Super Simple Moonlight Landscape Painting Tutorial for Absolute Beginners

Welcome back! Sometimes when we're painting it's what we don't paint that's quite important and in this composition what we're going to paint is a nice little moonlit scene but some of the things are going to be hidden some of the things are going to be quite dark so you don't really see them and what that will do is give the viewer of the painting a chance to sort of like visualize things which shouldn't really be there or which are there but are very very hard to see. So let's look at what I've done to the canvas. This is a normal 18 by 24 inch primed pre-stretched canvas okay and what I did was a paint a little bit of yellow light yellow acrylic paint just up here that's going to be his moon. I took some masking tape stuck it onto the top and once that was all in place just spray painted it with a little bit of black acrylic primer and you can see some holes in the in the primer okay that's going to be great because that will have some sort of mottled effect when we're starting to paint and that's what exactly I want after that kind of effect. I said it was a limited palette now look at this lot this is just what we're going to be painting with in this picture today we've got some browns up here we've got burnt umber and burnt sienna in the olden days this was made from the dirt of some places in Italy mixed with a little bit of liquid oil okay linseed oil and stuff like that but now it's beautifully done by Winsor and Newton. I'm not sponsored by them but this is the brand that I use okay on this little pile here I've mixed in a little bit of white into some of that burnt sienna that's going to be a tree by colour up here we've got phthalo blue that's going to carry out throughout the majority of the painting over here a little bit of the ivory black sap green on this part and I've mixed a little bit of the sap green with a little bit of black maybe a little bit of the yellow ochre a little bit the cad yellow we can get all kinds of different colours okay maybe even a bit of blue into some of this this this yellow will give it another depth to the painting over here titanium white cad yellow yellow ochre down here we've got a little bit of a highlight colour that we've mixed up it's just cad yellow and white okay and you can take this to any side you want this is baking paper or baking parchment it makes an absolute ideal palette once you're done scrape off the paint that you want to keep the stuff that you don't want to keep it just goes in the normal trash all right let's have a look at some of the equipment that we're going to be using today the paint brushes and things like that the hardware palette knife okay good for for mixing colour on the palette we've got a one inch background brush from Bob Ross uh an oval brush or two that's good for foliage we've got a couple of here that are just old acrylic brushes but they're very soft and they do wonderful things and a couple of fan brushes a liner brush and one of my faves a little dagger brush or a sword brush or whatever they call it nowadays but gives wonderful detail okay on top of that we're going to be using linseed oil but you use clear gel or liquid clear or whatever you want and some lint free tissue and that's it well we're ready to rock and roll let's do a painting this is obviously nice and dry so a little bit of thinned out phthalo blue so I've thinned it out with a little bit of linseed oil but you could use a little bit of liquid clear or clear gel or any medium like that and I'm going okay now that seems to be nicely covered in phthalo blue and I've put a touch of the green down there and a little bit of black in the corner you can't see it really it's a transparent colour remember this is where our moon is so what I'm going to do is take a little bit of titanium white on a soft brush and all I'm going to do I'm going to start where where the moon is and I'm just going to touch on the outside of that just follow the masking tape around I want a little bit of a glow just around there like so I don't want any yellow on the canvas because yellow and blue will make green I don't want a green sky okay so that's why I painted the moon in yellow first with acrylic right I'm going to get rid I think just put a little bit of something there and there like so just get rid of that brush okay I'm going to pick up another brush which is pretty soft a blender brush and I'm just going to tease that tease that out like so now you can hit that a couple of times wipe your brush off a couple of times make it a little bit brighter if you so wish okay I just want to show you how I'm going to do it okay fan brush a little bit of the titanium white again and we want to put some clouds in this sky okay and the opening all right so we'll say about there just like so just let it bounce okay like that and maybe at the top I'll do it this way if I can like that like a nice big eye okay like so like that all right and then we can just get rid of any of the excess paint just somewhere up here like this get back to the blender brush wherever I put it okay it's just gently tease that in like so now I will hit this several times with titanium white so I get the desired brightness but before I do that I just want to tease all this together and then take a step back okay always take a step back six foot away from your canvas so you can see what's actually happening I'm painting sideways on so I've had no idea what this this really looks like isn't it wonderful what you don't really paint in this picture but gives the illusion of massive movements of cloud in the moonlit sky a little bit more white right where the moon will be nice delicate soft brush and we're just going to tease that into the composition no pressure no pressure at all just a little little lightest touch because the more you touch this the more you work it the more bluer it will come and we don't want that okay let's take a palette knife and I'm going to remove the masking tape now this might appear very very vivid okay so scrape off that masking tape there and we've got a nice moon right there it looks like something from the uh from a movie doesn't it or something like that right get rid of that we'll get a little bit of white on there and maybe blend that into the sky let's put some craters in the moon you can see I've put built up the white it's obviously got the blues in there and you can see the yellow but I'm just going to tap on a little bit of dark gray color here and there just off this dagger brush just a little bit I don't want to go too silly with it I just want a indication that there's some craters up on the moon like that to apply the really thin amount of green down there just below halfway that's going to be as distant hills and things we're going to have bushes and trees and things like that in front of this and a lake and another big tree but I really want to highlight some of this area here it's just a little bit of sap green it's nothing it's really easy to do so into that with a fan brush a touch of the bright yellow now remember there's blue all over the canvas so it's going to change color as soon as we start to touch directly underneath directly underneath the moon we want to just pick out and very gently pick them out a little highlight and we don't want much less is more less is very much more now there's a lot of thick paint okay that's really thick I've put a lot on so what I may do is just take a piece of blue blue tissue blue blue lint-free tissue and then just start to dab okay screw it up okay and then just dab and take off any of the excess oil that's on there that's very important so the next stage the next the will be a little bit easier to apply okay now then remember what I said what you don't paint is just as important as what you do paint I've taken a little bit of the greens as well on a on a soft brush and I'm just going to just touch on just on the highlight side of these individual little trees okay and I'm varying the greens as well but I'm not covering the whole of the dark okay you don't want to cover the whole of the dark because there's going to be deep shadows really deep shadows especially down towards the base of these trees so just touch on and tap now if you paint a little bit too much or it's too much in the shadow side just take your tissue your lint-free tissue and just blend it away just like so just tap tap tap tap tap and it'll go away okay I think we've got enough mid-ground foliage in there to sink a ship what I've done is I've taken the little brushes and I've just touched in some little trees different kinds of trees I've put some evergreen trees in there as well different yellows different greens different blues different blacks and of course obviously where the moonlight's going to hit I've touched a little tiny bit a very very pale yellow right on the edge of the foliage okay so right underneath this with this is where his legs going to be I've sketched in a little bit of a a little bit of a headland for his nice tree and I've also put a mark down here on the easel where the moon is I'm just going to gently with this little dagger brush okay a little bit pale blue okay very pale blue and I'm just going to just touch on and you could use a knife for this okay and I'm just going to carve in what would be little waves okay just down here and we don't have to go crazy don't have to go mental at all just just little waves that I get in the this is really good this little dagger brush really does a lot of wonderful things of course this is all blue paint I keep getting it on my fingers but that's okay that's okay and I'm just going to work my way down just touching like so and obviously I'll have to reload the brush every now and again we're going to go all the way down to that line just there that was painted on the easel so I've just mixed up a little bit of pale yellow very pale yellow and I'm just hitting the top of some of these these waves okay very small waves that are down here in the water okay so we've got various different colors okay and then a little soft blender brush and then just set them in very delicately okay very delicately if you really scrub this it'll go into mush and we don't want that okay just look at that that looks like reflected moonlight okay this is a black green paint and I'm just going to start pushing in a lot of paint down here okay a lot of paint we need a we need a headland for this big tree to sit on so that's what we're going to do put a lot of paint in just like we did with the background put it on dampen it off then we can paint on it once more happy days pure black and a Bob Ross oval brush okay and you may have seen some pictures like this on some of my short videos but I'm gonna just hit I've got two brushes I'm gonna use dark and we're here and I'm just gonna touch on okay just touch on I'm just gonna put in some shadowy foliage just down here now I'm gonna take a step back and see where it's going but that's all we're gonna do just bring it all down round about to the tree line and stop so on the clean brush a little bit of the greens now we'll hit this with several shades of green and just merge it back so we want the head edge of the the uh the tree be quite crisp and clean and everything but we want to merge it all into the shadows okay so we'll just put some crisp ones there and then just a couple of gentler ones less pressure again we want it very dark in the shadow so be careful where we're touching there like so just like that and then eventually we'll put a little bit of paler green on this sparkle off some of these this foliage and then we can work down here as well we can put some some grasses and stuff like that that's glistening in the moonlight a little bit of light brown and stuff and we're gonna paint just a little bit of a trunk on this tree now again it's moonlit trunk so it's what we don't see that's probably better than what we don't see then back to our blender off hand holding it off and very light so it's almost falling out your hand and just blend that back in to the painting all right a couple of little twinkly leaves right on the edge of these branches with a little bit of yellow and white mixed together obviously not mixed together with a liner brush but we've mixed it together and we've cracked it first of all i want to thank all my members i couldn't do this without you so if you want to join my membership just click that join button if you try this picture as well share with us what your compositions look like i'm sure you'll do better than what i've done it's very atmospheric very deep and dark in places but that's what we're aiming for if you've liked it thumbs up leave me a nice big comment and subscribe if you've not done so already until next time take care you said stay safe happy days