EASY Art Project for Kids and Beginners: How to Draw and Watercolor Paint Santa for Christmas

1. Introduction and Supplies You Will Need: Hi friends, how are you? I hope you're having a great today. I'm excited about sharing this project with you. This is a drawing and watercolor painting project that I designed especially for kids. Students do not need to have any drawing or painting experience at all to be successful with this project. I will guide students step by step through all the steps that they need to take. Today, we are going to be creating Santa in the snow. Let's talk about the supplies and the materials that you will need for this project. The first thing that you'll need is a sheet of watercolor paper. You will need a set of watercolor paints and a paintbrush. I like to use this size paint brush, but just use what you have available to you. You will need a cup or a bowl with clean water, a black oil pastel or crayon, a white oil pastel or crayon and a paper towel. Go ahead and gather all of those supplies and materials. And I'll see you back here in the next video. 2. Step 1: Draw Santa: In this step, we're going to draw our Santa design. Let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do is we're going to pick up our black oil pastel or our black cron. We're going to come over here to the right side of our piece of paper, a little bit in and pretty close to the top but not touching the top. We're going to start our hat about right here. We're going to go about right here. We're going to go with a curve line and then come about this far. If your curved line does not look like mine, that's okay. Now what we're going to do is we're going to start back at the tip of this curve line. We're going to go in and then come out and then come down. All right, it's almost like a hook. This is going to be the hat for our Santa. Let's make one of those cute little floppy balls at the end of our hat. There we go. You can probably see it's starting to take shape now. All right, now what we're going to do, actually I'm going to make this a little bit longer because I wanted to be about the same length as this one. Now what we're going to do is we're going to connect these two lines right here with a curve line like this. Now that we have our basic hat shape, let's add some detail to this hat. I'm going to add another curve line about right here. That's where that white fluff is going to go. All right, now we're going to come down below the hat and we're going to create our Santa with the nose and the mustache, and the beard. All right, let's make two curve lines. One coming out from this curve line and one coming out from this curve line. This is going to be the face of our Santa right here. Now what we're going to do is find the middle of our hat and we're going to come down a little bit. We're coming down to about where these lines stop and we're going to make a circle or an oval. This is going to be our Santa's nose. All right, now we're going to make a mustache. And our mustache is going to come out from the sides of our nose. I'm going to make a curve line and then another curve line underneath. The same thing over here. Curve line, then another curve line underneath. Now what we're going to do is make some eyes. I'm just going to make some simple dots for some eyes. If there's a different type of an eye that you'd like to make, go ahead and do that. Then. I'm going to make some very small eyebrows. Another thing that our Santa is going to need is a small smile. Santa loves to smile. We're going to make a little smile right underneath the nose. And then we're going to make his nice, fluffy beard. That's going to be coming out from the bottom of his mustache. I'm going to make it nice and fluffy. And the way I'm going to make this beard, it's going to be a collection, a series of curved lines that are connected together like this. Now what we're going to do is down here, this is where the body of our Santa is going to be. So we're just going to make his shoulders right here. That's going to connect to the beard curve line and another curve line over on this side. Now let's give our Santa some buttons. I'm going to make some shiny buttons right here. Let's see, I think I might be able to make a half button down here. All right, friends. Now we're finished with our black oil pastel. I'm going to go ahead and put that down. Let's pick up our white oil pastel or white crayon. And what we're going to do on the outside of our Santa, in this space right here, we're going to make some white dots. And these are going to represent snowflakes. Those are just circles that are filled in with the oil pastel. You'll want to press fairly hard, if it's oil pastel, if it's crayon, you can press pretty firmly. We're just going to make some nice round dots all around our Santa. It will look like he's in the snow because he loves to be in the snow, right? We do know that about Santa. He loves that snow. I'm going to go ahead and I'm pressing pretty firmly. Now, the thing about it is you're not going to be able to see these dots, right? Because I'm using a white oil pastel on white paper, so you're not going to be able to see them, but basically it's just a circle filled in. Let me show you. It's just a circle filled in like this. That's it. And that represents a snowflake. All right, so when we come back, we will start painting our design. 3. Step 2: Paint the Design: In this step, we are going to paint our design. Let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do is we are going to add a drop or two of water into each of our pans of paint. What this will do is it will soften up our paint a little bit. That will make it easier for us to use. I really do encourage my students to take that step because it really does help. Now that our paints are softening up, let's turn our attention to our Santa design. Let's talk about the colors that we're going to use. We're going to use the color red for Santa's hat, because as you know, Santa loves to wear his red hat. We're going to make his jacket red as well. You get to choose the color for the buttons. We're going to make his nose a little bit cheery and rosy, so it will be a pinkish color or a light red. And then the skin color can be any color that you'd like. That is actually a skin color. I'm going to use maybe a light brown for the skin color. Then in the next step, we are going to be painting the background, so we're not going to worry about that right now. Okay, let's get started by painting Santa's nose. I'm going to put a little bit of pink into one of my wells and then paint his nose a light pink. If you do not have pink, you can choose red if you'd like. And then just make it really light. That means add a lot of water to it. Now we're going to paint Santa's face. I'm going to put a few drops of water into one of my wells. Then I'm going to add a little bit of brown paint. You can choose whatever color that you'd like. As long as it's a skin color, some people might use it more of an orangish color, yellow. But I'm choosing brown. This is the color that I like to use for this particular project. Maybe I'll add a little bit more. You might have to experiment a little bit with the skin color to make it the way that you want it to be. Yours might not be exactly like mine and that's okay. That's actually a really good thing. It's a good thing when your artwork looks like your artwork. My artwork looks like my artwork. I'm going to try to not get any of that paint onto my mustache because the mustache and the beard, those are going to stay white. There we go. All right, that looks awesome. Now I'm going to move down here to my buttons. And I'm going to paint my buttons yellow like golden buttons. Now I'm going to move on to my hat and my jacket. I'm going to start painting those a little bit more color. Remember, if you want a stronger color, you add more paint. Then if you like a lighter softer color, you add more water to whatever paint color you're using. All right, friends, I'm finished painting Santa. As you can see, I decided to leave my pom pom white and the fringe on the hat white, and the mustache white, and the beard white. I decided to keep all of those white. When we come back, we will be painting the background. 4. Step 3: Paint the Background: In this step, we will paint the background. Let's get started. What I'm going to do is I am going to choose the color blue to paint my background. I'm going to put a little bit of blue and some water in one of my wells. Then I'm just going to start here at the top and I'm going to start painting. As you can see, those snowflakes are starting to pop out when I add my paint to my piece of paper. And the reason why that happens is because the oil pastel or the crayon, the wax in the oil pastel or crayon is resisting that paint. So I am just going to go ahead and I'm going to paint this background. All righty friends, I'm finished painting the background and as you can see now, my snowflakes are visible and I think that my artwork looks great. I hope that you had a lot of fun with this project. I will see you next time.