Night Sky with Trees

NIGHT SKY WITH TREES WATERCOLOR PAINTING

Use watercolor, pen and ink to create a nightscape with trees, stars, snow and a moon. Spend time looking up at trees from below. Paint from memory, photos, or invent your own trees.

1.      Start by painting just water onto your watercolor paper.

2.      While the paper is still wet add one shade of blue paint. Then, add a second shade of blue paint. This is called painting wet into wet. The paint colors will move and bleed into each other since the paper is wet.

3.      Once the paper is dry, use white watercolor or acrylic paint to paint tree branches on top of your blue night sky.

4.      Allow your tree branches to dry then use a black pen and ink to draw over the white painted branches on your painting.

5.      Experiment with adding snow, stars and a moon to your painting.

6.      Repeat all the steps above and test out different compositions, colors, and layers.

7. Once you have all your favorite details and ways of making trees and sky, create a mixed media painting where you layer all your most interesting techniques in one image.