Paint an Easy Christmas Card in Watercolor

1. Class Introduction: Christmas is a very special time of the year, and I wait to make it even more special is to give you a loved one's a handmade card to show them how special Dare. Hi, I'm cardia. I'm an artist and online teacher, and I'm based in Sicily, Italy. In this class, I will show you how to create this card using simple watercolor techniques. First, I will go over the materials you will need. Then I will show you how to trace the design and mix the colors. I will also show you how to apply masking fluid to preserve the white areas. Then I will explain step-by-step how to render the tree and the bag texture using the very easiest stippling technique. And this mode, snow texture for the snowman using the wet-on-dry technique. We will also see how to give the impression of a shadow to give form, and how to use gouache with watercolor paint to simulate snow. I will provide you with the tracing of the design so you don't even have to worry about during, and as usual, I will share with you my tips and tricks as we go along. This class is best suited for beginner watercolor artists who have a list, a little bit of experience with working with watercolor. However, I will guide you step-by-step and show you my technique. You should be able to follow along, even if you have very, very little experience with watercolors. If you like, you can always have a look at my class. Watercolor basic techniques for the absolute beginner. When I show you the basic techniques with watercolors. By the end of this class, you will have a beautiful card which can even be framed by the receiver. And you will have learned techniques that you can apply to future watercolor projects. So if you're ready, let's get started. I almost forgot since this Christmas, I have a special gift for you. So have a look at the video called spatial Christmas gift and see what's in store for you. 2. Class Project: The project for this class is of course, to paint the Christmas card. And you can add your own details. You can add gold paint or ink. Personalize it the way you you prefer. Don't forget to post pictures in the project section so that you can receive my feedback and the special gift. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I'm here for you. 3. Special Christmas Gift: So here is my special gift for you. Every student will complete the project and will post it in the project section, will receive a set of digital download the book cards, Christmas cards from yours truly. Just drop me an email saying I did it. And I will send you the cards to download and then you can just print them and send them to your friends and family. I really can't wait to see your cards. 4. Materials: The materials you would need for this class. We're not be all of these. But I can show you, I will tell you which ones are absolutely necessary and which ones are optional. So first of all, you will need some paper and you can choose the paper you like. I'm going to use this one here, which is the Canson XL acquire L, is 300 gram. Paper, is not one of the top most expensive, but it's not one of the cheapest ones. So it's kind of a good, good compromise. And then you need a palette. And if you have seen, if you've watched my other classes, you know that I don't really like plastic palettes because they tend to stain. But my other pallets are all in use at the moment, so I'm going to use this one, um, it's okay for this project. And you're going to need some kitchen towel or a rag, just a cotton rag to dry your brush. And also paints are important. Again, you will need all of these. But if you have a few paints, you can choose the colors that you like. But even just a few, I don't know, six paints will be enough. And this one here and then you will need what the jazz. I always use 21 to clean the brush. I want to dilute the paint. And then you will need a pencil. You can use a mechanical pencil, or you can use a normal pencil and an eraser. So either one of these small ones or just a normal eraser we do. And brushes are also important to have. This one here is an old brush which I use to, I'm just mix the paint and pick it from the watercolor pans. And then as far as the actual brush for painting, it's always say it's personal choice, personal preference, which one you like to work with. This one here, we would do the tree. So for the tree you can use a bigger brush. And I have here the Princeton Neptune is called. And then if you can see it, and I have a number four and number eight, these are synthetic so they're not too expensive. Then for the smaller details, you will need a smaller brush. And I have here the Winsor and Newton Series seven. These ones are miniature two of them. And then this one here is just a normal CD27. But again, you can use any brush that you have available. As long as you have maybe a couple of sizes, it will be fine because you just need a bigger brush for the tree and then a smaller brush for the smaller areas. And then as for the optional things, I have here, some Tombow brush pens. These are watercolor brush pens. So if you have any handy, you can use these. And these are quite nice because they have this tip here, which is like a brush, but also on the other side, they are another tip which is more like a different type of marker. And I have a selection of colors here. And then I have a gold pen. So, um, this is from Zig Memory system and I think it's Japanese. I bought it in England. But I'm sure you can find this everywhere in the world where you are. And again, he's got two different size tips. That's quite nice to add a little details. And a white gel pen. You can use whatever Japan you find in your area. And I have a tube of white wash and I will show you how to use this if you want to use it, if you have it. And some masking fluid. So this is the Winsor and Newton. Again, the loads around there you can trade. This is the one that dries clear. I do advise you to buy the wonder days with a slight coloration so you will be able to see it better. Um, where you put this. Unfortunately, when I bought it, they didn't have any of that kind. So I just put this one. And I think that's all. So these last things, they're all optional. Um, I have also some ink pens, so you can use a microphone or European, or any other ink pen that you prefer as long as it's waterproof. Because otherwise it might as much if you use it. If you put water on top, watercolor on top. So these ones as well, and oh, and underneath here we have a light box. So again, if you don't have it, don't worry, you can always use a window. But I'm going to give you a tracing for our card. So if you want to use the light box, you can just print it, put it in the light box, and put your watercolor paper on top. And if it's dark enough, you will be able to see it also through the watercolor paper. So if you print it, it is not strong enough. Just go over it with them with an ink pen, e.g. make the lines quite, quite dark like these ones. And you will be able to see it through the light box. Or as I was saying, if you don't have this, you can use a window or you can use just some glass with a light shining from underneath. And I think that's all. So don't worry if you don't have all of these other extra things. You can use colored pencil if you like, you can use different things. So you can just use the watercolors. It's fine. But if you have them and you want to experiment and have fun, feel free to use them. Well. And now we can move on to the next lesson. 5. Tracing the Design: I'm just going to quickly show you how I trace my design. So to make a card, I'm going to use this paper which is A4, which I showed you before is the Canson paper. And I basically folded it enough. So I know where the front of the car this and then open it and I taped down the tracing so you can print the one I provided in the download and tape it down like this. If you have a light box, then you adjust, um, center the, the front of the card with the design. Now, I need to switch off the light for you to see a little bit better. It might be a bit darker, the general image, um, but, um, you should be able to see the tracing a little bit better. Okay, so as you can see, with the lights off, you can actually see the tracing through the watercolor paper. So even if he's quite thick, it's your undergrad, you can still see it. And the next thing you want to do is to tape down this as well. So let's center it more or less like that. And when to use a, I forgot to mention this in the materials. This is a artist tape, so it's very low tack tape. And you just stick it in the corner. And one down here so it doesn't really move. And then you can just trace the design, which I'm going to do now. It is a bit light and although it's late, I usually do it even lighter than this, the pencil marks. But in order to see on camera, added a little bit darker. And maybe you, Let's see this part. But try to remain late with your pencil marks. And the tree is only little dashes because we're going to do it in a loose manner. So you don't really need a shape just to an exact shape for the tree. Just as long as you have a triangle, then you will know where to, where to stop with the watercolor. And that's it. I'll see you in the next lesson. 6. How to Make the Textures First Layer: Before we move on to the actual card, I just wanted to show you my method for attaining the texture for the tree and the tree trunk. Okay, so I'm going to do a little triangle shape. Here. You can see it, so make it a bit darker, but always keep your pencil line light when you work with watercolor. Because when you put watercolor on top of the pencil, then you will be able to erase it anymore. Okay? And then what you want to do is take your brush and depending of course, how big the shape is, you can use a bigger or smaller brush. For this one. I'm going to use this, the number four. And then take a good amount of watercolor. And then just to sort of dabbing motion. So just the dub, dub, dub, and load the brush again. And you can leave some whitespaces. Because then when you put the second layer, you might go on top of these anyway, create different movement of the paint. So don't do just like a solid area. Okay. Then you can go over the lines. That's why I'm telling you to do this very light. And this will give you this effect. So the first layer is the lightest one that you can see here. And then the second layer, we will use a darker, darker version of the paint. That's why I asked you to do 30 a mixed three of them. And I would like you to do the same. And then the third layer, I'm gonna do The only on one side to give a little bit of an impression of a 3D tree is not a realistic tree, but just to give it a little movement and a bit of an impression. And the way you apply the second layer is up to you because you can wait until it's completely dry, this one, or you can apply it before it dries completely. So e.g. if I pick up a little bit of this darker color, when you do that, it will expand the color and mixed with a color underneath. And this is a one effect that you can achieve with watercolor. And it's the beauty of watercolor because it just flows and it gives you an expected shapes. And of course, where there was no color, it would just stay where it is. And you have this darker and lighter effect where if it's too wet, it might just mix and create a third color. Um, so this is the first, and in a way, the second layer. You can wait, as we're saying that until it's completely dry. And then you just apply the other one. And now I'm going to just wait until this dries and apply the darkest layer. Again. You can apply it when this is not completely, completely dry, so, but wait until it's sort of you can see still a shine. I'm not sure if you can. So as you can see at the moment, is very, very wet. If you wait until it's dry, like almost dry, it will give you a similar effect to this. If you wait until it's completely dry, then it will give you a different effect with more defined shapes. So we'll leave that for now. And I'm going to show you how to do the tree trunk. So I'm going to make a bigger shape here. And for that we need the brown. And I'm going to dilute it a little bit. The first layer, always dilute your paint. You can make it darker, but it's almost impossible, very, very difficult to bring it back to a lighter color and dilute it quite a bit. That's okay. It could be even more diluted. And a play, you can play this layer also in a W and fashion if you want. I was gonna do it. I'm just a solid layer. But I can show you the two ways. So let's do this as a solid layer. And then we do another one with the stippling. Because this is called stippling. And you just do like it did in the tree. So like that. Then you can decide which one you like best. So they're all quite width still. Cheese quite width as well. So I'm going to wait for these to dry a little bit and then we can apply the other layers. 7. How to Make the Textures Second Layer: Okay, this one here, it's almost dry. Let's see if I can show you with a light. There's just a little bit of shine to it. Wherever is more. What we can do is apply another layer. We're still not completely DRE is a bit more down this side. And as you can see, creates this sort of patterns, this stained. And you can use that. Just make sure that it's not too way too. As you could see, it was almost dry. You can just about see the shine on this side that there was a bit dire. You can see that the stains are modifying. So if you want a modified stained, wait until it's dry. And if you want something like this, wait until it's almost dry. Well, not exactly. And then this one is also drying. So what I can do is I can apply. You can see some of these things are not computed j, and this will create a different play with the marks, with the stains. And that it's something that you might you might like. And then of course you can make that a bit darker. And I can add some of these black mix and make it a bit darker in a play. Some of that darker on one side to give the impression of the shadow on one side. And the tree is still a bit wet. So as you can see, is less than it was before, but it's still a bit wet. And if you want, you can apply some of this darker paint when it's about this day. So you can you can still see a Shane and the paint will sort of diffuse. So don't put too much, load your brush, but then touch it on the side of the whale. And then just lightly touch it. When you're painting like this. And then usually a play a little tiny bit on this side as well. Because if you are a 3D shape, it will have a little bit of a shadow on this side, immoral shadow side. Of course, you don't have to do this. We need a Christmas card is a stylized tree, so just do it the way you like. But I wanted to show you this. I will give you a download where you can see the different steps. So I added the colors, color mixes, and the Tombow that are used. If you have Tombow, you want to use them. And I added the steps. Normally, what I do when I do my color mixes is I put a letter for each mix. So this is the starting mix. Then I add the lemon yellow, then I added the quinacridone magenta. So I call this mix with a letter, uh, the way you know, the alphabet letters. I didn't put a letter here because these are just the single color is not a mix. And then here I will put it in pen so you can see it better. I wrote d, So you use this mix for the first layer. Then plus b. On top of this, you add the mix, the slightly darker one, and then plus c. So on top, you add the C mix, the darker one, which is basically what we did here. And of course they will be, every time there will be different. He wants he would never be the same effect. But that's the beauty of it. And I will put this with your downloads. Okay, this is again, almost dry. So I'm going to add a little bit of the darker paint. And I just sort of on a vertical, still the stippling, but in a vertical way. So it gives the idea of the bark. And sometimes what I do is with paintings like this is a pickup some of the neat color from the palette, which is quite thick. And give it that extra texture. Okay? And so you can do the back. I mean, there are different ways. But for this type of card, I think is kind of a mornings if you do the bark in a similar way as you do the tree. Alright, now we can move on to the actual count. 8. Color Mixing: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to mix the colors. So I'm going to try not to use too many colors and to keep it as simple as possible. So normally I would mix my own green and we will need some green for the tree in here. So, but in this case, I will use ready mixed greens, but I won't use them as they are because they still look a bit strange. But if you want to mix your own grid, feel free to do it. I have another class on color mixing. If you want to try that and then try to mix your own green color because this is not a botanical painting, then we can just improvise and mix a green that we like. I'm going to start with hookers green. And if you don't have one of these colors, then feel free to use another color and other greens are plenty you can use e.g. sap green and olive green or a different type of grain. Or again, as I said, just mix blue and yellow and see what comes up. I'm going to put some of these sap green and hookers green in here. And I'm going to mix a good quantity of this because we will need quite a bit. So I'm just adding some water because you don't want the color to be too thick, but not too watery either. And always have some scrap paper handy so you can test the color. That's okay. The next color is permanent, sap green. These are all Winsor and Newton. And then this color still a little bit on the inside. So I'm going to add some yellow to make it a little bit more natural. And this one here is actually one of the few Daniel Smith colors that I have, lemon yellow. But you can use Winsor lemon instead of this one. So Winsor Lemon is from Winsor and Newton. Or you can use the lemon yellow if you have Daniel Smith. Or you can use a different yellow altogether, just be aware that it won't look exactly like mine. If you use a different yellow, then what I'm going to do now to make it even more realistic side, I'm going to add a tiny bit of quinacridone, magenta. Just add a little bit at the time. Because it's easy to add more, but it's very difficult to bring the color back if he's gone too dark. That's okay for this one. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to pick some of this and put it in the other. Well, I think that's enough. And then I'm going to add a little bit more magenta. As you can see, it's a bit darker. So I think just a tiny little bit more. So I have a later version in a darker version. But I want to have an even lighter version. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pick up some of this, add a bit of water, make it later with the water, but also I'm going to add a little bit more of the yellow. So now I have a light version, made version and a darker version. And it's always good to have this combination, whatever you do. Because one important thing in watercolor, in any type of painting is contrast. So it's good to have some contrast. And then our need bluish color for this snowman to represent this. No. And I'm going to use Winsor blue, green shade. And to this, I'm going to add a little bit of cobalt blue. And then we need this to be quite diluted. Okay, and I will give you a download when I write down all the colors that I've used with a sample of the color. So don't worry about writing down everything now, I should have told you that before, but I will give you the download. And then we're going to need some. Brown for the little bit of the trunk that we see in here. So for the brown, again, you can use the ready-made one. You can mix your own completely, or you can do a sort of in-between kind of thing. So I'm going to use some burnt umber. Burnt amber is like this. I want to make it a little bit darker, so I'm going to add the Permanent Alizarin crimson. Okay, I think this is alright, and then we can always add a little bit more. And then for the carer to need some orange. So I'm going to use some scarlet lake. Again, if you just have orange, don't worry too much about it. Use the orange that you have. Maybe you can add a little tiny bit of red. But don't stress about this. And then I'm going to add Winsor orange. I think that's okay for a carrot. And then going to use probably some of the halos. Paypal, this I think is from Sennelier. If you don't have Haley's paper, you can use quinacridone, magenta, which is not too far off from areas paper, but again, you can use any color. C is very similar. So quinacridone, magenta from Winsor and Newton is perfectly fine. And then we'll see if we need any more colors. We probably need a neutral color for the hat because I'm going to make this as if it was like white, fair, like the Christmas hat. And to paint white objects, it's good to use a black, but don't use, please do use the ready-made black because it's quite opaque and it's not very nice. Normally, I would make my own. But this class is, I wanted to keep it really simple and stress-free. So if you want, you can use Payne's gray. So which has got a sort of bluish tint. But if you make it very diluted, even more diluted than this, very, very diluted. It's good to give the impression of the shadow on a white object. And I will show you how to do this. So if you don't want to do your own black, I have a class on how to mix neutral colors where I explain how to mix your own black. But basically you need to mix yellow, blue, and red, and you will obtain a black. And if you are interested, I can quickly show you here how to do your black, but otherwise, don't worry about it. Just use your ready. Payne's gray, ready-made paints gray, maybe even neutral tint, but Payne's gray probably is better. However, if you want to try this and make your own black, you use Winsor blue, green shade. Then you add quinacridone, magenta. And you should get the kind of deep purple like this. And then when you have this color going to add the lemon yellow or if you want, you can add, if you don't have the yellow, lemon, yellow, you can add the Winsor lemon. This one is getting there. You just have to make sure that it doesn't have either a blue or a red bias. This is towards the red. I think bias. I'm going to add a little bit more yellow. And you can use this. I'm not sure you can see it on camera, but this is more like a black, the one I did. And the Payne's gray is more towards blue. Okay. But as I said, don't worry if you don't want to do this. If you're having trouble, just use a ready-made color like the Payne's gray. Don't use black because black, it's opaque and it looks horrible when you dilute it. And what it looks always horrible. But I think these are all the colors that we need. I will give you the list with everything that I mixed. And if we need any more color than I will tell you as we go, but this should be ok. And then as I said, they will use some of these Tombow pen just to do a few more bits and pieces. And if you don't, if you don't have the Tombow pen, just use the colors that you have. Just go crazy with your imagination and use your watercolors. And now we can move on to painting the card. Uh, see you in the next lesson. 9. Apply the Masking Fluid: Finally, we can start working on the card. And I just wanted to show you a couple of examples. So this was mostly a test drive to try different techniques. And if you have time, I advise you to do that because it will give you a chance to see, you know, how things work. So here I tried the ink pen and a trade, the gold pen. And what else? I tried to put ink around the shape of the snowman and I tried to, there's no here, this is done with gouache and watercolor, so I can show you how that is done. And then what else. I tried the Tombow, these ones here. And so there's the white gel pen as well. So it gives you the possibility to try different things and then see which one you like best. Also, in this one I tried to add the little bubbles. I think the code, and I did the boxes in a different way. So I add a bigger bow. And I did some with a Goldman. And I didn't put the ink around here. I just use it for the details. And again, I use this no because I quite like the effect. So if you have time, you could try that. And in here, I'm going to again repeat the bubbles. But I wanted to tell you this paper, the Canson Excel, doesn't take masking fluid. Very ugly. So I used it here and it's okay. But you have to be really careful when you remove it and you shouldn't leave it for too long. So don't leave it for days and days and then go back and try to remove it. Because the longer you leave it, the worst statistic for the paper, it would just take one layer of the paper and it becomes a kind of rough. You can see it a little bit. Probably. I don't know if you can see it on camera. We're probably there is a bit rough. So if you want to use masking fluid, maybe it's best if you use a more expensive paper which is stronger anyway, resist a little bit better to the masking fluid. I mean, I I used it. It's okay. You can't really tell by just looking at it like this. But if you look at closely, then you will see there are a little like little imperfections because then the paper starts to tear and this is quite light. Don't know if you can see the drawing. Maybe I should do it a little bit, a little bit as it is. But you should do it very, very light. So even this is still a bit dark because this is going to be quite light in color. But other wanted to do a completely delighted that you don't see anything what I'm doing. And if you have a kneaded eraser, just use that to debate on your pencil line and it will make it lighter without completely erasing them. So masking fluid, I'm going to apply it with one of these, which is especially made for masking fluid. This is from the SAA. And you can find these acetyl, their single ones on their website. But if you want, you can use an old brush. So that's why I didn't really tell you about this before. But as long as there's an old brush because masking fluid will ruin your brushes. And what I normally do is actually apply some soap, just a little bit of a layer of soap, just the one you use to wash your hands before you use it. And then see if I can open this. Just pick up the masking fluid and apply it. So I did a little like circle drawing. You don't need to. But if you want to have a guide, alright. And then just wash your brush straight away. And you can wash it with a little bit of soap again to take the masking fluid because it's Psych this plastic thing that we stick to your to your brush and make sure the masking fluid is completely dry before you start painting. If you want, you can also apply it. Let's see if I can do the both for sample and the little ribbons in here. And if the order details that you want to keep the one to preserve white and you're not confident about sort of going around and around them with the paint. I'm not going to put any masking fluid here. I'm just going to go carefully round with a smaller brush. But if you want to, if you feel more confident, you can do that. And then just make sure, as we're saying, that the masking fluid is completely dry before going forward to the next step. And we're going to do that. Just wait for this to dry. And in the next step we will start with the paint, with the first layer. 10. Card First Layer: We can finally start with the first layer on the Christmas card. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the bigger brush, makes sure that the masking fluid is dry. And then take some of the lighter, more diluted paint and start basically applying it with the stippling motion that we did. Before. I show you. Basically I play it leaving some spaces. So not a just a full layer, a solid layer, but with some spaces, the only place where I'm going to add the color, it's around the bubbles. So I will add and we make sure the bubbles are surrounded because they look nicer if they stand out from a solid background. And then everywhere else, just the play, the color with the stippling. And he would pull naturally in certain places. So you will have lightened dark. And be careful when you get close to the snowman. Just go with the tip of your brush or change your brush to a smaller one and you feel worried. And then you will get paint inside. You can paint over the arm because we're going to do that with the ink. So that's fine. And it's just the quick fund lose way to apply the paint key. And then the last bit here. Alright, so you will have these sort of light and dark areas. And then we leave that to dry. And we will apply the second layer once. This is day. And then we can now do a row with the first layer on this snowman with is not touching the tree. So the way I like to apply my watercolor is wet on dry. And what I do is say, maybe I will use this later. Bigger brush for this. I use the number for Princeton. Very diluted paint. Always start with light and then you can go you can make it darker. And I apply some paint on the right side. Goes up. For me. I'm right-handed, so delight always comes from the left. And then we rinse the brush. Once touched it on the side, make sure it doesn't have too much water. And then start again. Applying it next to the paint. Rinse. And repeat. The same process. Rinse and repeat basically. And you want to cover the entire area. And every time you rinse it, you will have less paint. So it will become lighter and lighter. So you have the darker on this side, lighter on this side. And as you can see, usually, when a rinse the brush, I touch it lightly on the paper because this brush holds quite a bit of water. So it will be I will be putting too much water down if I didn't touch it once. But that comes from knowing your brushes. And we can do, let's see the hat or maybe decide, maybe we can do this, this one. So I'm going to use a smaller brush because it's a smaller area. So I'm going to do the same thing, apply the paint, rinse the brush. Just be careful not to go over the scarf. And then we can cover the rest of the area. And if you want to make it darker, you can just add the second layer. Just the same way we added the first one. Let's see if we can do the face. I try not to touch the tree and be careful there's the little carrot here. If you are unsure, you can do this. Then you can always add masking fluid on, on top of the carrot, e.g. and then you can work a better like that. And then just the everyday rinse the brush and keep doing this transition effect and attached the tree. So if this happens, you can simply rinse your brush, dry it, and with a dump brush, just pick up the color that you don't want to be there. Okay. So yeah, did that on purpose so I could show you this, how to do this. Alright. Now we can do the hut. So for the heart and went to pick up some red which I didn't prepare before, but I'm just going to use some Permanent Alizarin crimson. And then maybe add a little bit of this pink and diluted. Because you always want to start with a diluted paint. And then going to start to apply it in here. And then again, rinse the brush, touches lightly on the paper and then make the transition key. You can smooth the edges if there are not. Enough was more than F. So just the when your brush lightly. And we can add one layer to the gloves as well. So just a simple flat layer in the gloves. And then we will add the shadow afterwards. You can even leave it like that. If you don't want to add the shadow. We can do the little feet as well. So again, put some blue down. And then the other one. You'll make the transition like this. Alright? And we can do the tree trunk as well. So with diluted brown paint, we applied the stippling effect like I showed you earlier. And this will give the idea of the bark of the tree. So we'll leave that and then we can add the second layer. And we can add some paint to the boxes as well. So for some people I think are going to do the first one, the blue color. So just dilute some of this blue. And if it's too light, you can always add a bit more. And for the first layer, you can just go over some of the lines, but be careful not to go over the little bow. And just leave this area white because we, we add a different color for the rebound as well. And then we can do the other one, the other books. We can do it pink. Maybe. I'm going to dilute this. Just be careful not to touch the blue box. If you did the first. Going to leave this one for the moment. And we can add some color to the scarf, which I can show you. You can do with one of the Tombow, miraculous if you want. And this is quite easy. You just basically apply the paint, watercolor marker. But you just upload the painter like a normal pencil or normal marker. And you have more control. I suppose you could do the entire card with markers like this, but I'm not sure if you can do the stippling effect. Now that the box is dry, we can do another box. Let's see, I'm going to do it actually with a lighter color, with a pink. And if you want, if you don't want to use the brush in these areas which are quite small, then you can use the Tombow pens or another brush pen if you have them. Otherwise this will use a small brush and you can just use a normal watercolor. Alright? And one last thing we need to do is the fair here. So I'm going to use some of the black and mixed before or you can use Payne's gray. I'm going to dilute this quite a bit. And then you can just, again do the sort of stippling effect just to give the impression of the fair. So it's not a solid solid earlier, little tiny bits in the middle, and then a bit there as well. And I think we're done for the first layer. And we can carry on in the next video with the second layer. 11. Card Second Layer: We are ready for the second layer. And I just notice I forgot to paint the carrot here, the little nose. So I'm just going to do that with the orange we mixed before. And the smaller brush. So just do a layer and then we can add some details afterwards. And I'm going to do the second layer on the tree. So I'm going to pick up our medium color. So we applied the lightest. Now we're going to do the medium, medium strength and just do the same as we did before with the stippling action. Just apply it on top of the previous color, leaving some spaces. And in this case, the spaces we show the lighter color underneath. And you can go over some of the white areas as well. So we'd give you different type of coloring. Just do it like that. And again, being careful when you get next to the snowman. I'm just going to do around here a bit more carefully. Just with the very tip of the brush. Just always make sure you have enough paint To do the entire tree and day a layer. And a bit down here. I can then if you notice some places where you could add a bit more, you can just go over them. Alright, so we need to wait for that to dry. And we can apply a second layer and the rest of the design. So I'm going to use a smaller brush and play. His second layer in here just to strengthen this side to make it a bit darker. So same thing, wet on dry. Then the chip brush on the side and start from close to the paint and then pick up the paint and do this transition effect. Then again, rinse the brush and carry on. And even if it's clear water, I advise you to do the whole area because otherwise, you might get a mark sort of a sane way you stopped. If you do the whole area, this won't happen. Okay? And then in here I want to show you how to use these, um, if you're using the Tombow markers. So I'm going to rinse the brushing of it. I'm done. Then with this brush, just go over this side like we did before with the paint. And then with a dump brush, you can just go over the paint and create the transition effect. And again, I will go over even we just clean water the entire area. And we can do the same here and the phase. So add the shadow. And then with the damp brush, just create the transition. And what they normally do because this is a round shape. We need to add a little bit of a shadow on this side is less than the right side. And this is if the light comes from the left, which for me usually does because I'm right-handed or left-handed. It would be the other way round. And then the same here. Okay, and that gives you the impression of a round object. And on the last one I'm going to do with the brush just to show you the previous technique. So pick up some paint, then, apply it in here. Then rinse the brush, and then touch it on the previous paint. And then just the transition it laid this. Okay. And in here they're quite small, so I might just do it with a, with a Tombow. That alright, and then we need to do the same thing with the hat. So let's get some of the red color. And I'm just going to add it on this side. Rinse again. So it becomes clearer and clearer. Then we add a little bit on this side as well. So when the paint is still wet, you can also add a bit more to make it a bit darker. Just drop the paint like that. And then do the transition. Okay. And the same thing we can do with a white. Let's make it a bit darker. And you can see here there's a line for being. So if you're the one that with a damp brush, just lightly, lightly touch it. And then he will, um, so transition a bit better. It's a little bit of fluff in there and a little bit of paint on this side. And same thing with the gloves. If you want to add maybe a little bit of a shadow in here. If you don't want to rinse the brush, you can do this with a second brush. Just keep it down and do the same thing that you're doing with this. And I'm drying the brush because this is a very small area so it will be too much water otherwise. And I'm going to add the second layer to the tree trunk so I'm making the paint a little bit thicker with a thicker paint that I have in the well and a bit of fluff. I'm not sure why fluff always attracted to paint brushes. So I'm giving this stippling vertical type of effect. So you can see it mimics the trunk, the back. Alright, so does the second layer. And then in the next video, I will show you the final layer. 12. Card Third Layer: So the second layer is almost dry. But I think I can add the third layer. And I'm going to use the darkest mix that we have and just apply it on the right side of the card of the hair tree. I mean. So just to give it a little bit of an impression of 3D tree. And I'm not going to pick up any more paint. So I will use the one in here and just keep applying little bits here and there. So I won't cover the entire tree with this. And maybe carefully at play some around. There's no ma'am. They say it's got a bit more. And on this side, I would like a bit more variation. So what I'm going to do is rinse the brush and pick up some of the midtone and apply it. So there's a bit more variation. And I think that's it for the tree. I'm not going to add anything else to it. And then we can do the same for them. A trunk. So I'm going to use an even more, um, deep brown so less diluted paint and play. A third layer. So a bit more on this side, right? And then we can add the details in the boxes. So let's see if I add another little bit of shadow with this. Maybe that's not strong enough. Um, I think it's okay. And then like we did before, with a clean damp brush, just go over the paint a little bit. So it gives you the impression that is, there is a shadow there. And a, for this one, I'm going to use some of this color that I had in their palette, less diluted. And do the same as I did with a pen. So just go just underneath, do a line. And then with a clean, damp brush, just touch the side of the line. Maybe it's diluting it a bit too much. So I'm going to make it a bit stronger than clean damp brush and transition it. Okay. And then let's see what else we need to do. So the scarf. With the scarf, we can do maybe going to do little polka dots with a darker paint. And of course you can do this with the paint. You don't have to use these brushes. And to show that there is a sort of not here of some sort, you can use the previous paint and just go over it again and do a sort of shadow. And then the shadow on the right side as well. And a little bit on this side. But what I like to do with the scarf normally is to add some ink pen. So even if you don't do too much shadow, it should be okay because I like to add the details with a pen. So the buttons as well. And maybe you're going to strengthen this shadow here. And I'm going to show you, um, where they meant before when I told you you can use two brushes. So I'm going to wet this and have it done. Then pick up the color. Put it on this side where I want the shadow. And then use this brush to diffuse the paint a little bit on this side. Quite as malaria, so it's not easy. And you're going to have to do this. One too. Is just a I like to show a little bit of the shadow. And always keep the brush clean because it will pick up the paint. Alright. And then maybe put a little bit more shadow in here. And I'm doing this typically action just to show that it's a, it's fair, it's not smooth. Maybe do something like that. And a little bit here. Okay? And I think, um, well, we need to do now is to add the details. Wait for this to dry and then remove the masking fluid and add the bubbles. And so it's just a matter of adding a few more details here and there. And we're almost homeless, ready, and we'll do that in the next couple of lessons. 13. Adding the Details: So while we wait for the tree to dry, I can add some details here and there. And for sample, I would like to add some gold on, on this to mimic like a Christmas wrapping paper. We can add some little dots in here with a gold pen. So you can make smaller and bigger dots to make more varied. And then on, uh, on this paper, we can add some stripes. So we can do stripes like that. So just try to show that this is just one paper. So the line is continuing from here to here. This one you can see a little bit there. And maybe on this one, I mean, you can add it with the paintbrush as well if you like. So I can show you in here. I'm going to pick up some of these blue and just get rid of the excess paint in your brush. Don't have too much. And then add some little dots here and there. Okay? And then maybe I can make this a bit darker. And I will make the center bit darker and maybe disable the book. So let's do like we did before with a damp brush transition. This maybe a little bit here. And they might do the same. On this side. The little center side transition, it makes sure that brushes damp and not too wet. Okay. And then what's gonna put my brush in there? And then maybe we do blue one. We can do the same. What's a bit late. So okay. And I'm going to apply the ink pen in here so make sure that this is completely, completely dry. Otherwise, it might smudge. So I'm going to do the little eyes. I'm going to do some details here in the carrot. Don't do like a solid line all around. The, break it up a little bit. Smile. And then we do the details of the scarf. As you can see, I'm breaking the incline here and there. And if you do some like flicking motion, you can do the detail of the scarf as well. Here. Go select that. You can apply the pen before if you want. But it's nice to have the option to decide afterwards. Okay. So this motion that I do is basically put the pen down and then flick it like that. And then we have the arms. So can just about see this in here. And then this one from this side. The buttons. I'm going to leave tiny bit. This is to sort of mimic a shiny button with a little bit of light. You can do it all black if you want. And maybe add a little bit of a detail here in the fair. So just a little tiny marks here and there. You can practice this in another piece of paper if you want. But just nothing like no solid lines just here and there just to show the fair. And in these balls you can add also details with the pen. I don't think I will do it, but if you want, you can add it. And I think I might add. Then he lately, the details here. Just to show like a knitted gloves. And the next thing to do is to wait for the bubbles and hadn't been for the paint to dry completely so we can paint the bubbles and we will need to take the masking fluid off first. So we do that in the next lesson. 14. Painting the Baubles: The paint now is dry. So what we need to do is to remove the masking fluid and you can remove it with your finger. Just put your finger, touch it lightly. And very, very delicate tree. You can remove it like that. Or you can use an eraser. So I'm going to use this one which is quite small. But you can use any type of eraser and just very gently remove it. Like this. You have to be very gentle, especially if you use the cancer paper because otherwise it might tear. So very, very slowly. Okay, So make sure you don't have any more masking fluid there. And then all you need to do is to color the, the bubbles. So we can do I'm going to do some with the paint. So let's see this one here. And while you can do to give it the idea there is a round shape. You can leave a white area like this. And then to make a smoother transition, do like we've done already. So with a damp, clean damp brush, just go over this area. Such as more. I'm area here that, um, it might be a bit more difficult to do that. Um, another way you can do this is to just color in the shape completely. So, and then, like I'm doing here, and then we will add the highlight with a gel pen. Okay? Maybe I'll do this one. Same color. Then maybe do an orange one. We can use these. So I can put a yellow one here. Then maybe pink one somewhere over here. Maybe a red one. As you can see, you can just use the same colors. You don't have to have huge amount of colors. If you have two similar colors. So e.g. like in this case, I have a lighter and darker, purple and blue. So put down the lighter color first, like you would do with the watercolor. And then you can add the shadow with the darker color, pink. And in the ones that are already dry, we can add the shadow. For somebody with a blue one. We can add these quite a dark color, but we'll see how it goes. So I'll add a little bit on this side. And then same principle, a damp clean brush. Just do the transition effect. So always clean your brush because it's picks up the watercolor and dry it well. So it needs to be damp and not wet. And let's see if this one. So if you look at it against the light, you will see which ones are dry. So this might be a little bit dump steel, but maybe to do the shadow is not too bad. It's kind of defusing the paint already. Then you just need to give it a little bit of a help. They're so tiny touches. And it will create the transition. And then let's see which one can we do? This one probably. So let's pick up the darker color and do it in here as well. So for the shadow, clean, damp brush, and transition. Okay. And let's try with a pink. And this one, we can do it with the watercolor. And where was it? Here? We add the darker color. And then just do the transition. And we can do the same. Here. Gets a bit more red. The color, this was still a bit wet, so it just diffusing by itself. And they're gonna add it here as well. Drop a bit more. And then this was done with the Dumbo so I can add the shadow with this darker color. So clean, damp brush and do the transition. There's one last one. You can do. With this. There was 11 more. If you'll feel your brushes too big, you can always pick up smaller brush. K. There's one last one. Pick up some, some color. Going to talk a bit more in here. Alright. And I think as far as the CI and everything is fine. Um, but I wanted to add the snow effect. And for this, I will show you how to use the gouache. So we're going to use white gouache. And I will show you in the next lesson how to add. The background has no effect. 15. Adding the Snow: I'm going to show you how to add the background effect. I just send this a little bit of the pencil marks here so they can be erased. And the two ways you can add, that's no effect. You can use one of these molecules, either this side, the brush side, or even decide because you just need to do some small dots. But I like to use the brush because with this more or less, you get more or less the same shape, especially if you use this side of the pen. With a brushy, you'll get more organic shapes. And what I do is I take some of the gouache. Gouache is more or less like a watercolor, but it's opaque. And you can make any color with the white gouache because you just add the watercolor color. So I'm going to pick up some of the blue and I'm going to add it to the white. So you want sort of a light blue color. When to add a little bit of water. Don't add too much. And then you can start adding the little snow flakes. And you can do, you can push a bit more for a larger shape and you can just barely touch it for the smaller shape. And it's good to vary where you add your snowflakes so you can avoid making patterns. So there will be more random. And it takes a little bit, but I find it quite relaxing actually to do this. And I'm going to speed up the video with this. And you can add as much or as little as you like. I think this is quite a good quantity and might add a little bit because I'm, the gouache is opaque. You can add a little bit on the tree as well. And I added a little bit on the snowman on his hat. So just bits here and there. If you want. You can do this with the wood, an old toothbrush, and the paint. But I quite like you to do this way. I feel I have more control where this goes. With. Russia was just flesh everywhere. And if you need a bit more support to steadier hand, you can just put your pinky on the table and use that to support your hand instead of going like that, which could mean that you push too hard. Just make sure you don't put your finger in the wet paint. And I'm on the TI, you can also add this with a gel pen, which is completely white, or you can, um, pick up the white gouache. But just to show you, you can use also the the gel pen. And do. I was putting my finger in the wet paint, like I just said, not to do this. So it makes it smaller flakes, if you like. And for the bubbles which are dry now, you can add to the highlight just with a little tiny bit of the tiny mark off the gel pen. It will show more on the darker paint but is still shows. And that makes the bubbles, I'm shiny. Add a bit more here. Hopefully you can see that on camera. And the same thing in here. So if you do the entire button black, then you can add a bit of the white on top to make it look shiny. And if you want to add just one more detail, you can put a little tiny touch of God here. Doesn't show a lot, but it shows when you have declared in your hands. And it's like a thread where the bubbles are hanging. So just a little tiny flick. Then he got disconnected bit more here. And I will do it only on the top half of the card just to show that it's snowing and very Christmas C. Okay, so I think we have finished our card. And of course you can add as many or as little details as you wish. You don't have to do it. This detailed. But really it doesn't take very long to do this type of card. And it's something I'm special. Just the unique for your friends and family. There you can do or you can even make these to sell them if you want. Um, but yeah, that's our card, complete. And I hope you have enjoyed doing this project with me. 16. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on completing the class. I hope you have enjoyed painting the card as much as I have. And I hope you have learned new techniques that you will be able to apply it to your future projects. Your next step is to keep practicing watercolor painting. Hopefully every day, even if for a few minutes a day. And you will see improvements up and over the time. Don't forget to post pictures of your project in the project section so you can receive my feedback if you like. And also, don't forget to hit the Follow button here on Skillshare, so you can be notified as soon as I post a new class. You can also check out my profile to see my older classes. If you'd like to connect, you can find my social media links down here. If you have enjoyed the class, I will be grateful if you could leave a good review, because that will be really helpful. Thanks again for taking the class and I'll see you in the next class. Bye.