Alright party people, it’s skyline tutorial time.  As I promised in my last post, here are the step-by-step instructions for creating this painting.

Okay first of all, here are the things you will need:

Watercolor paper (or any paper thick enough so it won’t rip when wet), watercolors, paint brush, water container with water, black paint, yellow and/or white paint, thick paper/cardstock/cardboard, masking tape, and scissors or an exacto knife.  I think that’s it.

The first step is to decide on the colors and the order of the colors you want to use for your sunset (or you can just use dark blue and make your scene a night scene.)  The best way to do this is to actually look at real sunsets and get inspiration from there.  Here are a few gorgeous ones:

(1 2 3 4)

Then you want to do what is called a watercolor wash.  You simply get your watercolors watery, and then fill in the space using brushstrokes that are going in the same direction (in this case, horizontal.)  First you do the color that you want to be closest to your skyline, which is typically the lightest color.  Use the brush and go back and forth until you are about 1/4 of the way up the page.  You can go higher or lower on the page, depending on how much of the page you want to be taken up by the buildings.

Now add your next color.  The colors will mix and blend together and will create a nice gradation from one to the next.  If you want you can even run your brush over the top part of your first color to make it seem a little more natural.  The trick is to just keep running your brush back and forth, from right to left, the entire time.  Add water if you need to but remember that the colors will be darker and bolder if you use less.

Notice that this strip is smaller.  The first strip of color you add is going to be mostly covered up, which is why it takes up so much of the page.  The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and so on strips of color, you will cover less space (depending on how many colors you have chosen to use.)  After you have your second color on there, you can add your third in the same way and keep going until you’ve done all of your colors and filled up the entire page.

Once you’re happy with your watercolor wash, leave it to dry while you work on your stencil.  You don’t have to make a stencil for the skyline and you can freehand paint it instead, whichever you are more comfortable with.  Either way, wait until the wash is dry before you add paint to it.

To make the stencil, get a piece of tagboard or some kind of thick and sturdy paper.  Sketch out the skyline that you want.  You can base it on your city, your favorite city, or you can just make it up and do whatever you want.  Things that I think could make it really interesting are castles or things like the Eiffel Tower.  Look at photos of cities, decide what you want to do, and sketch it out.

Then use an exacto knife or scissors to cut it out, whichever you are more comfortable with.  It’s hard to get some of the corners with scissors, but make sure you don’t slice your fingers or anything with the exacto knife.  Trust me, it happens.

It’s important to remember that you are going to be using the negative space as the stencil, as in, not the buildings themselves but the space around and above the buildings.  So in the next photo, the bottom half is the actual skyline but the top half is the stencil you will be using.  It’s okay if you mess this up, because you can just trace your skyline and cut it out again, but you probably won’t be too excited about doing extra work.

So, again, the stencil is the TOP part in the above picture.  It can be a little confusing to work in reverse like this.  Once you have your stencil, place it onto your (dry) wash.  You can move it up and down on the page to figure out how high you want the buildings to be, and then tape it down.

Now get out your black paint and a brush and start painting!  Make sure not to load on a ton of paint all at once, especially close to the stencil, because then it will just run underneath the stencil and you will get paint where you don’t want it.  It’ll be a big mess.  Take it slow, and make sure to press down the stencil when you are painting the edges.

Looks pretty, right?  =)  Remember to go slowly and to hold down the stencil when you are painting near it.  Once you’ve filled in the whole area you can take the stencil off and see your goooorgeous creation.

If your paint got under the stencil at all (it happens to the best of us) it’s really not that big of a deal.  Just get a little black paint and CAREFULL Y extend the walls of the building out a tiny bit, to cover up any mess-ups.  Nobody will ever know  =)

NOW.  Time to add stars.  Get your white paint out and some clean, fresh water (don’t use the water you’ve been using for the watercolors/black paint, or you’ll have gray stars.)  I mixed a TINY bit of yellow into my white paint just to give the stars a bit of a “glow.”  Get the paint on your brush and then do a couple brush strokes on a spare piece of paper, dip your brush in water, and do a couple more strokes just so it’s not dripping and not completely covered in paint.  Then use your finger to flick the ends of the brush towards your painting, to splatter it with tiny little dots.

It might be best to practice this technique on a different piece of paper to make sure you have the hang of it.  It will be easiest to see on a dark or colored piece of paper (white on white is not so visible.)  You can add as little or as many stars as you like, and even paint extra fancy stars too.  You could even make star stencils, or paint a moon, or… do whatever you want =)

Aaaand you’re done!  You can add whatever you like to it (things in the sky, a quote or lyrics, whatever.)  Let me know if you have any questions or if anything is unclear, and I of COURSE want to see yours when you’re done =)