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Christmas, Aerin, 2021.

30"x40", acrylic on canvas.

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This was the final image I made for this collection. This one is based off memories of my commute back in 2019. It's a mix of two different entrances to the UAF campus. One entrance has an iconic sign that displays the temperature, among other things. The other entrance has a fairly basic sign but it leads off into a less populated part of town. I liked the less popular entrance for the background, but I decided to use the other sign because it's more iconic. 

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I had the idea for this painting several months before I actually made it. I realized that I didn't have any paintings with northern lights in them, which seemed weird since they're all paintings of Alaska. I decided that this painting should be the last one I do, cause where do you go after doing the northern lights?

A photo of a pen drawing in a sketchbook. The drawing shows a curved road disapearing around a bend and flanked by trees. There is circles going along the road that indicate streetlights. The drawing is shaded with hatchmarks. The sky has marks that indicate aurora borealis.
A photo of an unfinshed painting. The top half is blue with white stars. The top half also has several lines of aurora borealis that are green and pink. There are large sections that are unfinished, and the bottom half has a large blob of grey.
A photo of an unfinshed painting. The top half is blue with white stars. The top half also has several lines of aurora borealis that are green and pink. Also on the top half is a large swath of black tree silhouettes. On the bottom half there are lines of white empty canvas beneath the trees. The bottom half also has a large blob of grey.

I don't have a lot of images for this piece, because I kept forgetting to take progress pics. In addition, my concept for it was so clear that I didn't make a lot of thumbnails. 

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With these in progress pics, you can see a little bit of my layering technique. I put on the snow after the trees and the road so that I only had to keep the edges of the snow clean. I also used the snow to alter the perspective a little because once everything was down, I realized it looked weird. 

In these images, you can also see that my northern lights were a little lackluster. Later, I used some watered down lime green to add a few highlights and that made them much more glow-y.

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