Paint Night

Instead of a Christmas Party this year the Girl Guides District decided to have a leaders only Paint Night. We did a potluck and one of the Guiders co-workers came in to instruct us on how to paint a northern lights picture. All the supplies were provided (the units as a thank you paid for us), we were taught how to do all the different brush strokes and where to put which colours. I do have to say that it helped a lot to know have an idea of how colours blend and how to graduate colour on the canvas dark to light and back to dark. It was a lot of fun and I ended up with a great piece of art!

Blank canvas ready for the paint

The paint and brush provided

Blending the colours, dark to light and back to darker again

Messy work!

No hesitation, bright yellow-green northern lights are on the canvas!

Mountains added to look like they are across the water

Time to put in the reflection of the mountains and later the reflection of the northern lights.
We also were instructed on how to paint a dark silhouette of trees to use in our pictures.
Since I put my horizon at such a distance away from the viewer, a tree on the horizon would have just looked funny.
This is where I think an eye for landscape and how to portray it was essential for my picture to have turned out.
Some of the other ladies put trees in but the perspective was off and displeasing to the eye.

The finished product!
And no it wasn't done paint by number, as my sister thought it was ;)
Every picture was different, the instructor had a picture she had painted to use as a guide,
but she also suggested going online to find a photo that inspired you. 
There are a lot of beautiful photos online of northern lights, lots of pinks, purples and other colours.
I have only seen the green-yellow northern lights before, and felt I couldn't paint something I hadn't seen before.

My art hanging in our home