Winter Polaroids: Simple Watercolor Landscapes for Beginners

1. Introduction: Welcome to Winter Polaroids. A skillshare class on simple watercolor landscapes for beginners. Hi, my name is Madeline, and I am an artist and content creator on Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, and Youtube. And I'm a brand ambassador for Polina Bright Fairs, well press and Stakiwi colors. Here is a look at all the different landscapes we will be painting in this class today. Something that is unique to my artistic voice is my color palette and my ability to paint landscape photos with a unique combination of colors. In this class, we're going to explore several different winter landscapes. And we will paint mountains, trees, northern lights, and more together, all inspired by the beautiful colors of winter. I can't wait to get started. I'll see you in the next lesson. 2. All Our Supplies: Let's go over all the supplies that we will be using in today's class. I am going to start off with brushes. I have a Princeton Neptune two inch Motlerbrush as well as a black velvet 34 inch flat brush. And I will be using both of these brushes to wet our paper. I have a polina bright size zero round brush and a size one mop brush. I have a black velvet round four brush and several different liners. Two of which are Da Vinci colonial liners, size zero and size four, as well as a Princeton select ten dash zero liner. The last brush I want to share with you about is my makeshift tree brush. It is a super old Princeton heritage round two brush. And I take the bristles of the brush and I smash it into a palette at a 90 degree angle like this, I really, really get those bristles frayed out. This brush makes the perfect tree brush textures. And we will be painting trees in one of the landscapes with this brush. And I just really love how these trees come out when I paint them with this brush, my recommendation is to obviously not do this with any new or expensive brush. This is probably one of the oldest brushes I have. So it's a way to repurpose the brush and to get very unique brush strokes out of it that I wouldn't otherwise be able to get if I had just left this brush as is. I will be painting with 100% cotton watercolor paper. This is probably one of the most important supplies. Our paper really makes a difference in our overall final painting. I have cut them out into four by four inch squares. I will be sharing more the next lesson how we will cut up and prepare our paper. But the brand of paper is Bow Hong and this is their Academy Rough line. I feel like the quality of this paper is just really good and it's also very affordable. I have an acrylic bar that I will be using in one of our landscapes where we paint the Northern lights, as well as a small water bottle that I'll use to miss our paper as we are painting. I also have some paper towels close by. I have a jar of clean water and today I'll be using handmade paints. I'm going to swatch out all the different colors that I have so that you can get an idea of the range of colors that we're going to be working with. You do not need the exact same paints that I use. Even though I know it's tempting to always want the exact same colors that the teachers using. I feel this very often. But I do encourage you to look for similar shades in your existing paints, or feel free to use whatever colors called to you, even if they are different than the ones that I am using. The first color is a warm yellow ocher, ish color. I use two different shades of opera, I use several different shades of pink. A lot of them are pastel colors. If you don't have a pastel pink or a light pink color in your color palette, you can also create a pink by mixing some white wash with some red paint and playing around with the ratios of more red paint or more white guash. I also use several different shades of purple. Purples can be mixed by mixing a cool red with a blue. And varying the different amounts of red and blue will give you different hues of purple. I also will be using several different blues, including lavender, ultramarine blue, cobalt turquoise, thalo blue, indigo, and paints gray. I use a warm brown, a dark green, some neutral tint. The last color I want to swatch out for you is a very pretty metallic blue that I will use to paint shadows. One of the most important supplies in this class is this bottle of Dr. ph Martin's bleedproof flight. It is an opaque white water color and we will be using it to paint a lot of our snow. This is very crucial to our class. I will also be using white masking tape to tape off the borders to our watercolor paper, as well as this hot air tool which is going to help me speed up our drying times. That is all the supplies that we are going to be using in our class. 3. Preparing Our Paper: Now that we know what supplies we'll be working with today, let's get to preparing our paper. When painting with watercolor paper, I really enjoy buying paper in large sheets and then cutting them up with my paper cutter into sizes that I want to paint with. I like doing it this way because it is a bit more affordable. And then we can really tailor the watercolor paper to the exact size that we want. For today's class, I'm going to be cutting up this large piece of watercolor paper and I'm going to be cutting them down into four by 4 ". So if you look at the ruler on my paper cutter, you'll notice that my paper is 14 " wide and 12 " long. I cut it width first into a sheet that is 12 " and then 8 " and then 4 ". And then once I have them in strips, I cut them again at the eight inch mark and then again at the four inch mark. Then I have a perfect stack of little tiny polaroids to work with. Next I'm going to show you how I turn a square piece of watercolor paper into the perfect little polaroid. I have masking tape right here. And I am going to tape off a very thin little border like what you see I did in the video right here. For the upper edge and the edge on the right and the left, I am going to tape off the same width. And then for the bottom edge, I am going to leave uncovered a tiny slither of paper that is the same width as the edges that I covered on the other three sides. And that leaves us with a Polaroid canvas. 4. Day 1 Snowy Mountains: Hi and welcome to day one, Snowy Mountains. While I'm getting my paper prepped, I wanted to share the reference photo that we will be painting together today. It is this beautiful sunrise morning. The sky is just beautiful, colorful and we have a snowy mountain in our midground. I'm just so excited to paint this photo, to really capture that beautiful sunrise sky. We are going to be using wet on wet technique today. I have a mop brush right here and I'm only going to wet the sky. That is where we are going to have our beautiful watercolors blending together. And I am making sure to leave a silhouette for our mountains. They are going to be white, so we will be using negative space to essentially highlight our mountains. I'm now switching over to a round brush to get the color into the sky. This is a warm yellow ochre, and I'm going to start off on the horizon in a little bit of yellow by painting our sky and dropping the colors on wet paper instead of dry paper. It helps all the colors to really blend into each other. And you don't see any hard lines as the colors are next to each other. Now I'm going to grab a few shades of pink to add above the yellow. I'm just using my round brush right now to further define the mountains just a little bit more. Now I am picking up a warm purple. I'm just going to add it to the top left hand corner. And I'm going to let those colors blend into each other. I'm going to add a little bit more pink. This really resembles the colors in our reference photo. This looks perfect to me. I am going to grab my hot air tool and I'm going to dry our sky. Now, I'm going to grab some blue, a darker blue. I am going to water it down with a little bit of water. And I'm going to add a little bit of indigo. With these two colors, I'm going to start painting the tops of our mountains. I am going to do that by very lightly tapping my brush at the very top corner. And pulling that brush, it's a little bit like dry brushing, but without as creamy as a paint mixture. I'm going to add more of that dark blue mixture to the left side, right here. Now I'm going to pick up my Da Vinci Coloneo size zero liner. And I'm going to pick up some paints, gray. We are going to paint the fence that we see over on the right hand side first. I like using liner brushes when painting small details or fine lines. It is a brush that is a little bit longer and as a result, it just gets the sharpest lines. I'm using that to paint the fence right here. I'm not trying to make the fence perfectly even. I am okay if the lines are a little bit wonky, it makes the fence feel like it's a little bit older and weathered by the snowy elements. I'm going to do two posts between each line, getting smaller as we get further away from us. Now, I'm just going to dry the existing paint I have on the paper because I want to a fence on the left side and I don't want any of these colors to bleed into each other. One tip to getting really fine lines is to have a watery mixture of paint. If your paint is a little bit too creamy, it's going to be hard to get fine lines. And the second tip would be to not have really any water in that liner brush. You really just want that really watery paint and you don't want there to be excess water in the brush. Now, let's dry off this fence. I'm now picking up the same liner brush but with a bigger size. This is a size four. I'm going to paint just a few little tiny trees right here on the left side. There are trees in the reference photo. And I think it just adds a little bit more to the composition to have a darker tree, a few trees on the side. To contrast the really light snow, to paint these trees, I'm just making a straight line down and moving my liner brush left and right to paint the tree branches, they just look like very tiny little triangles. Now I am picking up my round brush that I used earlier and I'm going to pick up some very light blue. And I'm just going to make some light brush marks here to signify that this is a road. This makes it look like the snow is a little bit darker on the sides of the road. And it really helps you focus your eyes to the mountaintops. That's it for this first day. Once everything is dry, we can remove our masking tape, and we have our very first winter Polaroid. I really love how this turned out, how soft our sunrise sky is, and the mountains just look so wintry and snowy. 5. Day 2 Frosted Trees: Welcome back to day two frosted trees. I am so happy to have you back with me. This is our reference photo for today. I just really love that bright turquoise color from the lake, contrasting with that soft forest of trees that we have all covered in a powdery, soft snow. And that's what we are going to be painting today. As I finish up taping off my Polaroid, I'm going to be grabbing an extra little piece of tape and that's going to separate our forest from our lake. After taping that down, I am going to grab my liner brush. This is the Da Vinci colonial size four liner. This is a brush that is going to do all of our magic when painting our trees today. I'm going to grab some indigo. I'm going to grab a good amount of indigo. And I'm going to grab some water and water it down on my palette to the right right here. And in our reference photo, we have a huge forest of trees. And I'm going to simplify that by only painting one row of trees. I'm painting a line down for the trunk of our tree. And then I am making very light tapping motions with my liner brush. And if you look closely, I'm sort of making little circular squiggles. And I'm going from top to bottom. And as I get down to the base of the tree, I am going wider. So that, like I said in our last lesson, tree kind of looks like a little triangle. I am going to vary the height of my trees so that they don't seem like cookie cutter trees all looking the same. But I just want you to be very relaxed with the way that you're holding your brush and to really be light and soft with your brush marks. Making sure to alternate between little dashes and little circles with your brush marks. For this third tree, I am going to have it be a little bit more sparse than the first two. I'm leaving more white space in between each row of branches that I'm painting with. This tree that I'm painting now, I'm using a lighter value of the indigo. This is a little bit more washed out. I'm going to have that contrasted with the next tree by picking up more indigo so that there is a variance of darkness and lightness so that our trees don't look flat. And so I'm picking up more indigo now. And you can see that this mark is a lot darker than the tree to the left of it. Now that I have some darker trees over here, I can see that the trees on the left are a lot lighter. So I'm just going to drop in a little bit of indigo just to the base of the corner in the left side, right here. Just to give some depth and dimension to our trees. I don't want them to look flat since we're using one color all the way across. The way that I achieve that is by varying the tones of the tree colors from left to right. You'll see right here that my line going down for the trunk wasn't completely straight. And I'm just here to remind you that trees in nature are not always fully upright. They are not perfect and when you are painting your trees with in water color, they do not need to be perfect either. Like you'll see my line is a little bit squiggly and that's going to be okay because the branches are going to cover up that line. For the most part. I'm making this one a little bit darker than the one that I just painted, so that the one in the lighter shade of indigo kind of looks like it's further back. And now I'm going to take my hot air tool and I'm going to completely dry all those trees. And now I'm going to come in with some Dr. ph Martin's white wash. This is a very opaque white water color. I just love it. I feel like it gives the perfect snow textures. And now I'm going over the trees with very similar brushstrokes that I did to paint them. I'm adding a layer of snow to these trees so that it definitely feels like winter in our landscape when you're painting the snow. One rule of thumb that I use is I like to skip every other branch so that it feels like there is snow settling just on top of the branches. And that there is some darkness underneath from where the tree branches would be that don't have snow covering them. I'm going to skip this tree, the second to last tree because that one is a little bit further back. I really like how that looks. I'm now going to rip off the tape that I had to tape off the lake. I'm using this 34 inch flat brush and I am going to wet the paper directly beneath the trees. Being careful not to paint water over the trees that we just painted. Now I'm grabbing some cyan. I think this matches the color of the lake. In our reference photo, I'm dropping some darker color right beneath the trees and right at the very bottom of our landscape. I'm going to dry this layer off with my hot air tool. In our reference photo, there is some snow piled up at the base of the forest. I'm just adding a little bit of snow that it looks like there is a little pile of snow right above where the lake would start. Now I'm going to grab with a liner brush, the same one that I used to paint the trees. I'm going to grab the same color that I used to paint the lake, but I am going to water it down a little bit. I am going to very lightly trace out the reflection of the trees in the lake, which we do see in our reference photo. My tip for this step is to not paint the entire tree. We are just very quickly painting a silhouette reflection. I recommend using the same color of that you use to paint the actual color of the lake. That way it feels more like a reflection and doesn't stand out too much. In terms of contrast, some of my reflection trees are a little bit darker than the others. That's okay. I'm trying to vary the values to keep it looking loose. I really like how that looks. We can dry this last layer off with our hot air tool. Once everything is dry, we can peel off our masking tape. There is something about that snowy lineup of trees and that beautiful reflection that just look really beautiful to me. 6. Day 3 Winter Sunrises: Welcome back to day three winter sunrises. In today's lesson, we are going to be looking at this reference photo. And I'm going to share one of my favorite ways of breaking down and simplifying reference photos. I like to see a reference photo as a blueprint for what I want to paint composition wise. And more often than not, I like to choose my own colors rather than relying on the colors exactly from the reference photo. Today we are going to paint a few trees that are in front of the brightest point of our sunrise. And instead of using the blues and dark blues and greens that we see in our reference photo, I'm going to be playing with pinks and purples and blues, colors that you wouldn't normally see in nature, but that still go together and still look beautiful when painted as a tree. So the first thing we're going to do is I'm going to grab my Princeton molar brush. And I'm going to wet our entire paper because we are going to lay down our first wash, which is going to be our background wash. I am grabbing my round brush and some yellow ochre and I'm going to lay down the brightest point of the background, which is the yellow that we see from the sun. Now I'm going to pick up some opera and paint that above the yellow. Then I'm going to grab some blue and paint it above that. I initially grab some of the indigo paints gray on my palette. And quickly after swatching it, I realize that it's a little bit too dark for me, and I pivot and use an ultramarine blue instead. If you ever pick up a color and as soon as it touches the paper, you realize that you don't like it. One easy way to correct that is to lift the unwanted colors out. The way that you lift color is to wash your brush, dab off the excess water or the clean water from your brush so that your brush is wet but dry, like there isn't a big glob of water in the brush head. And with that, we can lift whatever color that we've put onto our paper that we don't want. As long as the color, the water colors are still wet, There is the ability to lift the paint in water color. The absence of color creates light or brightness. And by lifting a small circle in our sky, that's going to help us paint the sunrise. Once we get to the trees, I'm adding a little bit more yellow because I see that it has gotten a little bit washed out. Now I'm going to use my hot air tool and dry off our sky. If you painted day two with me, this is going to be piggybacking off of the trees that we painted in day two. But I am using some yellow ochre to paint the tree branches directly in front of the sun. What we are going to do today is paint a tree that looks back, lit by the sun by using different colors. As we paint the tree, this warm, pinkish opera color is darker than the yellow. It looks like the yellow part of the tree is right in front of the sun. And then as we move further from that center focal point, the tree is going to get darker. We are going from yellow to pink to indigo, with yellow being the brightest point and indigo being the darkest. The indigo parts of the tree are the parts of the tree that are not back lit by the sun. This is one of my favorite ways to portray light and water color. Earlier I mentioned in a tiny pop up to keep a tiny slither of white here in the foreground. And I am going to be careful not to paint my tree into that white foreground because that is where we are going to paint our shadows. I'm looking at my tree now, and I see that the indigo has seeped into where I had painted pink parts of the tree. And I'm just taking my brush and I'm lifting that indigo from the pink. It's created a little bit of a blue. And I don't mind that too much, so I'm going to leave it. Another way that I simplify my photos is by taking out things that I don't want to paint. In the reference photo, there were three or four trees, but I'm only going to paint two. And I'm just going to paint one more to the left, right here. I'm not using any yellow since this tree is not. But I imagine the branches to the very right of the tree to have some light bouncing off of it. I'm using the Opera to paint just a little handful of branches to the right of the tree, and then I am painting the rest of it in indigo. I like how that looks, so I'm going to dry this layer off. And now I'm going to grab my bleed proof white paint and we're going to add some snow to these tree branches. The last thing I want to do is to mix a color for the shadows. I'm using some blue and indigo and I'm watering it down. And I'm just painting some shadows behind these trees, further accenting the light that we have captured in this landscape. Once everything has tried, we can take our masking tape off. And this might be one of my favorite projects in this series. I really hope you enjoyed painting this winter landscape with me. 7. Day 4 Icy Shadows: Hi, and welcome back to day Four, Icy Shadows. This is the reference photo that we will be painting from today. When I was picking reference photos, I came across this photo and I felt like this must have been taken maybe during a blizzard because the sky looks a little bit ominous to the left and I just felt cold. And I bet the shadows, I thought shadows from these mountains will be so fun to paint. That's what inspired today's landscape and what I thought when I was looking at this reference photo. At the very end of the lesson, we're going to use some metallic paint and give these shadows a shimmery reflection to them that I think captures the feeling of ice. The first thing that we're going to do is wet our background and we are going to paint the sky. I am grabbing my mop brush and I'm going to pick up some ultramarine blue. And I'm going to start to paint that really intense sky that we have with this reference photo for that upper left hand corner. I'm going to grab a darker blue to create that moodiness that we see in that corner. I'm going to start to build some of the shadows. I'm going to add some of that darker blue right here. Now I'm going to pick up a smaller round brush. This is the black velvet round brush. And I'm just going to lift a little bit of the blue because in the mountain that we have a little bit further from us, you actually see the brightness of one side of the mountain face. I just want to lift some of that color so that mountain face is a little bit on the more white side. Now I'm just going to get a pencil and I'm going to trace out this mountain so that I know where I want my shadows to be. Now, still using that black velvet, I am going to pick up some blue. If you look at the sketch that I did of the mountaintop, there are two mountain faces that we can see. I am going to paint in the shadow of the one that is not facing the source of light. Then there's a larger mountain on the right side. In the reference photo, this mountain is completely in shadows. I'm going to pick up ultramarine and I am going to fill in this mountain because it's closer to us. It's going to be darker than the mountain that's a little bit further away. That allows us to keep the perspective of this landscape. Both mountain tops have a lot of black rocks scattered across them. And I'm going to paint those in as little tiny specks just so it gives our mountains some more dimension and so that they don't look as flat. Again, I'm going to make the rocks on this mountain just a little bit darker than the mountain further away. Then now for the fun finishing touches, I'm going to grab my metallic paint. I'm going to do some paint spotters in one corner. I'm also going to paint some icy reflections. Because you know the ice, it is reflecting the sunlight. And so I can imagine in real life that there are in parts of the icy mountain that are more glimmering. And that's what this metallic paint represents. Once everything is dry, we can remove our masking tape. 8. Day 5 Early Cabin Mornings: Welcome back to day five, Early Cabin Mornings. This is the reference photo that we will be painting from today. I love how soft the sky is with really pretty pinks, blues and purples. And I love the tiny little cabin just nestled away in the mountains. I imagine the family living there to be waking up on an early morning and getting their coffee ready for the day. I'm going to start off by painting a yellow glow, and then now I am going to trace a very, very simple cabin over that glow that I want to be emitting from the cabin windows. After this, we will move on to painting the sky. I am going to grab my Motlerbrush and I'm going to wet the paper so that we can paint a really soft and beautiful sky above our tiny little cabin. I grab some lavender with my mop. Then I'm going to pick up some pinks and some purples. The sky in the reference photo does have some moodiness to it, so I am going to pick up some of the darker blue and indigo colors on my palette. And I'm going to drop in just a few darker brush strokes of color. Then I'm going to dry this layer and then now I am going to get my tree brush. I shared in the supplies video how I made this brush and why I love it for painting trees. But I'm going to grab some indigo and bring it over to my palette. And we are going to paint some dark trees around the cabin that is going to highlight the snow on top of the cabin. It's also going to make the yellow lights coming from the cabin windows seem that much brighter because it is being contrasted with really dark loose trees around it. I love this tree. It is so, and it really just paints so many different foliage and tree textures. If you didn't watch the supplies portion of this video, be sure to check that part out. Now that I have the cabin surrounded by dark trees, I am going to grab my black velvet round brush and I am going to gently color in the cabin. I'm going to have the four walls of the cabin be a nice warm brown. I am going to make sure to outline the windows and I'm going to use white wash on the roof so that it looks like the cabin is just covered in powdery snow. Now I'm grabbing the white wash and I am going to paint our roof. Now I'm going to use the white gouache to paint some fallen snow on the trees around the cabin. Now I'm going to take my hot air tool and everything and I'm going to grab my Da Vinci Coloneo size four liner. And I'm going to pick up some neutral tint And I'm going to paint a fence that I want in the foreground. I just want this fence to frame our photo. As I'm painting this fence. I realized that the blue that I had swatched in the foreground here is really washed out. I'm going to dry my fence and I'm going to make a with some ultramarine. And fence wasn't as dry as I wanted it to, so it smeared a little tiny bit, but it's okay. I just needed it to be white behind the fence so that the snow on top of the fence would actually show up. And the last thing I want to do is add some birds to our sky as finishing touches. And once we're done with that, we can peel our masking tape off. I hope you enjoyed painting this early morning sunrise cabin with me. 9. Day 6 National Parks: Welcome back to Day Six National Parks. This is the reference photo that we'll be painting from today, this photo of Yosemite. If you have been following me on Instagram for a while, you'll know that I have painted this exact shot in almost every season. I think now I have painted a winter version of this. But this is a new photo that I haven't painted yet. I'm excited to get started. The first thing we're going to do is wet our paper, and I'm going to drop some moody pinks and purples for our sky. I'm using my mop brush and I'm going to pick up some opera. And I'm going to mix it with some of the purples that I have on my palette to create a moodier purple. Then now I'm going to pick up just a little bit of paints gray and drop it in the right corner. We are going to dry the sky. Then now I'm going to get my black velvet round four brush again. I'm going to pick up some neutral tint and I am going to start painting the outline of our mountains right here. I'm also going to leave the reference photo up in the corner just because I am going to be trying to paint most of the outlines. And I think just having the reference photo to look at will be helpful. Just a reminder that when you're painting from reference photos, you can pick and choose what parts of the reference photos you want to keep. I'm keeping the silhouette outlines of the different mountains all together, but I am going to simplify other aspects of this photo. The mountain range that we have on the right over here is primarily in the shadows in this photo. So I'm going to be grabbing a stronger hue of neutral tint so that it looks a little bit darker. Then for this cascading mountain on the left right here, it's closer to us than the mountain that I painted just behind it. I'm also going to paint this in a darker value of neutral tint. When creating perspective with water color, the objects closer to us are usually darker and the objects further from us are usually lighter. By alternating those values in color, it creates perspective in our eyes. There are a lot of trees in the midground, and the colors in the photo are some muted purples and pinks. I'm simplifying all those trees by just adding a light layer of purple right in front of the mountains. Then now I am going to grab some pink and I'm going to drop in pink in there as well. I am dry brushing some of it and I'm leaving some intentional white space. Now I'm going to grab my colonial size four liner and we are going to paint the green trees that we have in the foreground. I am grabbing a dark moody green. I'm going to paint this tree right here. It is taller than the rest of the trees and you see that it has a lot of really droopy branches that are covered in snow. I am going to make little semicircle brush marks to signify those droopy branches. And next I'm going to paint this clump of trees over here on the right side. They are similar trees to that droopy tree that I painted, but they are kind of all bunched together. So I'm going to paint these trees a little bit differently so that it kind of breaks up our foreground and that there are different areas of interest and different trees over here. I like how those trees look now. I'm going to dry this layer off. Now I'm going to grab my bleed proof white paint again. We are going to add some snow to these trees. I'm using the same brush for this tree right here. I really want to highlight those droopy branches because the mountains behind the tree and the tree itself are all really dark. The white that we're adding for the snow is really going to make this tree in our foreground really pop out at us. And then now I'm going to add some snow to these trees on the right as well. Let's try that layer off really well. Now I am going to pick up some neutral tint. And I'm just going to add some rocky details to the mountain faces so that they don't feel as flat. I like how that looks. Let's dry this layer off completely. And once everything is dry, we can peel our masking tape off. This is day six National Parks. 10. Day 7 Northern Lights: Welcome back to day seven. Today we are going to be painting Northern lights. And there is nothing more iconic that represents winter more than a bright set of Northern lights. This is our reference photo that we will be painting from today. I painted Northern lights for the first time last year and I quickly fell in love with how fun these were to paint in watercolor. I am going to be taping our paper down to acrylic board because we are going to be misting our paper with a spray bottle and to get the movement that we see with the Northern lights. We are actually going to be getting our watercolors to move and we are going to have so much fun. This is going to get a little bit messy. So make sure to have paper towels or paper cloths nearby to help clean up the mess for all of our polaroids. I have been taping off the very bottom part, leaving a tiny little space. But I just want to point out that this little strip of paper that normally is uncovered with our masking tape, I am going to add an additional piece of tape just to cover it because I don't want there to be water color on this bottom little strip for today's northern lights. The three main colors that we need are thalo green, thalo blue, and either indigo or paints gray. I don't have a thalo green in my palette right here, so I'm just squeezing some out from a tube. Now I am grabbing a pencil and I'm just lightly sketching out where I want my mountains to be. I'm not going to paint out the person in the center of the photo, but I am going to have the northern lights reflecting off the mountains. Now I'm going to grab a flat brush and I'm going to wet our paper. Once our paper is fully wet, I'm going to pick up some thalo green and I'm going to start painting the brightest point of the lights. At the top center of our photo, we see a beautiful ray of northern lights. And I'm going to add some green on the mountains because it is reflecting off the icy mountains in our reference photo. Now I'm going to pick up thalo blue. I am making diagonal brush strokes to help convey the movement in this photo by laying down the brighter colors first and painting the darker colors over them. It helps to preserve the light. Now I'm going to grab some indigo, and I'm going to drop some indigo at the top of our landscape. And I'm also going to change the angle of my camera so that you can see what I'm doing a little bit better. But after we drop the indigo at the top, I'm going to grab a little water spritzer bottle and we are going to spray this dark indigo paint. And we are actually going to get it moving on our paper that is going to help convey the movement that we see in the Northern lights. Yes, the paint is going to get everywhere. It's going to get messy, but it's also so, so much fun. What I'm doing is I'm dropping darker color at the top. Then I'm using gravity to create the movement with the darker paint. I'm using my brush and I'm wetting the rest of the paper, and now I'm grabbing more indigo. I am dropping it in the right hand corner and I'm going to tilt my paper so that the paint flows down in a diagonal line. I'm also being careful and trying my best to preserve some of the green on the paper, but using gravity, tilting your board and using the water bottle to spray at the paper is going to create that movement. And I am using some paper towels to pick up excess water. Also, there's no right or wrong with how this sky is going to turn out. And I love that there is an unpredictable sentiment with this. It just feels really fun and sort of in line with how nature would be now that I've dried it off. I'm grabbing some neutral tint and I'm going to paint in the mountains. I am going to remember the sketch that I did prior to putting down any color, and I'm going to trace that mountain shape. How I am going to preserve the green reflection on the mountain is by taking just a wet, clean brush and softening that initial line that I painted on the mountain. I'm going to do the same for the mountain. On the left, I am going to trace the silhouette of the mountain with neutral tint. And I'm going to paint in the parts of the mountain that are not reflecting the Northern lights. Then now I am just getting a clean brush. And I'm softening that hard line right there so that it looks like the Northern lights are just reflecting off of the mountain. I like how that looks. We are going to dry all that off then. Now I'm going to grab some scratch paper. I am going to add star spots to the sky, but I don't want there to be splatters on the actual mountain. Let's dry all of that off, and once everything is dry, we can peel our masking tape off. I just love how this turned out. Northern Lights are so fun to paint and I hope you enjoyed painting these with me. 11. Your Class Project: Congratulations on finishing this class, and I really hope you enjoyed learning and painting along with me. In this lesson, I want to go over a few resources that I want to share with you. Including how to upload a class project, how to leave a class review, and where to go from here. If you are on the class website and scroll down to the project and resources tab, I want to direct your attention to the files here under the downloaded resources. Here will be all of the reference photos that I painted from. You can download the photos and have them open next to the class while the class streams. I also have a file with all of my class projects, along with all of the class supplies, and a photo of all of the different colors swatched out that I used. If you scroll back up on the right hand side, you'll see a purple bar that says My Project. Hit the Submit Project button, and it will take you to this screen Right here under Project Title. Feel free to put your name or a title for your project and then hit the Upload Image button. I recommend posting photos that are in landscape format. Once you select the photo, you can crop it to your liking. And once it looks good to you, hit Submit. It will appear in the class gallery. I really enjoy seeing all of your work and it makes me really happy to see people enjoying the class. To leave a class review, hit the reviews tab and then hit the button. Leave a review. I welcome any and all feedback and would really love to hear what you thought of the class. If you enjoy my style of teaching, feel free to find my Skillshare profile. On my Skillshare profile, you'll see a list of all of my recent classes. And you can hit the follow up button to get notified when I publish future classes. Thank you again for taking my class and I hope to see you in a future lesson.