I saw a YouTube video come up on my feed recently on how to create moonlit winter watercolor cards.

The artist, Shelley Prior, is an accomplished watercolor artist. I watched a couple of her other videos before getting the nerve up to try to follow along with this one. “Easy” is in the title of the video, so I was hopeful that I could create a painting similar to hers.

Like all experts, Shelley makes it look easy. And it clearly is easy for her (and I imagine for many artists). But not being an artist myself and not having done much artistic lately, I struggled with it. I made 3 versions of the “Easy Moonlight Watercolor Cards” before deciding that enough was enough.

What follows is what I learned from my efforts.

Below is version #1. Lots of things went wrong with this one–my attempt to lift paint around the moon didn’t work well, the trees are tilted, and the method Shelley used to create the stars–load a brush with Dr. Martin’s Bleed Proof White and tap the handle of the brush with another over the painting–didn’t work for me. Instead of a fine splatter I got blobs instead. The lightish smear in the sky on the right was my attempt to wipe off the largest blob. Generally, version #1 was a fail.

Below is version #2. It’s a little better I think, but I still struggled. First of all, Shelley used a sticker to cover the moon area while she painted the sky, then pulled it off when the painting was dry. On version #1 this worked fine for me, but on version #2 I must not have sealed it down quite as well, because blue paint bled under the sticker and I ended up having to paint in the moon with white acrylic paint. It doesn’t look right with the rest of the watercolor painting, especially in real life. Another problem is the awkward trees and their shadows, especially on the right. However, the stars came out better–I used an old toothbrush to splatter white acrylic paint. Overall, I like the sky and the stars more than those in version #1.

And finally, version #3. This is the best version I think (not great, but better). Instead of a sticker, I used masking fluid to block out the moon area. And I was freer with my use of two blues in the sky. The trees are better too I think, but the shadows are still not right–I’m thinking that maybe they should be more bluish. In this version, instead of creating stars, I used the toothbrush to spatter white acrylic paint over the entire painting to suggest snow.

The biggest difference between the 3rd version and the first two is that I didn’t watch the video–with the first two, I kept starting and stopping the video and being frustrated about how mine didn’t look like hers.

With version #3, I just went for it. I didn’t feel like hunting for the video and figured that I knew the basic parts of the painting, so I just painted, using things I’d learned from the first two versions.

The takeaway? Once you’ve learned what you can from videos and practice, just paint.