Starry Nights and Wintery Scenes

For a while now I’ve been paying member of the workshop community called Skillshare. It’s a great resource for creatives, where you once you pay the fee, have instant access to all of their thousands of online workshops. There are workshops on digital communication and marketing, how to edit video and production work, sewing, crafting, book binding, visual journaling, painting and marketing.

If you’re curious and interested in learning something new, you will most definitely find at least twenty classes that you’ll want to watch and maybe even actively “do” (i.e. submit images to of what you make to the classroom for others to view).

If you’re anything like me, you’ll find about one hundred classes that you wouldn’t mind taking ASAP! I’m adding new ones to my “to watch”-list on the site all the time. Because there’s topics with everything from bullet journaling, video editing and crafting to color theory and learning google analytics there.

I love to soak in some new knowledge, and even though some of the workshops lack charm, video skill and/or most common technical know-how, at least many of them are interesting enough and some even filled? with awesome inspiration. You just gotta dig a little to find the gems, I guess.

But fear not, if you want to start with learning how to create the cutest wintry scene, a starry night sky or perhaps a floral galaxy… I’ve got the links ready for you today!

One of my favorites this time around was spending some time with my friend Jana Bodin of TangledPen. We have painted together on many occasions in the past, but a couple of years ago she moved and settled elsewhere with her family. Now I have signed up for all three of her workshops at Skillshare and thought I’d share my results.

Starry Night Sky

Jana’s first class is called Painting a Starry Night Sky with Watercolors, and in it she demonstrates how to paint in a way that I’m sure even beginners would “get” and enjoy painting along with. She says it’s: a class suitable for the adventurous watercolor beginner…

I love that!

Painting nature like this makes me feel like I am back in fj?llen (the Swedish Alps).

The second one is Painting a Winter Landscape and Starry Night Sky with Watercolors – (yes more stars, but now with less color because it’s winter and freezing cold outside).

I made a few trial patches along with the teacher, here in the Hahnem?hle book:

I love watercolors but mostly use them as either abstract color blobs or as a tool to color in my own illustrations, so I am by no means a watercolor professional. But after taking Jana’s class, I was pretty pleased with my starry sky. And surprised. I think it turned out awesome (for a first timer).

This is what happened:

With practice I’m sure my pine trees would look even better and more realistic, but I’m not sure I have the patience for that… But I’m happy I gave it a try. I did add some stars later, but forgot to photograph those!

Floral Galaxy

The third Jana-class is called Floral Galaxy Painting with Watercolor and White Ink! In it I got to try two new-to-me things. Painting within a predefined circle shape (which I do think looks so neat but still never would’ve tried on my own) and creating a doodle with white paint using a paint brush! Very cool things I hope you’ll try too.

I love the result of this whole experience!

And I love my floral galaxy too, what a cool thing, huh?

BTW: I think I bought the white ink two years ago or so, but this was the first time I gave it a real try. Now I want to use it more, and learn how to incorporate white into my watercolors in the future, because this was a lot of fun.

Do you like my paintings?

Join Skillshare

If you want to sign up for Skillshare today you’ll get 30 days for free, so you can check out my friend’s workshops and a lot of others there too.

Sign up here ! That’s an affiliate link, it will not cost you anything extra but I will get a few more days on the platform to learn from.

If you already have an account, feel free to recommend me some workshops/teachers to check out below. And do you think I should create a Skillshare class – and on what topic?

Further Watercolor Inspiration

Jana on Instagram
Jana’s class Painting a Starry Night Sky with Watercolors
Jana’s designs as fabric on Spoonflower – wanna get sewing some?
Watercolor inspiration on Pinterest
Watercolor wet-on-wet video – older video by yours truly (actually my first try at “art journaling on camera”!)
xo