This is a watercolor painting of presents and mistletoe sprigs

The Wonderful Words for This Wednesday are, “Fun Christmas Painting Idea!”

 

This idea came about as many ideas do, through everyday things.  Remember that Orvis sales guide I referred to in last weeks BLOG post?  Well, I found this page in there as well, and as soon as I saw it I had a new idea for a Christmas painting:

this is a photo of an advertisement for soaps in ORVIS sales catalog that inspired this painting and tutorial

Can you see it?  The little boxes become Christmas presents and the rocks become mistletoe – obviously!

So one night, I just started in and the process evolved over the last few days until I felt it was complete.

Here’s My Process in case you want to try it:

Supplies

  • 9×12 sheet of Arches Cold pressed 140 lb
  • Watercolors: 2 reds, 2 blues, 2 greens
  • Red, green, blue and white pens (I used gel pens)
  • Small piece of card stock
  • Red & White string
  • Needle with a needle threader
  • tape

The Composition

With a pencil, lightly sketch various size squares on watercolor paper leaving good size spaces for Christmas type items like holly or mistletoe or whatever you’d like.

The Presents

This is a close up of one of the presents

Use the wet on wet technique to paint the wrapping: apply clean water inside one square at a time and then drop two different reds in on opposite corners until they blend in the middle.  Continue with two different greens, two different blues….or whatever colors you fancy!

When the presents are dry, add a little ‘shading’ with gel pens (green for green packages, red for red, etc.) on two connecting sides and a thin line on the other sides.  Then draw ribbons and bows with the same color gel pen.

Next, take your card stock and cut out little tiny tags.  I happen to have a script stamp so I stamped that on my paper first and then cut out the tags.  I applied gold stamp ink on the edges of the tags which you can hardly notice so I wouldn’t worry about that step.

Finally, I felt like the whole thing was too ‘flat’, so I busted out a needle and some string and sewed the string onto each present by hand.  This was the ticket! Because it is paper, you can tape the string on the back instead of tying a knot so that your masterpiece remains as flat as possible.

Note about sewing: poke your holes around the present FIRST so that when you’re coming up from the bottom you don’t have to make additional mistake holes.

The Mistletoe

This is a close up of the watercolor mistletoe

Paint mistletoe sprigs in the blank spaces going various directions.   For the leaves, I used mostly Sap Green, with a little Viridian Green and a dab of Cadmium Red.  I painted some leaves separately first, then darkened the green with a little red and painted more on top.

Wait for the leaves to completely dry before adding little groups of berries.  For the berries I used mostly Alizarin Crimson with a little bit of  Cadmium Red and dab of Sap Green.  I painted the berries first, then when they were completely dry, I connected them to the main plant with little stems.  When the stems were dry, I added one more layer of color to the berries to deepen them (this is called ‘glazing’).  After everything was dry, I added a little white dot on each berry as a highlight with my white gell pen.  If you look close enough, you’ll see I missed two in this particular mistletoe!

Lastly, I added messy little red ‘string’ bows on the mistletoe stems with a red gel pen.

*Note about mixing colors: If you add a tiny bit of a complimentary color to your main color, it darkens and mutes the color.  Complimentary colors are colors directly across from each other on the color wheel.  Red and green are complimentary colors.  If you add too much you get mud and if you mix two complimentary colors in equal parts, you’ll get a good ‘black’ of sorts.  Do NOT use white or black to change your colors in watercolors (that works with acrylics, but not so much with watercolors).  

this is an image of the color wheel

The Process

Because there are various layers and drying times for different pieces, I worked on this over a few days, little by little.    As always, I probably added one too many mistletoe sprigs because it’s very hard for me to know when to stop, but I still really like the piece as a whole.

Next, I will be busting out my repeating pattern skills on Adobe Illustrator to make this into a fun wrapping paper or something of the sort.

Also, I’ll be thinking about how to use this type of composition for various other things.  The possibilities are endless folks!

Remember, always be looking for inspiration!  You never know where you’ll find it next, but I promise, it’s all around you.

Kimberly Snider, Virtuoso, Signing off