Watercolor Cards for Beginners : Paint Cute Dolls in Snow | Francoise Blayac | Skillshare
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Watercolor Cards for Beginners : Paint Cute Dolls in Snow

teacher avatar Francoise Blayac, Professional Artist

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      2:17

    • 2.

      Class Project

      0:47

    • 3.

      Supplies

      2:31

    • 4.

      Sketch and Colors

      5:41

    • 5.

      Background and Snow

      9:57

    • 6.

      Base Layer on Dolls

      8:17

    • 7.

      Shadows

      10:35

    • 8.

      A Few Details

      8:53

    • 9.

      Final Highlights and Snow

      6:38

    • 10.

      Before You Go

      0:43

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15

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About This Class

Ho ho ho! Are you ready for winter holiday fun?

We are going to paint a cute watercolor card that you can turn into more beautiful cards for the Holidays using the techniques and inspiration from the class!

With cute dolls on a snowy background, this is what we will be exploring: 

  • Painting  a full scene with just a few colors
  • Sketching dolls with very simple shapes
  • Creating a quick but dreamy background with snow.
  • Painting realistic dolls with beginner portrait painting techniques.
  • Finishing a watercolor winter card for a beautiful holiday atmosphere.

This class will suit art enthusiasts looking for winter and Christmas magic through painting. 

Each lesson will help you implement basic watercolor skills so you can easily follow through, thanks to added tips and my full guidance with each step.

Join me to paint this beautiful watercolor card and when you finish the class, please share your project to the project gallery and reach out to me for help or feedback.

See you in class !

Meet Your Teacher

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Francoise Blayac

Professional Artist

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Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: When winter holidays are coming up, I think it's always nice for us creators to be able to add a personal touch to our gifts, and watercolor cards are a great way to do this. Hi, my name is Francoise, and a few years ago, I left my job to become a watercolor artist.] Since then, I found that my core passion lies with teaching, thanks to Skillshare, and sharing my experiments to YouTube. Fast forward to today and I get to host watercolor workshops and weekly classes for beginners in my local community. Watercolor cards can be really easy and fun to make, and that's why in this class, we're going to paint a doll illustration on a folded card. First, I'll show you what supplies you can use, we will then mix colors and prepare the sketch. I will walk you through each stage from painting a dreamy background and snow to making our dolls with cute and slightly realistic with just a few strokes. There will be plenty of tips along the way and my advice to know this illustration and gather the confidence to paint more of them. You can take what you learn here to make more winter illustrations like this snowman, for example, that I've painted for a previous Skillshare class. The best is that there are no rules for watercolor cards. They can be square, rectangular, or you can have them fold or just let them stay flat and use as a regular painting to decorate your home after the holidays. We can also keep them, use them as a beautiful ornament for a dinner party or turn them into a cute tag. The choice is all yours. I think this class is ideal for someone just getting started with watercolor because both supplies and colors are very basic. The sketch is easier to draw even when you think you can't draw and I've made the process as simple as possible so you can follow along, learn some techniques, and practice your watercolor at the same time. Let's not wait any longer and let's get started. 2. Class Project: [MUSIC] Your project for today will be to create a cute watercolor card using the techniques demonstrated in the class. Remember, there are no rules. You can change the format of the card, use the techniques that I'm teaching here, and apply that to another illustration. So feel free to be creative. To help you move throughout the class easily, you can download a list of the supplies as well as a reference photo and a photo of my painting in the Resources section. When you're ready, just snap a photo of your art and download it to the Projects section. We're ready to get started so meet me next where I look at the supplies we're going to use. [MUSIC] 3. Supplies: In this lesson, we're going to go over the supplies you will need to paint our cute watercolor card. First watercolor paper. I picked a size of ten by seven inches since we will fold the paper in half later and end up with a five by seven inches card. I prefer and recommend 100 percent watercolor paper, a cold press type. But you can very well use the watercolor paper you already own as long as it is thick enough like mine, so we can use it as a card. Mine has a weight of 300 grams per square meter and it works well once folded. You will need a large piece of any paper or cardboard to protect the top of the card while we paint. At least two paintbrushes will do. I like a variety myself. But for a project like this, a large round paintbrush for the background and a smaller one with a pointed end for the dolls will work. If you have an extra one for the dolls, one that's not too large, it's even better. I always try to use simple colors in my classes. So if you have a basic watercolor palette, you're all set. I like one that comes with the mixing trays. Otherwise, plan on a mixing palette too. Our colors for today are blue, yellow, red, and brown. That's it. I'll show you how to mix them in the next lesson. The drawing part will be easy, so don't worry. You only need a very basic pencil, ruler, and eraser. We will need masking tape to hold the card into place while we paint, and also create these pretty white borders all around. Plan on two or three paper towel sheets or a piece of fabric mainly to soak up excess water from the pain brushes. Two jars of water are always helpful in watercolor, one to wet the paintbrush and the other one to rinse. To paint the highlights and the snow, I recommend white gouache, and since there are little dolls in our painting, a white gel pen will also be very helpful, if you have one. But you can always use gouache instead. I like to use a heat gun or a hairdryer to speed up the drying times between layers. If you have neither, you can wait for your painting to dry between each step. I think we're all set to get started. See you in the next lesson. 4. Sketch and Colors: To prepare for the painting, first, we're going to locate the middle of our sheet of watercolor paper. There are five inches on either side, then we want to add tape, so it starts below the line. This is because we will tape the card all around to paint it and we need this white frame to show all around, so make sure to plan for it on all sides. When this is done to keep the card clean, you can add a piece of cardboard of paper on top of the area we'll not be painting. I'm going to mix my four colors and I like to start with a lighter one, so I'll start with yellow, then red, then blue, and finally brown. You can see I picked basic shades and it's okay if yours look a bit different, if you're using tubes, pens, or even bottles. I add enough paint but also water in order to get a creamy mix, a bit like milk. We want the paint to show when dry, that's why I don't add a whole lot of water. If I did, it might look very pale when it dries in paper. But we also need the paint to be liquid enough that it will float easily on paper and then it will be easy to paint with. Don't forget to rinse your paintbrush every time you switch colors. I started with a horizontal line towards the top of this sheet, it will help me remember where I want the dolls to end, this means the hash one go past this line. Same with the bottom, this is where the snow will be. To make sure the dolls are properly centered on the sheet, we can also split it into four equal parts with one vertical and one horizontal line. Let's draw two circles of the same size and it's okay, they're not exactly the same. We're spacing them out equally on each side of the vertical line, and the bottom of each circle lays on top of the horizontal line we just drew. This is the dolls heads. Now we can draw their clothing and it's a very simple design that looks like an unfinished triangle. I make it stop on the bottom line since there'll be snow there later. Let's draw the hats. These starts before each circle ends because we need to imagine part of the skull is inside the hat. I invite you to design the hat as you wish. I like that mine are a bit different, so my painting looks more realistic in the end. Let's draw the scarf. The scarf actually turns into arms and hands, which makes it dry and looks so nice and cute. We're going to define the snowline a bit better, so it looks like it's passing in front of the dolls. Finally we can add the hair. That's it, I'll see you next to start painting. 5. Background and Snow: There are several ways to paint a background and snow in watercolor. To make it fast and easy, I find the best one is to do it on dry paper. If you're a very beginner, I recommend to watch this lesson once before painting to know what to expect. You need a paintbrush to apply the paint fast and a second one to get rid of possible harsh lines, whenever the paint starts to dry faster than we need it to. I prefer to work with a pointy paintbrush because it's easier to get the areas between both dolls. We're going to have to work quickly to avoid harsh lines. That's why my other paintbrush is clean but wet and ready to fade those drying lines into the paper. Notice I'm working section after section. Otherwise, it will be very hard to avoid harsh lines. I also started with yellow because the next color is blue. It's a stronger color and I don't want to muddy my yellow with it. So this is the safest way to go. Let's keep going quickly because we want both yellow and blue to still be wet once we've finished covering up the whole background. The advantage of this technique is that it will help us get vibrant colors after they dry, and we can also outline the dolls very easily. It's best to keep it for a small paintings like this one now because on a larger sheet, it will be better to wet the paper first. Now we end up with two distinct colors. To break that monotony up, the trick is to overlap these colors. Certain associations of blue and yellow will turn into green, others like mine, into a muddy tone. To avoid this, you can either add color with your paintbrush directly with as little back and forth as possible, just drop yellow there like I'm doing right now. Or another way is to use the splattering technique. First with yellow. If you notice the paper turning white where you add splatters, it means there's too much water in your paintbrush and you would need to add yellow paint to your mix. It's okay to leave those white marks, also known as cauliflowers, since we're painting a snowy landscape. I'm adding water drops now, for instance, to get this effect on purpose. It works well in snowy scenes. You can see how that excess of water pushes the colors away. Now I'm finding we need to break up the monotony in the yellow parts. So let's repeat the splatters, but this time with blue. Try and avoid the dolls. While this dries, we can paint the snow. Have two paintbrushes ready again, one to add paint, the other to get rid of any harsh lines and get a softer look for our snow. Let's apply a blue directly at the bottom of the sheet. Now you can soften the hard edges as you wish. Remember that when we soften harsh edges, the paintbrush is never dripping wet. You can dab it on a paper towel to make it just damp. My paintbrush is a bit dirty from the yellow paint, but that's okay. It's one of my main colors, so it helps tie up the snow part to the background. I add a bit more blue here so we get some variety in colors. Dark parts at the bottom, a very bright paper white part on top, and softer blue strokes in the middle. It gives an impression of shape. White parts will be the curvy areas, while the blue ones suggests either a little dips in the snow and the snow being closer to us, like it is the case for the bottom of the painting. These small details gives a simple painting a lot of depth. Let's make sure this is dry before we get to the next step. 6. Base Layer on Dolls: Now the background and now we're finished we can tackle the doors. We'll take it step-by-step. Be sure you can get similar results as mine. We're still using two paint brushes with the same technique as before. Applying paint on one hand and softening harsh lines with a clean and damp paintbrush on the other hand. The main difference here is I switched to smaller paint brushes. That's why it's nice to have a variety if you can. Painting skin is easier than you think. Dilute your red mixed with a lot of water until it looks like a light pink. We're going to apply that on the faces of the doors, repeating a round shape, and to make it look like it, I apply the color on the edges mainly, and they fade the hard lines with the other paintbrush. Only the center of the circle stays white. Think of it like the areas in the circle that are located towards the top of the head and towards the ears and neck are receding away from us. Well, the area where the nose is, is a protruding one and it's a bit closer to us. That's why it should be a lot lighter. We're going to do the exact same thing for the hands then dry the paper completely so we can keep on painting without the paints in the clothing, bleeding into the phases. For the hats we'll use a Christmas Eve version of our red, which means it's the original mix, the one with more paint. It should look like a bright and cheerful red. I'm still using the damp paintbrush technique, just so we end up with several tones of red hat and not one solid and boring tone of red. Just like what I was telling you about snow. It's a detail, but it makes the painting look less cartoony. If you want, you can add a few extra lines to suggest strands of wool finishing the hat. For the girl's hair, you can mix yellow and red to make orange and add that. I always like to point out how we don't need many colors at all to paint anything and you can see it's the case here. Thanks to color mixing. For a change, I'll add a little bit of brown in the dress, you can mix in a darker blue. It will make it a bit darker if you had a lot. Otherwise, it will just help tie this brown to other parts in the painting that are blue, not something we noticed looking at a painting, but it really helps with color harmony. On the reference photo, the dress was gray. In that case, we would have had to use black and dilute it with a lot of water. But I preferred to use brown instead for more warmth. Let's repeat this with the scarf. I'm adding more paint here because this is the inside of this car, so it's darker. Add pigment here makes if you need the color to look more opaque there. You can see how this is turning into a very cool painting and I'll see you in the next lesson to intensify shadows. 7. Shadows: In this lesson, we're going to add depth to the dolls with shadows. You could call this a second layer on the dolls. I'm still working with my two paint brushes. This time we're adding change through color and we will add more brown to contrast the previous colors and create that impression of shadows. Let's add brown directly all around the face, exactly like we did before. Just make sure you add the shadow color on the edges so the previous layer is visible still. The idea is to end up with a variety of tones. The light paper, white area in the middle of the face, the light skin area from the base layer, and the shadow area immediately beneath the hat and towards the plates. For the hats and other red parts in the doll, we can mix brown to red to make a darker red. Don't forget to fade the hard edges with your damp paintbrush. You can add a few lines with a dark red paint to suggest texture if needed more. This is also a good technique to create texture in general, so one area doesn't appear too smooth all over. I forgot the hands earlier, so let's add a shadow there with brown. A little bit of dark red in the plates make them look nicer too, more finished, and you can add lines there as well to create a hair texture. To add shadows to the brown parts, I suggest add enough blue to your brown paint so it starts looking noticeably darker. Blue is always a great color to make other colors dark. I want to give a little more shape and depth to the hands and face, so I'll add this mixture too. As you might have noticed, the nice thing about working in layers is you can always tweak things little by little. With a dark tone of red, so that's red and brown mixed together, I keep going and then emphasize the hat and scarf. The shadows look good to me, you decide to stop when you're satisfied. That will vary with each person. We're ready to add a few details, so see you next. 8. A Few Details: It's time to add details. To emphasize the idea of texture, you can use the dry brush technique. Dip your paintbrush in paint, and then dab it on a paper towel to get rid of most of the paint. If we want to add a texture on the hat, for instance, we can hold the paintbrush horizontally, close to the paper, and gently brush it. If your paintbrush is dry enough, you will end up with a few lines and the greater the paper showing through. If not, you need to use the paper towel again and remove a bit more paint and water. Let's add cute crosses on the dress with that version of our red that has a lot of pigment and little water because we really want that to pop. With brown, I'm increasing shadows and texture everywhere. This is not a must in your painting process, you don't have to refine shadows as much as I do. I like to do it for realism, but we could make do without and keep the painting as it was. I mentioned earlier how, with blue, you can create very dark colors. Let's add pure blue paint to our brown mix, and it will turn into a very dark color that looks like black. I use that to paint the eyes, and actually you can't really tell that's not black. We'll need red again for the lips. I suggest you try this or wait because we're going to add water nearby. Wet the paper with pure water just a bit next to the corners of the lips. Add some red in there, and that will make those cheeks look nicer. I forgot to paint the boy's hair earlier and we'll still have time to mix yellow and red to get an orange tone once more and apply it there. We can add brown, too, to create shadows. Here's a nice trick to brighten up colors in the painting. When the paints are dry, it can glaze more colors on top. For instance, if I want to make the hats brighter because maybe they're looking too turned because of the shadows, I can glaze plain red on top and instantly you can see how that makes that whole area look brighter. Same for the brown dress. It's a bit turned since it's brown, so why not add a tad of yellow there since we have it elsewhere. Let's splatter a little bit of blue on the snow to add texture there. To make it more of a part of the painting, we'll add some yellow and fade parts of it to avoid harsh lines. We can think of it as a subtle reflection of the sky colors and the snow too, and it really helps to tie everything together. This is it. I'll meet you next to final highlights on this painting. Make sure it's dry before we add them. 9. Final Highlights and Snow: We're going to start adding highlights to the dolls. I prefer a white gel pen, but you can dilute a little bit of white gouache and use that if you prefer. The idea here is to add just a few lines here and there to brighten up the dolls. We don't want to overdo it, and if you notice it comes out too harsh, you can always use your fingers to soften that. Let's add more crosses on the boy's clothes this time. Now we'll use white gouache, it's very convenient to paint this now. The key for nice splatters is to add enough water to the paint but not too much. Don't worry, you can easily tell. If your splatters are huge, then you need more paint, either tiny or they don't come out at all, then you need more water. Once you have that, try and add them everywhere and overlap them on the dolls too because we want an effect of snow falling, so we need to add some on the dolls. With snow I like to add bigger flakes with a paintbrush directly as a way to finish the painting. To make this snow line look more realistic, you can even use pure gouache directly from the tube and tap the paintbrush in places. For a natural finish, I keep fading harsh lines even with gouache with a clean and damp paintbrush. It's time to remove the tape and fold the card. I like this ruler to help me fold the thick wall of the paper, is really convenient. You can fold the paper in half entirely and you've got yourself a card. You can see how easily it will stand because the paper is so thick. I hope you enjoyed this project. Please share with me and other students in the project section of the class and I'll see you next once more for final thoughts. 10. Before You Go: Thank you so much for taking this class with me today. I cannot wait to see what you came up with and to hear about your experience. Remember you can share that with me and other students in the project and resources section of the class. You can also leave a review to let potential students know what to expect. For more, you have the option to follow me here on Skillshare and get all class updates and emails. For extra tips and motivation, you can follow me on YouTube and Instagram under the new name, Painting and Chocolate. Have lovely winter holidays and see you next time.