I like those pictures of lanterns by night. Ecspecially when there snow is fallen. Today I show you how to paint a snowy lantern by night. I used oils. Both mediums acrylics and oils have their own pros and cons on this painting. The pro of oils is that you can really nicely blend the light but it’s hard to paint the black stripes on the wet ground. With acrylics it’s the opposite. It is hard to get a smooth blending but if you wait some time for drying the stripes will be an easy job.
The materials are:
- oil paints
- brushes
- liquin
- wodden button or a rock
- white gesso for base layer
The liquin is for getting the paint more fluid and for a shorter drying time. I can highly recommend it. This silver brush that you can see is just an old smooth brush to eventually blend some strokes.
You don’t need the exact colors this time. Grab just a blue, red and yellow. If I would have painted this with my acrylics I would have choosen phthalo blue. In oils I don’t have this so the prussian blue works well too. Before I started to cover the button with 3 layers of white gesso, I drilled a hole into it. I want to give my xmas buttons to my parents for hanging it on the xmas tree.
You see here a nicely covered button. I sketched a couple times with a pencil but I erased it kinda away. At the end it gives me a bit of orientation. My reference photo is from pixabay. I used couple photos. One for the shape and others for the light.
I started with the blue. If you use acrylics you can just cover the entire button. But with oils I want to prevent getting green light. I let the area of the lantern and the treetrunk blank.
With vertical strokes and a mix of burnt umber (I forgot to take a photo) and the blue I blocked in the tree trunk.
Make sure that the back side of the tree trunk is a bit darker.
I added here and there a mix of yellow and white or yellow and red on the treetrunk. This is for the reflection of the light.
The next step is better for oils, but with an amount of patience you will get it also with acrylics done. I started in the center of the lantern with pure titanium white. Then I painted yellow around the white and around the yellow I painted a mix of yellow and red. With a soft brush I blended the paints together. Here and there I added more paint. Make sure that in the center of the lantern there is still a tiny spot of white.
I mixed burnt umber and blue together and started painting the outer edges of the lantern.
Do you recognize that the top and bottom edges are pointing to the bottom? Thats because we are looking from above to the lantern.
With gentle strokes I added the diagonals. And I painted in the top of the lantern. I painted the top not completely with the dark tone because I want to add some snow. On this way it is easier with oils. With acrylics it doesn’t matter, because they are dry in a minute and you can just add the next layer.
It’s hard to see but I painted a branch with burnt umber and a hint of blue. I added some bits of snow and completed the snow on top of the lantern. I also painted a part of the holder.
I lighten up the branch a bit with mixing in some white. On top of the branch I added some snow.
The last step the final touches. Some more bits of snow on the bottom of the lantern and the second part of the holder.
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