How to Paint NORTHERN LIGHTS Landscape with Acrylic - Paint and Sip at Home - Step by Step Tutorial

hi there i'm michelle the painter from berkshire paint and sip and this is paint and sip at home [Music] all right so today i'm going to be painting northern lights and i'm going to be sipping on a little pinot grigio and if you do enjoy this video i hope that you like and subscribe to my channel and that you also check out my patreon page where you're going to find additional painting perks so let's get painting and let's get sitting alright so for my materials today i'm going to be using a stretched and prime 16 by 20 inch canvas if you're painting along with me you can certainly switch up the size but that's what i'll be using i'm going to be using acrylic paint today my colors are titanium white cobalt blue mars black purple violet burnt umber which i'll call brown fluorescent pink and chrome yellow and of course you can switch those up but that's what i'll be using for my tools today i have two brushes i have a half inch wide flat bristle brush and i have a number five round brush and i'll refer to these as small and large as we go through the painting process and again you can switch those up too uh if you're painting along with me you're probably going to want to have a cup of water for washing your brushes as well as a paper towel for drying your brushes and down below this video in the in the video description i have a couple of additional resources for you that can help you through your painting process one of them is a link where you could purchase the same paint kit that i'm using from the large canvas to the brushes and and the paint and the fancy palette i use and all that good stuff so that's there for you there's also a link where you can download a free image of the final painting so you can print that and use it as visual reference as you go through the painting process and there's also written step-by-step instructions down there for you as well and that's all we're going to need today all right so we're going to do for the first step is we are going to be painting our sky or at least the first step to our sky we're going to be using our large brush and the colors that i'm using are black purple blue and white and how i'm going to do this i'm going to be going left to right with my colors i'm going to start dark at the top with black then i'll transition into purple then blue and then a little bit lighter as i come down towards the the horizon line i'm going to be bringing my sky down about three quarters of the way down my canvas so what i'm going to do just to start i'm just going to pick up a little bit of purple on my brush and i'm just going to give myself a couple of markers so i don't go past that that way so you can pick your halfway point just by sight if you say okay maybe this is about my halfway point or i said i should say you could pick your quarter way by sight here's your halfway and it's about halfway between there and the bottom is your quarter way and just make yourself a little mark you could use your brush as a measuring tool come along to the other side make yourself another little mark that can just stop your eye and stop your brush from going farther than that when you're doing your sky so i'm not going to wash my brush i'm just going to pick up some black and purple to start my sky up at the top and the reason why i'm using both of them at the same time is because it will help for my transition into that purple a little bit easier if i've got already got that purple on my brush so black and purple the black will overpower the purple but when you go start coming down and start adding the purple like right now i'm just picking up purple without washing my brush you will be able to have an easier kind of gradient going into it now because we are using acrylic paint your paint may look streaky or scratchy and if that is not appealing to you you can certainly do a second coat on your sky once we've got it all done you can dry it and then do a second coat i might get away with just one coat so i'm just going to keep going this way i'm stopping i stopped painting because i wanted to tell you i picked up purple and blue the next time that i um loaded my brush so right now i'm starting to transition with the purple and blue i'm probably going to go purple and blue on my brush at the same time for quite a ways down my sky because i like the way that they kind of transition with each other you could just alternate those colors if you want i just picked up some purple and maybe next time i pick up a little bit of blue so you can really have a lot of fun with the way that this sky kind of gradually goes down towards the horizon line still right now i'm just kind of picking up purple and blue in a little bit i'm going to start picking up my white with these colors so that way i can transition down towards that lighter horizon but as you can see every now and again i just kind of bring my brush with a full stroke all the way left to the right and that way what happens is it allows me to not get what i refer to as cut marks cut mark to me is when i can see my vertical um direction of the bristles so i like to just kind of give it a nice smooth brush stroke to avoid those so right now i'm going to start picking up a little bit of white with my blue and or purple and again you can certainly train turn this into whatever tonal value you want if you want it lighter or darker feel free to adjust it accordingly but i'm going to try and get it nice and light as it goes down towards that horizon line just so it looks like the the lights that we're going to be the northern lights that we're going to be incorporating into it are almost kind of illuminating the bottom of the sky as it's coming up from the from the earth on the other side so you can you know again utilize your lightness or darkness however you want to but i'm going to get mine pretty darn light at the bottom and then after you've got that first coat on you make your own decision if you want to do a second layer you can go ahead and do you know let the first layer dry for a couple minutes and then go ahead and do a second layer i think i'm not quite sure what i'm going to do on mine i might let it dry for a minute and make that determination but at this point if you're ready to go on to the next step we will be using this same brush for the next step so you'll just want to wash it and dry it and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're going to do the first layer of our stream so i'm going to be using my large bristle brush and i'm going to be using the same colors that i used in my sky which are black purple blue and white so what i'm going to do is i'm going to first give you a couple of markers and we'll just make some markers and then we're going to connect those and then we're going to paint it in and by the time we're done we'll have something that resembles a stream so i'm going to use my um big brush i'm just going to put a little bit of purple and blue on my brush and i don't need much this is just going to give us kind of like an outline i'm going to come down from where my sky is maybe about a half of an inch to an inch and i'm making myself a little mark that's maybe about a quarter of an inch tall something like that and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to come all the way down to the bottom right hand corner of my canvas make myself another marker and then i'm going to come about a quarter of the way in from the bottom left and make myself a third marker so something like that now i'm going to connect this top to here with a very messy kind of jaggedy line something like this [Music] and then i'm going to connect this top to that bottom right corner with the same kind of thought process i just kind of want just a really jaggedy type of line so i don't have one solid straight line and then i'm going to color this in i want it to go from dark to light but i'm going to start the darkness at the bottom so the bottom is going to have a little bit of black in it and then as i move my way towards the top of it i'll be making it lighter so i didn't wash my brush i'm just putting a tiny bit of black and purple on my brush which is how i started the top and i'm just going to start the bottom just like that and i'm just going left to right and we're going to have a bunch of stuff on top of this water later so don't worry if the water isn't as perfect as your sky is i just picked up a little bit of blue and purple as i'm transitioning up my water actually i think i want that bottom to be just a little bit darker so i just put a little bit more black on my brush i want it to be evident that that bottom is nice and dark so i just added a little bit more black onto my brush now i'm going to use that blue and purple as i make my way up towards the top of the brook or the reflective part that would be reflecting the sky and i'm just using a left to right motion i am going right up to that outline that we created so it looks like it blends well together and now i'm going to start to use a little bit of white on my brush with that purple and the and the blue and you can see i'm not doing anything fancy here i'm just trying to get it to transition to a little bit lighter of a color now you can start to see it getting lighter and lighter as it's going off into the distance here and then we are going to be using this same brush for the next step so once you've got your water on here you can wash and dry this large brush and get ready for the next step oops all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're doing the first layer of our land i'm going to be using my big bristle brush and i'm going to be using brown and white paint so i really just want this to be the dirty undercoat of the snow that we're going to be putting on later so i'm just using brown and white i want my line where it meets my sky to be a little bit uneven so i'm just going to kind of wherever i want it to go on maybe i'll make a little hill here or a little hill there i'm using the brown and white on my brush at the same time so i have some natural light spots and dark spots and i do want to make sure that the entire top is in the sky so that way there's no unpainted canvas between my land and my sky and i'm not using any fancy brush stroke i'm kind of just using a loose left to right type of brush stroke but when i get you could do circles you could really do whatever brush stroke you want because it's just going to be the under belly cover of color of our snow but when you get to the water's edge you want it to meet in a kind of a natural way so you again you don't want a really straight line so i'm just gonna kind of utilize this left to right brush stroke and if i accidentally bump into some wet paint from my water i'm really okay with that i'm just gonna let it work its way into my my land color and again every time i reload my brush i'm just picking up a little bit of brown and white and this is going to provide me with a really nice base coat for my snow that i'm going to put on later and then i'm going to do the same step down here in this area here it's if yours ends up darker than mine or lighter than mine it's okay because again it's just the under color for our water and then let's see what are we going to do for the next step we are going to use this same brush for the next step so once you've got this first coat on your land you can wash and dry this large brush and get ready for the next step okay so we are on to a super fun step we're going to be putting the stars in the sky so i'm using my bristle brush i'm going to be using kind of a little flicking type technique you could use a toothbrush you could use your small brush and make a thousand little dots you can really apply it whatever way you want the way that i'm going to be doing it it's going to put millions of little tiny dots on there so i'm doing the stars now because when i look at the northern lights they are apparent in kind of the atmosphere clouds that are in the sky but the stars are way way above them so in my opinion the stars would have to be higher in the sky and almost behind the northern lights so that's why i'm gonna do them now the method that i'm doing is gonna it's very messy so my hand is gonna get messy my wall behind is gonna get messy so if you're gonna do the same method i'm doing just be prepared it gets everywhere um and i'm okay if it lands in my land or in my um little waterway because we're gonna be covering that stuff up anyways so how i'm gonna do this is i'm just gonna take my bristle brush and i'm gonna dab it in my white paint and then i'm gonna kind of wipe it off on the side of my palette i don't want a huge glob on it and you can even kind of test this out on a piece of paper or somewhere else if you're nervous about how it's going to go on your canvas and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to take the tip of the brush and my finger and i'm just going to kind of flick it for me my bristles allow me to do this but i have to be really really close to the canvas and i'm getting thousands of tiny little dots every time i feel that i'm running out of paint or it's really hard to get the the stars on there i do just reload my brush i think i need more paint because i'm not i'm not getting as many stars as i want right now so i'm reloading my my my brush and if you have too much paint on your brush you might end up with these little like squiggly streaks but that's okay that you know maybe you have some shooting stars off in your sky so you go ahead and put as many stars on here as you want this is to me a really really fun step but sometimes it takes a few minutes just to get the amount that you want and i'm just i'm just keep on keeping on until i've got my entire sky just filled with these oops see i just got a little streaker there but that's okay looks like a it looks like i'm gonna have a nice shooting star within my sky and again you can keep going until you have as many on here if you want you if you want you can also i just got an accidental big one but if you wanted a couple of big ones you could take sorry i'm having too much fun i was going to show you another method but you're going to have to wait a minute because i'm having too much fun if you wanted enough like a bigger one you could take your small brush and the butt end of it you could put some paint on it and you could do a couple of bigger ones if you wanted to have a couple of bigger ones throughout the sky so you just have fun make as many stars as you want to and then we are going to use this large brush for the next step so you'll want to wash it and dry it and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are painting our i'm going to call them our back trees so these are going to be the trees that are way off in the distance at our horizon line i'm going to be using my big bristle brush and i'm going to be using black and brown paint i just want it to kind of look far off in the distance i don't really want much detail to it so i'm going to put a little bit of black and brown on my brush at the same time and i'm not going to be terribly concerned about it being really clean looking i almost want it kind of out of focus so what i'm going to do is i'm going to kind of rub it at the horizon line right above my um snow line and then i'm going to just you know loose out of focus way put some representational pine trees back there so here we go i've just got a little bit of brown and black on my brush and i don't want it super tall i don't want it to take away from the focus of what i'm going to be putting my front trees on so i'm really just going to kind of utilize that in a loose fashion i feel like i have too much paint on my brush so i'm wiping it off on my paper towel and then i'm just going to kind of sit and make these little almost like shrubs or triangles that are going to come up every now and again and again i just want it to be loose and interpretive it does i don't want it to look like anything in focus i really just want it to be an out of focus kind of um representation of maybe some pine trees way off in the distance and then we are going to be using let's see what we're going to use for next up we're going to use this same brush for the next step so once you've got these out of focus back trees on here you can wash and dry this large brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're painting the northern lights in the sky so i'm going to be using my bristle brush and i'm going to be using all of my colors except for brown and black so i'm using pink yellow purple blue and white and any combination there of i might even mix myself some custom colors along the way um i do know that the the assortment or the display of northern lights can come in any color and in any shape so it really is atmospheric movement so think of loose clouds just kind of moving through the sky it can have a pattern to it it can come straight up with a curve it can be wavy it can really take on any form you want but what i do notice when i'm looking at various pictures of them is they seem to be kind of brighter as it's closer to the ground so wherever you're whatever direction you want to have your light your lights in or the lights that are kind of glowing the clouds if you have them brighter at the bottom or closer to the um the land that's going to make the most sense so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to do it in a series of layers i'm first going to kind of put my my pattern on there and then i will build from the light part up to let it kind of float up into the sky i'm not going to use white initially because i want my colors to look translucent and i want you to be able to see the sky behind them as soon as you start using white that's going to change the opacity of the paint and you might not be able to see through it so first just use your translucent colors to get your pattern on there and then you can start adding a little bit of white to lighten the value of them or to get those brighter areas on there so if i haven't scared you enough already let's start um so i'm going to use my big brush and i think to start i'm just going to kind of utilize these four colors which is blue purple pink and yellow to get my pattern on there and again i can kind of use any pattern i want but i'm going to start with a little bit of yellow and for me i think i'm going to have mine kind of coming out of here almost doing like a little bit of an s form and just kind of trailing off into the sky so i'm going to start with maybe my main one in through here and i'm really just going to utilize this translucent paint to give myself kind of leniency as i'm at as i'm creating my shape so i think i'm going to have this one going something like this and then i'm just going to kind of brush it out so i don't have very firm lines so something like that i'm going to pick up some more of the yellow to get maybe a second one in through here in a in a similar kind of pattern so something like this and i'm not using a lot of paint i really just want to kind of give myself an idea of where i want my pattern to go but you can certainly if you want to use a lot of paint and get yours really thick at this point feel free to do so but again i'm just being i'm playing on the cautious side to start i think i'm going to put yellow and blue on my brush to do this top one and i think this one i'm gonna have maybe coming like this and then maybe getting bigger and just kind of going up into the atmosphere over here and then maybe this one is like a squiggly line coming down here and again these can be in any shape you want them to be they can really take on any form in the sky and now that i've kind of got my idea of where i want it now now i start adding my colors into it and getting it more bright and vibrant so i'm just going to pick up a little bit of purple i mean a pink you might find that you want to have yours in a much different color palette maybe you just want yours to be green so you use blue and yellow maybe you want a ton of pink in yours maybe you want yours to be purple but for me i know that the they're gonna in essence kind of go up kind of dissipate as they go up so i'm just getting my my vibrant tones on here right now and then i'm gonna start moving my brush in an upward direction but right now just kind of getting these on here and you might get this on the first shot and and you might say oh my god i just love it the way that it is and just leave it that way but if you feel like you still want you know more movement or more colors and stuff like that then that's where you just kind of keep building it up into the atmosphere i think i'm going to put some blue some purple and pink on my brush to get this little guy over here i think now i'm going to start bringing my brush in an upward motion to get best to just kind of disappear up into the sky and i want movement in mind so that's why my lines are nice and wavy i think i'm going to put blue and blue and yellow i'm going to make myself like this pretty kind of teal color you can mix and match i might make a little bit of a peach color in a minute i don't know i'm just i'm just gonna have some fun i just added a touch of white as well so i can get this to be a little bit more vibrant in through here and then i think i'm gonna just bring this up in here give myself some movement into that sky and you can see i'm just i'm just playing at this point with the direction i have you i have picked up a touch of white now that um i know the pattern of my of my lights and where they're going so i'm utilizing blue and yellow and white and just kind of getting this to almost go in an upward motion on some of these i'll call them cloud waves i keep feeling like this is a a piece of a brush but it's not it's my it was where i flicked a big star earlier so again i'm just kind of putting some of any color on and then just kind of dry brushing it almost into its light and and filling that atmosphere with it with its colors and you can see i'm not using a lot of paint and this is looking yummy i like it when these colors just kind of start working together i'm going to start to use a little bit more white as i'm coming down towards this area that's going to be nearing the the earth a little bit more so i'm not washing my brush i really want these colors to look like they belong together but if you because i'm not using a lot of paint i'm maintaining the control over it but if you find that you're you're doing this and you're like oh my god it's i it's too muddled i have too much paint on my brush then certainly you can wash your brush and you know kind of go from scratch so i am trying to get the lightest part at the bottom of each one of these little waves these these northern light waves but then i'm going to try and pull up those light colors so light at the bottom and then you can just pull up those colors until they kind of meet that atmosphere but i'm consciously trying to not overdo my sky because i really want to be able to see those the the stars in the sky too so again have fun with it make it make it your own version of the northern lights i did not this is not a replication of of any specific photograph this was just my interpretation so you can certainly make your own interpretation i'm trying to decide what colors to use right now i think i'm making another of that that pretty like teal color i like i like that so i think i'm going to put a little bit more of that into here it's i don't know it's it's speaking to me so you can certainly again feel free to to have fun with these colors and make it whatever you want and i'm just kind of pulling these colors up into the sky putting the the little wave part again is the brightest and then i'm just utilizing almost like a dry brush type technique i think i'm going to put some more blue and uh and yellow on my brush to get this to be a little bit more vibrant up in through here but without overdoing it yeah i'm digging that and then maybe a little wave in through here i think i'm going to wash and dry my brush at this point because i want a little bit more maybe pink to kind of start representing itself so i just washed and dried my brush or like a little peachy orange color so i can take my yellow and my pink and i can mix them together and it's just a really cool orangey type peachy color so again you have fun with your colors because i know that i do so whatever you know is speaking to you that's that's that's the direction that you want to go and if you know if if you come to a point you're like oh i i colored my sky too much there's too much you know i can't see my sky underneath it's okay just roll with it there's no right or wrong when it comes to a display of the northern lights because they all can be in different intensities you can have them really really powerful some can be really really subtle so don't feel that if yours doesn't look exactly like mine that it's not correct because that's that's not the case and again here i'm just kind of bringing it up from that little cloud wave yeah i'm liking i'm liking this orangey kind of color in here i think i'm gonna put a little bit over it through here and you can see i just keep playing until i've got this into the the realm that i want it to be i think i'm going to pull some of my my pink and my purple over in through here yeah that's what i'm talking about i don't know sometimes when i'm going to these colors they're just look they just they get me going i like i like some colors and then when you see them they when you see it come to life on your canvas and it and it brings a a nice happy feeling to you then you know that you're doing something right because it's really more about the feeling of joy when you're painting as opposed to what it comes out looking like so just enjoy the process and you will you will enjoy your painting when you when you start to enjoy the process of creating it then it almost doesn't matter what it looks like in the end so i am just going to continue to keep tweaking mine until yeah see that's what i'm talking about sometimes you just put a tiny bit of white on your brush and it brings brings it to life i think i'm going to pull this maybe a little bit curving it in something like that and then just with my dry brush just kind of pulling these lights up just a little bit more into that atmosphere yeah i'm digging this all right so i'm just going to kind of maybe keep tweaking mine a little bit maybe you feel like yours is the way that you want it to be but if you want to keep tweaking it yeah i'm going to put a little bit more up here um if you want to keep tweaking yours feel free to do so we're going to use this same brush for the next step so once you've got yours wherever you want them to be you can so pretty you can um sorry now i'm not going to be able to stop painting this is one of those steps sorry about that um once you are done you can just wash and dry this big brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are finishing our snowy land i'm going to be using my big brush i'm going to be using white because we have snow down there but i will also use the colors from my sky too because i want there to be little bits of these colors in the snow as if they're reflecting onto the snow and i'll probably also use maybe a little bit of black too if i need some gray tonal value in there so for me i'm going to have it kind of brighter along my edge of my water and maybe up in through the top of the land in through there so i'm going to start with just white on my brush just to kind of give myself the information of where i want it the lightest so because i have this darker under color i really don't need to do much in order to get some good dimension in my in my land but i want to kind of give a little bit of information that maybe it's a little bit of a hill maybe it then kind of dips down here and it's a little bit brighter towards the edge of the the waterway so i'm going to do light at the top to tell people that that's the top and then it's going to get darker as it comes down the hill and maybe a little bit of extra brightness towards the edge of the of where the where it meets the water and you don't have to put it bright right at the exact edge of the water if you put it near the edge of the water that's going to almost make the wa the little lip of the land look a little bit more three-dimensional so something like that and then maybe i've got a little bit on this side as well and now that i've got my brighter areas in there what i'm going to do is just take the remnants of my brush and just kind of rub it on here maybe a touch of black too just to put a little bit of gray value in there so something like this just to give myself some some varying tones and shades in there and we still have some of that original color but i like putting a second coat on yeah that's looking good so i've got my bright at the top some bright at the bottom of the land and uh where it hits the water and then i've got the rest coming over here so then what i'm going to do is i want to have some bits of the color from the the sky in my snow as well so without washing my brush i'm just going to kind of wipe it on my paper towel and i'm going to start popping in some of those bits of colors so maybe i pick up a tiny bit of pink and maybe i put because i got pink over here maybe maybe i put little bits of pink on my snow over there maybe i've got a lot of you know my oranges this kind of orange maybe i put just little bits i'm not going crazy with this i just want the hint of some of these colors in through here i want a little bit of purple maybe maybe maybe some purple and pink so you so it doesn't look just um dark so i've got a little purple and pink on my brush oh i like the pink i'm going more pink i don't know i just like it i like it on the snow it really is reading as these are some great you know maybe little flex or reflections from the sky maybe we'll go with some of that greenish blue or just a little bit of the blue we'll put i don't know maybe some of that over yeah something over here maybe over here and again i'm really not doing much just kind of putting some of these little cute flecks in through there i think i want some pink over here too the pink to me is really telling me that these are you know parts from the sky just coming on down maybe a little bit of that yellow yeah something and i'm not really making it you know a mirror image or anything like that we're gonna have trees and all kinds of other stuff yeah that looks good so that's all i'm going to do for my for my um land i'm going to be using this same i say that's all i'm doing but i'm going to put some more on i'm going to use this same brush for the next step so once you've got your land all nice and done you can just wash and dry that large brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're putting the reflection in our water or we're finishing the water really so i'm going to use my big bristle brush and i'm going to use similar colors and this time i'm going to be a little bit more conscious than i was in the land the land i just kind of sprinkled in some colors here and there without really caring because they there's lots of variables in the in the land whereas the water would be a more reflective um image of what's in the sky so i'm going to pull some of these bright colors directly below so i'm going to use my peach yellow and white and i don't need it to be perfect perfect but you kind of if you can do anything with like a similar motion as you have here it's sometimes really tough to go upside down but if you can if you can make it happen it's a really cool um way to i'm right now i'm doing a little bit of this it's a really cool way to tell the story of um it being reflective and it is water it's it's giving you a similar image to what's up above but if the water's ripply it you know it can certainly be distorted when it comes to that particular um reflection so don't feel like it has to be perfect but if you can get some of those colors to be similar then that definitely helps to helps to sell the story so if that's that then this is going to be this one and again it's upside down so so it's really difficult and i'm gonna try and do this like this there we go and give myself some of this pink over here because i really like the prank something like that get it in that water and again it doesn't have to be uber perfect but if you can translate some of that similar pattern down into the water with the similar colors then it really um it's really fun and and allows the viewer to understand what they're looking at so i've got that in through there and then this is just going to kind of hide off in the corner here i'm going to just put a touch of that purple and pink maybe down in through here and then before i call it that my that my water is done i'm gonna put wash my brush real quick and i'm gonna pick up a touch of black and or black and brown i never told you what colors i was using on this step but it's all my sky colors and black and brown so it's like all the colors on my palette um but again i just kind of was using would it your colors might be different because your sky pattern could have been different than mine so whatever colors you used in the sky that's what colors you would utilize in the water and then i'm putting a shadow along the edge of my snow in the water so i have a tiny bit of black and brown on my brush and i'm going to just move my brush left and right just right along that snow edge i don't want a really firm line this is just again giving the viewer the information that this snow has a little bit of height to it it's either casting a shadow into the water or it's re you know maybe a little bit of a reflection but if it was a reflection you would want to use a little bit of white as well on the edges but that's looking pretty good to me i'm going to go all the way down to my little corner here and if you felt let's say on this one that you know if it's coming around the corner a little bit and you feel like there could be a little shadow here then feel free to put it going in there you probably don't need one around here because one we're gonna have a big tree but you know utilize whatever whatever method you feel is going to make it look realistic if you want your water to have more movement you could certainly add some left and right light strokes if you wanted to but i think that looks pretty good on my part so we are going to be using uh let's see we're gonna use our we're gonna use the big brush for the next step so once you've got your water done you can wash and dry the big brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're gonna do for the next step is we're putting our foreground trees our front trees on the first layer of them i'm going to be using my big brush and i'm going to be using black paint only we'll be putting all the colors on in a little bit so i'm just going to kind of put them in place we're going to be doing sticks and all kinds of stuff to fill in our ground also so after you get done this step if your ground still seems a little sparse don't worry about it we'll we'll correct that or or add to it in a little bit so i'm going to use my bristle brush i'm going to be using just black paint in order for my brush to be in control i like to squish it on the side of my palette that's going to bring my bristles together and i'm going to have my trees all different heights um i'm going to have some on this land and over here so i think what i'm first going to do is just give myself some place markers or tree trunks i guess one would normally call them um i think i'm going to have this one pretty close to the edge of my canvas and it's going to come up pretty far so maybe something like that and i'm just going to give myself a couple more here maybe somewhere in there maybe i've got a couple let's see maybe one here and i'm just using kind of the corner of my brush to to give myself these little markers maybe i've got a little one here uh maybe maybe we've got one i would say right about here and you can have them in whatever height or whatever distance from one another you want i'm gonna have a couple in this land here too so maybe this one's going to go somewhere in through here and maybe i'll have a shorter one over here you can see i'm putting them pretty close together maybe i have a little baby one too over here you can again have as many as you want so there's my my place markers and some of them are going to merge into each other some of them will be in front of one another it's all right whatever happens happens um so as i do this i'm just thinking long kind of triangle with uh with my branches are going in many different directions if you want it to really look like the snow is weighting it down you would have your branches coming in a in a downward motion if you want it to be like maybe they haven't had a lot of snow on them and they're still kind of in the upward motion you can have them in in an upward motion so i'm just thinking pine tree i'm thinking that these branches are going to come off in different directions maybe it hasn't snowed too heavily as of as of the time when we're depicting this picture but maybe you want yours to really have have your branches coming all the way down i am just using kind of the edge or the tip of my brush that way i can get these to almost look like branches coming out but you want them to come out in different directions have different lengths to them uh you don't want them to all be really systematic and have the same width to them or the same direction or the same number of dots for that particular branch this one's going to go off of my canvas on the right hand side so i'm just kind of getting that to go off the canvas it might end up hitting my other little tree a little bit here so i'm just again utilizing the corner of my brush and i want there to be little peekaboo spots where you can see the the stuff behind it so i'm not overdoing my trees i'm kind of having them a little bit more on the skinnier side but i'm also conscious of not letting that trunk show so another one of my tips or tricks is to dot down the trunk that will ensure that you have not left it too wide open and then you can just kind of get your branches on in whatever little direction you want if you want some flicking up or flicking down it's all right it works either way but if you want them to resemble pine trees just you want that bottom to be a little bit wider in nature than um than the rest of the tree so you can see mine i'm trying to keep that point to the top of the tree my smaller ones i might just dot them a couple times and and call it they might not i don't really need much to them and then again just kind of dot down the center and give it as much you know as many branches as you want i feel like my bristles are starting to get out of control right now so i'm going to re-squish my brush on the side of my palette that again is my my my trick because i really like using these bristle brushes because i think they give great diversity as opposed to you know one that has very systematic bristles to it so in order for me to keep it in control i dab i squish it on the side of my palate so this tree here might encroach on my my waterway a little bit or even cover up my waterway a little bit i'm totally okay with that i'm keeping them messy at the bottom where they meet the snow i'm gonna be doing a um we're gonna be doing one more step on the land so we'll be able to get that snow to to make sense at the bottom of the tree as well but you can certainly have fun with that and you can see i've got all these branches coming out in different directions i think it's looking pretty good this tree's hiding way behind it so this tree is not going to get a whole a whole heck of a lot of attention back here because there's not much to do to it and then i got this little itty bitty one think of at some times you know maybe they just end up looking like little shrubs or something so you don't have to spend uh too much time on each one and then let's see we're gonna switch to our small brush for the next step so once you've got your pine trees in place you can put your large brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step all right so what i'm going to do for the next step is i'm going to finish my land so i'm using my small brush and this is going to account for any branches that have fallen on the ground any areas that you feel might need a little bit of fine-tuning maybe around the edges of the water or at the bottoms of the trees so i'm first i'm going to be putting my branches just laying all screwed about the about the ground and maybe i'll put little pieces of sticks and stuff coming you know in a vertical sense too by you know the trees just wherever my brush wants to flick that's where a branch is gonna show up or little pieces of grass sticking up out of the snow but i'm gonna use my small brush i'm gonna primarily be using black brown and white but if i come to an area where i'm like oh i want some more blue there because i you know i just feel it then i'll put it there but i'll try and keep you up to speed as the colors i'm using so first i'm just going to start with black and brown and i'm going to put my sticks and my any little pieces of grassy kind of stuff wherever i want to so i'm going to just kind of let let my my brush work its magic i just kind of wiggle it about maybe i've got some stuff coming up in through here maybe i've got some little stuff on the side of my tree over there maybe i've got some little things going in here i'm really just making little squiggle lines i'm not doing anything fancy so maybe i've got some stuff in between these trees here the less you think about it and the more you just let your your brush kind of wiggle about and and do its own thing the more natural it's gonna look it's just gonna look like there's sticks and all kinds of stuff just laying around the ground that you know this the animals have brought over or the landscaper never came and picked up just let it happen mother nature has a way of leaving debris everywhere so you put as much stuff about that ground as you want to and then once i've got some you know enough mess around my ground i think i want maybe maybe just add a new maybe a little more stack of them in through here once you've got as many little branches and sticks and stuff that you want now's the time to just kind of fine-tune the land so i think i i still have black and brown on my brush i'm just going to kind of wipe it on my paper towel a little bit i think i'm going to just kind of add maybe a little shadowy stuff over on this side just to make sure this looks like it's you know at the bottom of that hill maybe i'm going to pick up a little bit more white just to add a little bit more at the edge of the the um land but this is really kind of just a visual thing on your part i do recommend just kind of stepping back from the painting and saying does it look like there needs to be a clump of snow underneath that tree or does it look like there needs to be a little bit of a shadow underneath that tree i'm going to add some highlights to my sticks in a minute but maybe the snow has you know piled up next to the stick maybe you know there's a shadow behind a stick so feel free to just kind of tweak this these last um areas of the land as much as you want to i am going to um definitely be adding little snow pieces onto my onto my branches in a minute but right now i'm just kind of manipulating my land a little bit maybe this needs a little bit of darkness here so maybe a little blue black and and my and my white just to give it a little bit more darkness over in this corner again putting darkness at the bottom of here is going to make it look a little bit more like a hill or like these are you know going out of our um out of the view of the the light from the from the sky so you can certainly have fun with that and i'm just kind of tweaking it as i go oh i just picked up a little yellow that's all right um and i'm gonna now i'm gonna put some snow on my branches now that they've dried for a minute you can just kind of put some little heavy snow maybe it's just resting on the top of some of these branches and again just have fun with that we're going to be finishing the trees in a minute too which will definitely give that great dimensional element to the entire painting right now i'm just kind of adding little dabs of of snow that is just kind of resting on some of these little branches that i've strewed about the whole thing maybe maybe i put a little bit more snow in through here like maybe there's a little path or something coming in through oh yeah i needed a little more snow on top of that too sometimes just adding a bit of another layer of whatever the remnants on your brush is sometimes that helps to just add that extra i mean everything in life has layers our skin has layers the ground has layers the atmosphere has layers so it always ends up looking a little bit more realistic when you continue to build that information on top of whatever's sitting underneath it so you feel free to just kind of keep tweaking this you know maybe i want my snow piled a little bit higher there maybe i need a little bit more shadow in between my snow here so really just have fun with it make it as dimensional as you want it to be and then once you've got your land filled with all of your sticks and all of your dimensional elements we're going to switch back to that large brush and on the next step as i'm as i'm this is another one of those steps i'm like can i ever finish this one but we'll switch back to the large brush for the next step but i think i want a little bit more shadow in between these trees before i go there i just picked up a little bit of blue so mostly i used white black blue i think those were the only colors that i used white black and blue uh maybe a little bit of brown but again just darkening adding shadows yeah i used brown on the on the branches oh yeah that's that's what i'm talking about a little bit of shadow behind these because my light is over there this looks good all right so large brush for the next step and i am ready now all right so we're going to do for the next step is we are finishing our front trees so i'm using my big brush and i'm going to use white because i want them to look like they have a little bit of snow on them but i don't really want to do too much to them i want them to kind of look like they're almost we're seeing the dark side of them so you don't have to go too bold with the colors but i do want there to look like once i put the snow on there that there's a little bit of these colors sparkled throughout them so i'm going to use white to start i'm going to put a little bit of snow on them and on the um on the edges because that's the light is over in that direction a little bit and then on this back side of the tree i'm going to put maybe a little bit of gray so i'll use black and white so it'll be just a little bit in the shadow on the back and then i'm going to dot in some colors from the sky so just white is where i'm starting and the trees that are close together if you want to kind of decide which one is closer to you than the other that um that will help to tell the story too and i am very lightly just kind of dabbing the edge of my brush to on the on the outside edges of the tree because my light is over there and i'm just using white right now i'm not doing much and i don't have much paint on my brush just a teeny tiny bit is gonna in essence kind of give me the glow or the brighter stuff from the other side of the tree because that's where my light source is and again i'm just kind of lightly going along these edges not too too much i'm going to do that to all of the trees so just teeny tiny bits of the white is going along those edges so it's telling you it's snow but it's being lit up by the brightness either in the sky or on the other side of the tree so again just a little bit i don't want to cover up all of my my edges to my tree this one's going to be definitely closer to us so i'm going to outline or put this white on the egg edges of this tree i'm going to do the same with these little guys over here and again i'm not doing much just kind of tapping along those edges now that i've got the edges done i'm going to pick up a little bit of black and white so in essence i'm kind of taking my white snow and turning it gray and putting it in the shadows so i'm putting a little bit of gray shadow or gray snow in the shadows on the back side it'll turn a little bit darker as it dries so just kind of account for that and again i'm not doing much just kind of adding a little bit of snow on this back side telling the story that this is in the shadows and then once i've got my shadowed snow on here then i'm going to wash my brush and i'm going to start putting some of the sky color twinkled into my trees so you might find that you've got a little bit you made accidentally or on purpose some green you've got some peach you've got some yellow you've got some pink so feel free to kind of play with it like you did on the land it doesn't have to be a mirror image like the water it's just twinkles all along your all along your your trees so i'm going to just arbitrarily kind of pick up some of the colors that i have in my palette that worked in my tree or in my sky so i've got a little bit of that greenish color and if you bring it outside of the tree a little bit that you can't even really see so i think i need a touch more white on my brush if there you go if you bring it a little bit outside the tree that will help to make it look a little bit brighter if it's not on top of that black black and again i'm not going crazy and just kind of adding some colors here and there think of it almost like like holiday lights like the northern sky then the lights from the sky are adding these almost these holiday lights on the trees below so have fun with it you can make these as bright as you want i'm gonna put some of my my pink on there now maybe a little bit of pink and white so you can really see it just dabbing it here and there yeah see again it's those little tiny colors in there that just get me all excited so i've got some pink in some of my trees yeah this is this is super fun um and again you can have yours as dramatic as you want as subtle as you want i think i'm going to put what am i going to put next i think i want i don't know i really like it the way it is maybe i'll put some um some blue because there's some blue up there no i don't want to put blue i i'm still i'm just digging the yellow and the and the pink but maybe i'll maybe i'll do some green because i see some some pretty green in the sky and then again you can certainly have fun you can see i'm clearly having a lot of fun on my oh yeah that looks pretty and then once you've got your lights done we have your lights they're not lights once you've got your highlights and your snow on your trees we have one final step to go and it's going to be with your small brush so you can take out your small brush if you can ever stop and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the final step is we are going to sign it this is the last step of every painting i usually sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right i'm going to be doing it with my small brush i'm going to be using black paint i think i'm going to sign mine in the bottom left corner i do my initials but you could certainly use your first name you could put a date on it if you want to it's all a personal preference this is your identifying mark you sign it whatever way you want you could use a symbol anything works and that is going to conclude this painting i hope you painted yourself a really alive and vibrant wintry sky and landscape and i hope you enjoyed the process and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometime [Music] you

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 19,781

Keywords: how to paint, paint and sip, acrylic, painting, tutorial, lesson, beginner, simple, easy, Michelle the Painter, step by step, painting steps, learn to, how to, paint, snow, winter, sky, snowy, blue, shadow, piled, pilling, through, up, into, stoop, tree, trunk, nostalgic, old, farm, hills, banks, Aurora, borealis, northern, lights, polar, wind, solar, southern, magnetosphere, rainbow, clouds, stars, stream, brook, reflection, shadows, pine, trees, swirl, forest, beautiful, stunning, display, brilliant, pink, yellow, green, purple, atmosphere

Id: d6zOBrxVYkk

Length: 61min 4sec (3664 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 27 2020