How to paint northern lights with watercolors for beginners

This post is all about how to paint northern lights — a simple technique any beginner can use.

How to paint northern lights watercolor

Auroras or polar lights are fascinating! A natural phenomena created by the solar wind. Did you know the colors change based on altitudes? Red color appears on the highest altitude and green on the lowest altitude. In this tutorial, we will paint northern lights in watercolor. The technique I will show in this tutorial is easy for beginners and it’s very quick to paint.

The painting follows two step process. First, we’ll use a wet-on-wet technique to play with the bright colors on paper. Second, we will let the painting dry and add details.

Supplies

Watercolor paper (I’m using Arches 100% cotton paper)
Soft bristle paintbrushes
Synthetic paintbrushes
Yarka St. Petersburg Professional Watercolor Pans

Color Palette Used

Violet Pink
Carmine
Blue
Emerald Green
Cadmium Yellow
Indigo (dark in the sky and trees)
White Gouache (for stars)

Instructions

We’ll use the wet-on-wet technique for the sky and the wet-on-dry technique for the trees and stars.

Step 1: Wet-on-wet painting technique

1. Wet your watercolor paper with a big flat brush. Let the water soak into the paper and swell a little. Wait a couple of minutes.

2. Using your soft bristle brushes, create tea-like consistency of violet color. Add violet color, carmine, yellow where violet is, blues, and greens (tea or coffee consistency). In other words, ensure the colors are mixed with enough water to create movement.

3. Continue adding non-diluted colors to create movement and color mixing.

4. Add dark color (indigo) on the top and bottom of the painting.

5. Move the color on paper if necessary, and add colors as you feel fit.

6. Once you like the color mixing, let the painting air dry.

Step 2: Wet-on-dry painting technique

1. Take indigo color with your synthetic brush and paint trees by creating zigzag lines.

2. Use your white Gouache and the smallest synthetic brush you have (mine is 3/0 size). Dot all over to create stars.

3. Sign your painting. And you’re done!

I hope you enjoyed this simple northern lights watercolor painting that makes a striking appearance. Although I used complementary colors of red and green in this painting, feel free to try this technique in just green or blue.

This post is all about how to paint northern lights in watercolor, a simple and easy technique any beginner can use.