- 1). Study clouds and sky colors during storms so you can get a realistic feel for colors and shapes that occur naturally during stormy weather. Explore watercolor and artist websites to learn more about proper tools, styles and techniques.
- 2). Practice painting on scrap or inexpensive pieces of paper before painting on watercolor paper. Experiment with your brushes and colors by painting lines and splotches to get a feel for how the paint reacts to the paper. Then practice again on a small piece of watercolor paper before adding paint to your final piece of watercolor paper.
- 3). Start with the sky background on your watercolor paper by doing a wash, the most basic watercolor painting technique. Wet the area to be painted as the sky with water. Dip your brush into your chosen pigment -- colors commonly used to portray a storm are usually black, grey, purple or dark blue -- and apply it to the wet portion of the paper in left-to-right strokes in slightly overlapping bands from the top of the area down. Allow the wash to dry completely.
- 4). Create the image of storm clouds in the distance over the wash. Use a technique called wet-to-wet, sometimes called wet-on-wet or wet-in-wet: Rewet the area of sky to be painted and add pigment in a splotchy form to add a subtle, background look. This technique can also be used for bushes, trees and other areas of the painting if you are including a full landscape in the painting of your lightning storm.
- 5). Insert lightning bolts using a drybrush technique: Apply a striking, bright color to contrast with the dark sky, such as white, gold, light orange or light yellow, depending on the time of day and the surroundings you have chosen for your landscape. Dip your brush into the pigment with little to no water and apply it directly to dry areas of the painting using a smaller brush with a pointed tip. The paint on the brush should be just wet enough to glide on the paper and should not be watered down; this will keep the color opaque and intense. Start at the point of origin for the lightning and paint a thin, jagged line to the stopping point of your bolt. Create additional streaks on your bolt by adding smaller branches of bolts emanating from the original bolt. This provides crisp lines, or forks, of lightning streaks and highlights the lightning as the main point of interest in your painting.
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