint our first layer. Right away, I wet the paper and as always on a blank piece of paper, when I know I want to work wet and wet, I take my time to make sure the insides of the paper are also soaked with water. I'm going to start applying the yellow shade. We're going to shape some kind of a circle. I tap the paint brush onto the paper and I tried to keep the shape centered. Now I'm overlapping red on top of that and we're going to switch and now over to Prussian blue, get that center colored and the edges too. This way we can work a bit longer now, everything has been wet again with fresh paint. Finally, I apply indigo and I keep it to the edges to maintain a nice gradient between my colors. Let's blend those colors now with a small paint brush. I'm starting in the light areas and I am taking advantage, I'm blending to overlap indigo onto those yellow and red parts. Let's add more color now we have a rough shape. We want the edges here to stay light, so I'm going to add paint on the outer edge more. Don't worry if you don't get a very accurate as we can still left color later on. I'm adding red. It's too much though, so I'm just blending it right on paper, baking some up to. It's really easy when you start getting used to watercolors to fix most mistakes I find that's why it's worth sticking with it until you feel comfortable with water, it will get easier in time. You can stop this layer whenever you're on shape looks good. Don't forget to overlap colors for a natural look not too much to preserve those bright yellow and red areas and also remember to blend all the colors together to make smooth transitions. I left a bit of color to refine the shape, and I'm going to add more colors to make my Nebula look a bit better as I'm trying to end this first layer was something that doesn't look out of balance. I'm going to overlap those bright colors onto the indigo parts to achieve this, since I already have a rough shape down [MUSIC]. I'm lifting there and those light areas to make the center stand out more and I use movement here and lift as if these edges were curvy to make them look like so [MUSIC]. Let's try this. The shape is good. Let's meet in the next lesson for more color and details. 22. The Nebula Part 3 : Second Layer: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to add color with our second layer and some details. A quick reminder, you can stop painting after the second layer if you are satisfied with what you're getting. I'm wetting the sheet again to apply more color and as always, I'll gradually increase the amount of paint in my mixes to avoid getting blotches. I'm adding yellow, then I'll add red. My blue is Prussian blue and indigo, many of the edges of the sheet for indigo. Then we'll blend all this in. [MUSIC] Let's lift a little now to act in the separation between the center of the nebula and what's around it. [MUSIC] I'm going to emphasize the area in the middle even more and also the edges that are right there next to the parts I just lifted to increase contrast a lot there with very dark and very light parts. [MUSIC] Let's blend this more details into the background. It's spreading and I don't like the all-over-the-place look I'm getting so that's why I'm trying to smooth things out when I blend the paints together. [MUSIC] Now I'm lifting paint in places, again because I'm trying to get very light values to show up along with very dark values. [MUSIC] Let's try this layer now. We're looking a bit better darker. Next, we're going to intensify the colors, especially the dark ones. [MUSIC] 23. The Nebula Part 4 : Third & Final Layer: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to paint the final layer, emphasize colors and details. I wet the paper briefly to start adding color, and I start with yellow. I'm going to add red, Prussian blue and indigo, then blend all those colors to soften any visible harsh edges. [MUSIC] Let's add some detail with a fine tip paintbrush to shape the center of the nebula a bit more. [MUSIC] I'm lifting this part again to make it look like the center of the nebula. The darkest part is hollow, and I'm going to keep lifting all around. [MUSIC] I'm overlapping some of the light colors on the blue parts to make it a bit more interesting. I'm actually seeing this from the photo, but you can customize your on nebula in the way you like best. [MUSIC] I keep refining the details. There's no specific sequence here, I'm just adding or lifting as I go. [MUSIC] We're ready to add our stars, so let's meet in our last lesson for this nebula. 24. The Nebula Part 5 : Adding Details: [MUSIC] This lesson is the final part of our Nebula painting. I'm using white gouache to splatter a few stars. Remember not to add too much water to the white gouache, even though you can always adjust the amount easily with gouache. Too little water and the stars will be tiny or the pain just won't come out and too much water and your stars will be really big. I'm going to add a few bigger stars here and there directly with the brush. As always, I can't help but add them everywhere, but ideally, it's better to keep them as random as possible. Also, wide splatters are so nice. [MUSIC] Let's reveal. I'll show you with the next painting a little trick to clean up the extra paint that gets under the masking tape. I'm happy with it. It looks nice. I'd love to see yours, feel free to add it to the project section of this class they shared with us. Remember, the more colors on the background, the more effective blending with a clean damp brush will be. Dark colors versus light ones emphasizes 3D effect. Specific brushstrokes can also be used when lifting paints. Keep the stars as random as possible. It's time to tackle our very last project. See you there. [MUSIC] 25. The Spiral Part 1 : Color Mixing: [MUSIC] Welcome back for the painting of our last project, the spiral. We're going to need our prussian blue and indigo, as well as pink. I'm going to mix pink right now. Remember to keep your mixes lights to begin with and also feel free to mix a lot more than I am. You have them ready and all you have to do is add a bit of paint each time. I'm used to mixing colors. I tend to already know how much paint to add, what I need in terms of consistency. As cliche as it sounds, that's really something that comes with practice. Don't worry if you're not there yet. Meet me in the next lesson for the first layer. [MUSIC] 26. The Spiral Part 2 : First Layer: [MUSIC] Let's paint our first layer and start wetting the paper. My water is not clean at all as you can see here. Actually, that's okay because I'm going to cover up all of the sheet with blue and pink paints. But if I was painting something different, something like a snowy landscape, I'll be more careful. Remember the wetting lasts for a while when the paper is like this. It helps colors blend really nicely later. [MUSIC] With this spiral, I'm going to start with blues first. This is because the spiral itself is a small part of the painting and if I start with it, it will be tedious to paint all around. All I'm doing now is paint a sheet with Prussian blue and I'm leaving a blank space in the middle. Now, I'm adding a little bit of indigo on the edges mainly [MUSIC]. Then let's grab a smaller paintbrush and with our pink shade, we're going to shape the spiral. You can see how important movement is. You can tap your paint brush here and there to add pinkish accents and define the spiral bit more. You see now why it's easier to start applying all the blues first and pink last and the specific painting when you get started [MUSIC]. Gradually I'm adding pigment to make mixes and I increase color intensity on paper. [MUSIC] I keep indigo to the corners of the sheet mainly. [MUSIC] Again, in this project, blending is going to help a lot. Remember to use a clean but damp brush to do this. As you blend the spiral with a clean and damp brush, the shape will fade a bit, but that's normal and okay. We already have a shape down, our center of the spiral is defined. Now we're using this as a guide to make colors more vibrant and to accent the shape more and more. I'm going to keep doing this, adding colors of a bit more pigment each time. The goal here is in every first layer for my galaxy painting technique is to have our rough shape down by the end of the process. This means you stop whenever yours is looking satisfying and you move on to the second layer [MUSIC]. I want to show you here how much more balanced your painting will look if when you accent the spiral with a pink shade, you also take advantage to dab your paintbrush and places on the paper to create a purplish shade all around the spiral. The transition with Prussian blue will be less harsh. Having a proper shade there. It will help make this spiral part of the background. As I'm doing this, I'm still following the direction of those swirls. It's looking good to me so I'm going to dry this layer and later we'll add more details. The shape is looking great and I like it, so we're going to keep building on top of that. We're going to add some details and then we'll have a beautiful spiral so meet me next for our second layer. [MUSIC] 27. The Spiral Part 3 : Second Layer: [MUSIC] Let's start on our second layer. We're going to paint more detail in this lesson. I'm going to re-wet the sheet fairly quickly since this is our second layer. [MUSIC] We lost a little bit of a highlight there in the middle, but that's okay, we can fix it. For now, I'm going to start with pink, since I already have the shape and darker colors down. I'm finding it easy now to go with pink right away. In the first layer, I needed to idle up the center of the spiral first. That's my way of looking at it. There's no right or wrong way of course. Whatever feels easier is the way to go. It's looking pretty elegant. Don't forget the paper will dry fast since we re-wet it briefly. Let's cover up those edges with Prussian blue and we can add those indigo accents later. I'm leaving the edges and the spiral untouched for now. That's because I'm going to add pink and apply it while also blending those harsh blue edges all around to create a transition between the pink spiral and the blue background. [MUSIC] The blending here is done with a paintbrush full of pink mix. Usually when I talk about blending in Part 1 and so far in the second part of the galaxy series, I do it with a clean and damp brush. This time we want to add pinks wherever there are visible color changes between blue and pink, to soften them with what will turn into a purple tone. I overlap this pink even further around the spiral to keep some balance. What I wouldn't want is a plain pink spiral followed by a purple area, followed by a blue area. I'm really trying to connect those different parts together. [MUSIC] With a smaller paintbrush, the one I have with a very fine tip, I'm going to detail this spiral a bit more. The paint will need to be a bit more concentrated so it doesn't spread too far out. We also don't want it too thick so it doesn't leave a very strong mark. [MUSIC] I am adding accents all around once more and this is how my spiral is becoming a full part of our background with this method. [MUSIC] You can leave the paint in the middle if you like, otherwise we'll just fix this with gouache. I'm going to do just that with my white gouache and also accent the edges of the spiral a bit. I like to add gouache in a second and third layer on backgrounds like these as we get undertones from the first and second layer and the third ones. But you could also consider adding gouache just once for the last layer, whether for you the last layer is a second or a third one. I'm going to keep adding and then I'll blend the gouache into the watercolors, and we'll dry this layer. When blending the white gouache, we're back to using a clean and damp brush. You will need to clean it frequently as it will get dirty from the blue paints. [MUSIC] We're ready for a third and final layer, so let's meet in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 28. The Spiral Part 4 : Third & Final Layer: [MUSIC] Here we go for a final layer, we're almost done with this project and the class, let's wet the paper quickly. We are going to define the shape even more in this layer and make those edges darker. I'm going to apply all the colors, pink, passion blue and indigo, just like we did in the previous lessons and then we'll blend these colors into each other by using our pink paint to create a purplish transition [MUSIC] Let's act on the spiral or the fine tip paintbrush [MUSIC] Now let's add some white gouache as we did in the previous lesson. Notice I'm also creating movement with white gouache [MUSIC] I keep adding white accents and I'm going to blend these with a clean and damp brush into the rest of the watercolors [MUSIC] I love how this is looking, now we're going to dry this and later we'll add some stars. We're almost done, so meet me next for some splattering [MUSIC] 29. The Spiral Part 5 : Adding Details: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're adding some stars with white gouache, and I'll show you a little trick to clean up uneven borders around your painting. My stars are coming out tiny, which means if I added a ton more water to my gouache, my stain next day would come out a little bit bigger, it will be easier too, but they would also be more translucent. It's all about finding a balance to get the looks you're going for. [MUSIC] I'm going to add a few stars directly with a paintbrush. It's a good thing to do to make them bigger and wider since you can use pure paint. [MUSIC] I'll also add just a few stars around our spiral shapes to axon and the movement of the spirals even more [MUSIC]. We're done, so let's remove the tape. I'm going to show you how I clean up the edges around the painting. I do have that problem quite often with wet-in-wet work, layering work like we did because paint gets under the masking tape with water and my borders are not quite clean. All you need is pure white gouache or white gel pen also works. In a minute, you'll get your borders looking camera ready. [MUSIC] Remember, blending colors together to achieve nice transitions can be done with a clean, damp brush, as well as a specific color. For a delicate accents, try using a paintbrush with a fine tip. If lifting paint is not effective enough. In some cases, white gouache may help. Also, use white gouache to clean up irregular borders. We are done with our painting. I hope you enjoyed painting along with me. You may share your spiral with me and the other students in the project section of the class. Please reach out with any questions you may have. Let's meet one more time for final thoughts. [MUSIC] 30. Conclusion: [MUSIC] Congratulations for completing this class. Please, before you go, upload your projects to Projects and Resources section of the class so I can give you some feedback. If you'd like, you can leave me a review to let me know what you thought of the class and you can also follow me here on Skillshare, you'll be updated of all the future uploads, and the third and last part of this Galaxy series. I'm pretty active on Instagram and YouTube, you can find me there. You can also use the #CreateWithFrancoise to share your work there as well. Thank you so much for watching this class and see you in the next one. [MUSIC]