Northern Lights with Alcohol Ink

Welcome to Monday! I hope that you had a wonderful holiday weekend, however you celebrated or didn’t. It was definitely a quieter year; no extra family members over for dinner. It was the year for video calls, phone calls and texting! I did have some fun playing and creating these beautiful Northern Lights with alcohol ink.

NORTHERN LIGHTS

A very talented alcohol ink artist, Vera Worthington, shared this tutorial. You can find it HERE on Youtube – be sure to subscribe to her channel for loads of amazing art work! Vera used Nara Paper, a brand that I don’t have, and I used some different ink colours as well. But that’s how we learn – use what you have, experiment and have fun! Here is my version of the Northern Lights.

The shimmer of the inks is amazing, in real life!

PAINTING DETAILS

Instead of Nara paper, I used a piece of Grafix Craft Plastic, in black. The first step is to draw your trees in the foreground with Masking Fluid. Next, mask off the bottom 1″ – 2″ under the trees. I cut a piece of masking paper, so as not to waste a lot of masking fluid.

The next step is to cover the panel with Alcohol Blending Solution. This is important, to create the movement of the alcohol inks. Now use either a small brush, or pour the alcohol ink Pearls directly onto your masked piece. The colours I used are Enchanted (pink), Envy (green), Villainous (purple). It’s the Pearls that give the beautiful shimmer to the Northern Lights.  Once you’re  happy with the Pearls, fill in the other areas with Monsoon alcohol ink – this will be the dark blue of the sky.  It’s difficult to capture in the photo, but it’s there!

Once your inks have dried, remove the masking fluid from the trees, and the masking paper from the bottom. Now add stars to the sky, using a fine tipped Posca Paint Pen in white.

You can see that I left some spaces between my tree branches. This was easily done using a Pebeo Masking Fluid Marker. If you want more solid tree silhouettes, I’d recommend using masking fluid from a container, and applying it with a brush or silicone brush.

SUPPLIES

This was quite quick to create, and a lot of fun, too! I’m going to be playing with this technique some more, and trying different colours for the Northern Lights, too.  Try creating your own  Northern Lights with Alcohol Ink- I’ve provided links for any supplies that you may need.

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