How to paint northern lights in acrylics

The night sky is a beautiful subject to paint, especially when it puts on a show with northern lights. In this tutorial, I show you how to paint northern lights in acrylic, over a scene with mountains and reflecting on a lake. 

I used this photo as a starting guide, but didn’t follow it exactly. The wonderful aspect about painting northern lights is that they are constantly changing and moving, so you have a lot of leeway in the exact shape and placement you choose for your painting.

Materials used

You’ll need to gather a few supplies for this tutorial. I used the following:

• An 8”x10” canvas panel. Feel free to use a different size or depth of canvas.
• Acrylic paint
  • Anthraquinone blue. You could use indigo blue or another dark blue instead. Or add a touch of a complimentary colour (orange) or burnt umber to a blue to make it darker. 
  • Brilliant yellow green. An alternative is mixing a similar bright colour using cadmium lemon and a touch of phthalo blue.
  • Quinacridone magenta, or any purply-red.
  • Bone black or another black or dark grey.
  • Titanium white
• Connoisseur filbert brushes in size 2, 6 and 10. I prefer using a brush with coarse bristles so that I’m not being too fussy about each paint stroke.
• A paint palette
• Rinse water

Northern lights in acrylic tutorial

As you watch the demonstration, remember that northern lights are translucent. The brightest areas are the most opaque, but there are many areas that are pale and you can see through them. That gives you plenty of room to play around with your paint, adding layers until you are happy with the result. 

Compositionally, I choose to have the focal point be right at the lowest part of the mountains. Every paintbrush stroke of the northern lights eventually leads to this focal point. Remember that as you are working through this painting.

Follow my northern lights in acrylic demonstration on my YouTube channel.

Get supplies

Pick up the supplies for this project at your local art supply store or on Amazon:

US

• 8×10 canvas panel
• Anthraquinone blue
• Brilliant yellow green
• Quinacridone magenta
• Bone black
• Titanium white

Canada

• 8×10 canvas panel
• Anthraquinone blue
• Brilliant yellow green
• Quinacridone magenta
• Bone black
• Titanium white