Would you look at that? I do not think I've seen a more beautiful cityscape at night than my own home city of Perth. In this video guys we're going to show you how to do more than abstracted or an impressionist version of a cityscape painting but we're going to be inspired by this stunning glorious Perth cityscape at night. Here we go. Hi again there guys, I'm here from Painting Peanut. I give you some top tips for all things art and design and today we're going to look at how to paint a really simple but effective cityscape painting using a palette knife. Palette knife is something that people tend to get a little bit intimidated by. So if this is your first time using a palette knife I will leave a link below just some little top tips and how to get yourself more confident using the palette knife technique. Alright so as for this painter today guys I actually live in Perth by South Australia which is a really stunning beautiful skyline. There's a bit of history behind it. We're actually known as the City of Lights. For a couple of reasons we have amazing reflections on an evening with especially when we get sunset but we also were known as the City of Lights by the astronaut John Glenn. John Glenn famous would be in the first astronaut to orbit the Earth and actually referred to Perth as the City of Lights when he was flying over. I could see some lights down there in Australia Gordo. Where are they from? Well John all the Perth and all the Rocking Ham are turning their lights on for you. The story goes that as he was orbiting the Earth Australia was going to be dark so they decided as a city that they would actually put all their lights on at night so that he would be able to see where he was when he passed the other side of the Earth. Obviously it was in a known back then they didn't really have much communication except for one small little satellite dish but near Moussha which is north of here. There you go a little bit of historical background for you guys but it really is quite a spectacular city so when you live somewhere as beautiful as this how can you not produce a painting. Obviously if you don't live somewhere that it has this reflection you can still produce a beautiful urban dynamic painting. You can always exaggerate the colours so here's a step by step guide on how to produce this painting. So colours wise to this painting guys we're simply going with the full range of primary colours and obviously the white and the black and then we're just going to load up the background here just simply using the palette knife. If you've never used palette knives before they are really fantastic for distributing paint pretty quickly and this is certainly a really good opportunity to just explore and play around with the type of techniques that you can do because we're simply just loading up the colour on the background. You'll notice I've got an element super low in the middle as well. I'll come to that in a bit more detail in a moment but for now we're simply just really practicing distribution of paint. So you can see the blue I was talking about earlier that's where you just give a bit of a contrast. Obviously we're doing a night time city scape here so there's going to be an element of white glow that's coming off the buildings. As you've seen the buildings and perth were stonestly colourful and bright and the reflections you get are really quite beautiful. Now it's really important that you let this background dry before you start working any detail on so I'm just going to forward the video very quickly so you can see how it looks once it's gone matte. Now one of the other great tricks using a palette knife guys is you can get really effective straight lines. You're just simply using the side of the blade and then just distributing some of the paint. And then that same technique we're going to use now just to drag the paint down so we can start building up the sort of the structure of the buildings. You'll notice I'm working on the reflections first. I always prefer to do that because first of all if you're not so confident it gives you a bit more opportunity to practice the technique because it is the reflections you get away with a few more errors in your wood if you're doing the actual buildings. But also it needs to have a little bit more of a shimmer so if I don't get the full distribution of paint at the beginning then it's obviously not as much a concern. You can see how I'm adding different colours of paint here as well so I'm using not just the yellow but I've got white and a little hint of blue through there as well. Just to really try and capture that dynamic range of colours that you get from the reflection of the buildings. Now because again this is reflections you don't need to worry so much about the actual edges of the buildings being too accurate. Some of these buildings have high lawns and different structures on the top but again it is a reflection so you can get away with those edges a little bit more. Then you will in a moment when we do the actual city skate. So again one of the great versatile elements of using a palette knife is just the different types of strokes or techniques you can get just from the one blade. So you can see here there is a range of blending the colours in so those elements of detail at the edges but also again making sure that you keep a different range of colours going on. You don't want to have just block colours with these reflections. So now we are just going to work on the actual buildings themselves. So again I am very similar technique in terms of dragging the paint up but again making sure that you have got a range of different colours going on because it is a black background or a black background. You don't want to have too darker colour because you are not going to have it stand out as much as if it were white background. So I have just got hints of white going through here plus it gives that sense of the light coming from the buildings itself. A lot of people ask how should you hold a palette knife. You notice I hold my very much like I would a pencil and almost treat it like it is a pencil in terms of the sketching techniques you can do. But it also means if you have got a bit of a looser grip you actually have more control over how whether you are using it as a flat blade or just using it for fine detail. And of course you have a great thing with palette knives as you can scrape away so if you make any errors you can always remove some of those pigments before you start adding extra colours on there. So this is just some red light detail that you get from one of our buildings here in Perth and it is just nice to have that dynamic contrast against some of the darker buildings. Now this is more of an abstracted cityscape so of course we are trying to build up the colours in a more dramatic way than they would not ordinarily look on the photograph. But it is really just trying to give an impression of that sense of city of light so the very dynamic bold strong colours that you get some more reflections and the buildings themselves. You know for me painting is all about interpretation. I used to be very much a photographic painter when I was younger. Really trying to practice the perfect painting as it were to get that element of photographic image you were in our painting. But now I much prefer this style of just giving that impression of what you see. At the end of the day you can go out and take a photograph and make the perfect picture. So then why train paint and the perfect picture that is how I look at it. So I am really trying to capture the essence of the painting rather than the exact image that you can see through the lens. So we are just going to add some finishing details here guys. It is the same technique all the way through. So just working these smaller buildings on the edges. And again make sure you have got that range of colours on your palette knife so the end not just having black colours. And then you have it. So they are having guys who have enjoyed today's video and how to produce this really simple but effective palette knife city skate painting. If you have enjoyed the video then please hit that like button just below as it really does help our channel. We do do regular weekly videos for top tips for all things art and design. 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