Watercolour Christmas Patterns: Master Your Brush Control

1. Intro: Hi, my name is Sharon and I specialize in watercolor, modern calligraphy and illustration. This class is focused on painting simple patterns with your watercolors, specifically Christmas patterns that you can use for jumpers, hats, and mittens and other festive designs. We will start by practicing a whole range of individual elements that we can include in our patterns, from lines and dashes to simple shapes, stars and snowflakes. By the end of this first section, we will have a page full of ideas that you can refer back to and use as inspiration if you want to design your own patterns. We will then spent some time looking at different colors so we can use and how it can combine our patterns to create focal points, borders and filler areas. I will then show you how to paint three projects, a jumper, a hat, and some mittens. This is a great subject for beginners because it allows you to spend time practicing your brush control and learning how much water and paint you need in your brush to achieve fine details. Is also a great way to slow down and paint in a really relaxing way, concentrating on simple verse strikes. It's also a fun subject if you want to make some tax via Christmas presents or perhaps some name cards for the dinner table on Christmas Day. I give you some tips on how to do this as well. So whether you want to paint something festive, make some tags for Christmas, practice your brush control, or just spend some time painting slower and amounting then this is a class for you, so grub your supplies and let's get started. 2. Your Project: Your project for this class can be as simple as painting one of the examples that I take you through, the jumper, the hat, or the mittens, or of course, you can paint all three if she want to. Using your pages of patterns that will produce at the beginning of the class, you can then go on to design your own piece using these as inspiration. Later on in the class, I give you some of my top tips for designing your own pieces. So make sure you check that out if you're interested in making your own patterns. If you want to go a step further than you can turn these into gift tags, or Christmas cards, or name cards for the dinner table on Christmas Day. You can do this by just simply using your original paintings and cutting them out or by digitizing your work on the computer and adjusting the size. This way you can print them as many times as you want to use again and again. I'll give you some tips for doing this later in the class as well. The class is broken down in sections, so it works well if you want to spend half an hour on every evening over the course of a week, but of course, you can just do it all in one day. But there is a lot of practicing different strokes involved and I would definitely recommend having some breaks to rest your hand. We can start by looking at the supplies you'll need for the class and then we'll move on to the practice sessions. 3. Supplies: For this class, the supplies that you'll need, start with water color paper. I'll be using a block of arches, cold press watercolor paper, but cold pressed or hot pressed, we'll be fine for the subjects as we won't be using too much water. This is a 100 percent cotton, which I would also recommend as it's better quality, but more importantly, it should be at least 300 GSM or 140 pounds, which means it is thick enough to absorb the paint and water. I've included some outlines to the projects for you in the resource section. They're really simple and you can easily draw these out yourself if you choose to, but I want you to focus on the watercolor techniques in this class and not have to worry about making sure the shapes are right to start with. If you wish, you can download this print and other trace on our light box or if you're using a block like me and you don't have a light box and you can just cut them out and draw around them. To draw these out, you'll need a pencil. I like to use this mechanical pencil because it's light and fine. Whatever you use, make sure it's not too heavy because you can't always arrange your lines once had been covered in water color. It's also useful to have an eraser to get rid of any unwanted pencil lines. I like to use this Tombow Mono eraser because it has a nice fine tip. I'll be using Princeton acrylic round brushes, which I would highly recommend. These round brushes have a fine tip and a full body so it can hold a decent amount of water and paints. They are great for both fine lines or edges and covering more areas of paper. I'll mainly be using this size 4 round brush for this class, occasionally switching to my finer 3.0 brush for more delicate areas. But the 4 is really good for fine area too, because it does come to that nice sharp point. You'll need some water and a paper towel for taking off any excess water or paint from your brush and you may want to have a second paper towel handy. Just put it under your hand, so you don't smudge your work. You'll need some watercolor paints. I'll be using Winsor Newton professional choice, but you can use pans or whatever paints you have. The colors I recommend you have for the class are a red, a green, a dark blue, and then a pink or purply mix. But it's really up to you what colors you want to use. There's no requirement for this class. Just choose your favorite festive colors. For the projects I'll be using Scarlet Lake for my red, and it's a really nice bold primary red. You can make a similar color to this if you have Permanent Rose and add a little yellow to it. I'll be using Sap Green from a green, Indigo for the dark blue. I'll be mixing up a dusky pink color with my Scarlet Lake and a little French Ultramarine. You can also play around with any red and blue combination to get a pink that you like. I'll be using my Othello Turquoise for more icy blue as well. During the practice session, I will also show how I use my white gel pen for white patterns. You can also use an opaque white paint for these. I'll also show you examples of using masking fluid for patterns. Now that we know what supplies we need, let's move on to our practice sessions. 4. Practice Individual Elements Part 1: In this video, we are going to look at the individual elements that we can use to make patterns from simple lines and dashes to simple shapes and more focal figures like snowflakes. Spending some time practicing these individual elements will be great for those of you who want to practice your brush control, practicing how much water and paint to have in your brush, and practice keeping your hands steady for painting fine details which are both fundamental basic skills for any watercolor work. Also, by the end of this section you should have a page full of pattern ideas that you can refer back to, so you can use it as inspiration if you want to design your own patterns. I started by dividing my page up into columns to make it neat, and to give each pattern a start and end point. Or less than space at the top for a header, and I added a second line between each column as a gap to separate the patterns. I'll be using my Princeton art curly size 4 round brush which has a nice fine tip for these thin lines, but it can also hold a decent amount of paint and water for more coverage when I need it. First, just a few tips brush control which will help you make these strokes nice and neat. Load up your brush with paint and roll around in the paint so that the paint gets into the belly of the brush, and that way you'll be able to paint for longer. If you have too much water in your brush, you will see that the tip doesn't come to a sharp point. It will look more saturated like this. Then you can just gently touch the tip of the brush to your paper towel or dab it on the side of your palate to take out any excess water. We can practice painting some fine lines, and I'm just resting my little finger on the page to study my hand. If you add a little more pressure, you'll get a thicker line as the head start to spread out on the page. Again, add a little more pressure. If your lines starts to become patchy then your brush doesn't have enough water or paint in it, so just go back and load up again. If you have too much paint or water when you start your line, then just take out the excess on your paper towel and go back to your page. Just spread out what is already there. The quality of your brush would determine how effective your brushes are holding water and how effective it is at letting it go as well. Note two brushes will behave in the same way, so it is worth having some decent brushes like these. If you're serious about watercolor, it will make everything so much easier. Throughout this section, pay attention to what feels most comfortable to you with your brush and when you're painting with the angle of your paper. You can adjust this all the time depending on what type of stroke you're working on, what direction you're painting in. When I'm normally painting I do this without even thinking about it, adjusting the page or the time, moving the way the brush is in my hand. But when I'm painting for these videos, I do try and keep my paper strait as possible. So it's easy for you to see what I'm doing. Don't feel like you have to copy me, just move your paper around as you feel you need to. Let's start with our patterns. We're going to start with some basic lines which work really well as stripes, or if you want to add a divide between sections in your pattern. Start with the thin straight line using minimal pressure just with the tip of your brush keeping it consistent all the way along, and do another one the same. These are good warm up exercises when painting so you can do as many of these as you want to, to feel comfortable with these strokes. Let's make a thicker line. Square up the ends, and then just go back over your bar and add to the width of it to make an even thickness all the way along. We're going to do more of a block of color. I'm starting with the outline, and then I'll go back and fill that in. These are great if you want some solid color to balance the pattern out, if you want a thick divider or as you'll see in the next section, if you want to make a layered pattern. You can start with a block like this and a pale color and build on top of that with your shapes and details. Next, let's do a dash. Lots of little lines, truncate them the same width with the same gap in-between. Again, these are great dividers and good for bordering focal points, which we'll see as we continue into the next section. I'm going to do another dash line underneath this with slightly smaller dashes. If you want to practice any of these patterns more, then just pause video and repeat them until you are happy with them. Try if I need to brush them or get them right first time. This is just about spending time getting to know your brush, getting to know different strokes, finding patterns that you like that you can use for fun pieces of art. There's absolutely no pressure to think that as a great way to improve your brush control and relaxing with these different stripes. Next, let's do some vertical dashes. I'll start by painting two horizontal lines, and we'll be painting these vertical dashes in between these two lines. I'm resting my hand on the page and then every few lines I paint, I'm just moving my hand over slightly and then continuing. Next, let's see some crisscrosses. Start with your horizontal lines, nice and thin and placed together to about five of these lines. Then as before, paint in the vertical lines. Try and keep the same distance between each line as a distance you gave to the horizontal lines, so those squares are squares rather than rectangles. Let's move on to some wavy lines. We'll start with quite a wide wave. If you like to have to do this in one strike, you can stop and start. Let's do another with a smaller wave underneath, and another with a slightly smaller wave. This time we're going to add a point in between each curve, so try and keep each one the same size. Every so often look back to the first one you painted and check that you're been consistent. It's easy to get gradually smaller or bigger if you're not looking back to the last one you painted. We can move on to zigzags. Lift your brush between each line to make it easier. You might find it helpful to turn your brush in the direction of your stroke. These are quiet small lines so the movement is quite softer. Let's do another one that's slightly smaller. This time we're going to make the lines longer and quite close together, so that V-shape is quite narrow. You can see I'm making the angle of my brush on every stroke, so it's in the same direction as the line. Next, let's paint two horizontal lines and fill this with diagonal lines. As always, try and be consistent with your spacing, and try different brush angles to see what works best for you. You can see I started from the top to the bottom putting the brush toward me, and then switch the wires holding the brush and moved painting the lines from the bottom to the top. Just try both and see if those are best for you. When you are at different stages of your paper, one might feel better than the other. Let's paint two more horizontal lines. This time we'll do the crisscross again, but with diagonal lines. The less we divide our board, you can do these types of stripes on our little arrows which are almost nested in each other. I can next again paint this pattern where we go up across, down across, up across, and so on. These types of patterns can be quite cute with a simple dot inside each of the little squares. If you can think of any more types of lines, or dashes, or crisscrosses to add to your page or that you want to practice, then you can post and add them in here. Next, we'll be moving on to simple shapes and decorations. 5. Practice Individual Elements Part 2: Now that we have all of these dividers that we can use in our patterns, let's move on to simple shapes. Let's start with a row of tiny dots, just using the tip of my brush. You want to make sure you've taken out and the excess water from your brush burst as we want these to be quite small. This can be used as another divider, or you can fill a block of area with AES, which can look like snow. Now let's paint in slightly larger circles. As always we are keeping this the same size with the same gap between and keeping them in a straight line. Lets make this the bigger circles now, I'm taking paint will really help you have more control of your brush and I will make these edges as neat as you can. Next, let's move on to diamonds, so you can paint the whole [inaudible] and then fill them in using the blunt edge of the brush to make edges of this cone as sharp as possible. Let's try that shape again, but much smaller, this time a row of tiny diamonds. If you need to, you can switch to a smaller brush for this. With all of these simple shapes, you can either use them as much bigger [inaudible] in your pattern or you can use them like this as much smaller dividers between sections. Another key shaped paint is a hot. You can start with the outline, painting those curves at the top fast and bringing it into a point in the middle and then bringing it down to a point at the bottom and filling in. There we have a few very basic shapes. Now let's move on to some more Christmas tree shapes. I want to show you a few different ways you can paint trees for your patterns, keeping them very simple to. We'll start with a block outline, so first we just paint a triangle. Keeping all of those corners nicely sharp and just native lock with the tip of your brush. Then add a thin rectangle for the trunk. Then repeat this a few times, trying to repay that. Making sure that the same size. For the next style of tree which is going to use simple lines, start with a vertical line for the trunk and then starting just below the top, paint a short horizontal line. As you go down, make these lines gradually wider, sorry, but you're still getting that triangular tree shape. Again, repeat this a few times trying to make them all as similar as possible. For the next one we'll be using lines again. Start with the trunk and this time we will have small diagonal lines slanting down, so paint three of this on each side. Again paint a row of this the same as the first. For the final tree, start with your trunk line again. Try to keep this straight lines gone little bit wonky on this one. Then starting at the top paint a downward curve and do this three times, getting wider each time and repeat this on the other side. Then from each end bring it back in and then fill that gap in. Practice this one a couple more times. In the next video, we'll be moving on to other simple Christmas tree shapes that we can actually patterns from [inaudible] and bows to stockings and rank. 6. Practice Individual Elements Part 3: In this video, we'll be practicing painting simple gingerbread man, bobos, stockings, candy canes, holly and reindeer. These can look great as small work painting patterns or as large more focal shapes. Once we've practiced the shape, you can continue playing around using different sizes to see what you like best. Let's start with the gingerbread man. Start with a circle for its head, and then add in oval shapes for the arms and legs, making sure there's a bit of a trunk in there for the body and practice this a few times. I think that last one is definitely my favorite, it's got the best shape to it. Now let's paint some bobos. Because we want to keep these quite small and simple, I'm going to be using the y at the page to distinguish between areas and give it a bit more shape. Start with the top by painting a square. Then I'm going to leave a very thin gap and paint a curve for the top of the bobo, and then bring this across and fill it in. Leaving another thin gap which could be a decorative stripe on the bobo, paint in the center. Try make the oval shape look like a circle by carving each end, and then finish with the bottom. If you want, you can add in a very thin oval at the top probable to string and then practice this a couple more times. Next let's paint some stockings. Again, we'll be using those gaps. Start at the top with a slanted rectangle and then leaving a thin gap, paint the bottom curving it around. Then add a little hook at the top and again practice this a couple more times trying to get the same as the first one for a nice repetitive pattern. Now let's paint some candy canes. You can just paint the shape like this, keeping it really simple as a block shape or you can paint in the stripes, like this. So try out both and see what you prefer. Keep it nice and alternating pattern, like this. You can go back and paint, add thin line to the stripes once to give it a bit more definition if you want to or leave it as it is. Next let's paint some holly. Start with three small circles in the center. Then starting from a point, paint three curves going outwards on either side to reach the berries, and then fill it in and do the same on the other side. Now let's paint another one of these. Finally, let's paint a Reindeer. This is a little more tricky getting it right, so practices as many times as you need to, but let's just try and keep it simple. Start with the head in a oval-shaped slanting downwards, and you can bring it to a bit more of a point where his mouth is. Then let's paint in the outline, from the head, putting it down for the neck and across the back. Then bring in a little for it's bottom, then down for the back leg. Go back to the head, bring the neck down a little then down for the front leg, then up and across and down and fill it in. You can add in a little point here for the eyes, then we can paint in the antlers. Let's do this again. Starting with the head, the neck, back and back leg, then the front leg, add in the ear, fill it all in. Then paint in those antlers. There's only Christmas shapes you can include in your patterns. I've included some of my favorite in this video, but there are many more that you could do as well, like candles, slices, persons, lanterns. Go ahead and continue with the other designs if you want to. In the next video, we'll be looking at stars and snowflakes. 7. Practice Individual Elements Part 4: In this section, we're going to be looking at ways that we can paint different stars and snowflakes. We'll start with some basic star shapes. We want to get all of these points lining up with each other. Start with the triangle at the top and then paint a line across and then bring it down, follow that top line down to paint the bottom point and then bring it back up. Let's do that again. Start with the triangle at the top, paint the line going across and bring these points down then following that line down from the top points so it lines up with the bottom point, I'm bringing it up so it lines up with that right point and the same on this side lining up with that top point and that left point. Next we'll experiment with a few different types of stars. For the first one let's start by underlining four points and then filling that in and then adding four small points in the gaps. The next one is going to have lots of points, so walk around in the circle to make it nice and even and you can leave this as an outline or you can fill and it's up to you. Finally, let's paint the outline of that very first star we did so try to keep all of these lines an even thickness so just get back over if you need to. Now we're going to get back to our diamond shape that we practiced earlier but this time the edges are going to be curved instead of straight. Practice doing large ones and small ones of these and use the very tip of your brush to get these points and try making them very pointy. Next are simple star shape using lines, so start with the vertical line and then horizontal and two diagonal lines and then let's repeat this a few times. This one, we will start with a horizontal line for a base. It's like a half star, and a vertical line upwards from the center, then diagonal lines on each side, and then just repeat this. Let's do this one again, but smaller this time. You can also do this in the other direction facing downwards, which can be in a sign or as a reflection. Let's do a row of these underneath. Now let's move on to snowflakes, which are great if you want to make a bigger focal point in your design. Start with a cross and then shorter diagonal lines in between, and then add little arrows on each of the lines just a bit in from the end. Do the same in the diagonal lines, but these arrows will start at the end of each line, and then do a second arrow underneath each of those. That's just a really simple snowflake. Another style of snowflake. Let's start with a vertical line, then two diagonal lines crossing over. Then paint in little circles at the end of each line, and then add in nice little arrows again. Now if you want to, you can add in smaller lines in between each of these large ones, adding those circles at the end again. You may want to switch to a smaller brush for this. Now just try making these snowflakes smaller for a more delicate pattern. You can simplify the design a little when are you making it smaller. I'm starting with the cross, adding the diagonal lines, and then this time I'm just adding one little arrow to each line. Repeat this a few times. Try to keep them the same size as you go along. The snowflake design, which is one of my favorites. Start again with the cross and then the diagonal lines, and this time make all the lines the same length. Add in two arrows to each line starting at the end of each line, and then in the center, paint in small diamonds in each of the gaps. Next one. Start with a small dot in the center for this one, and then we are going to paint full elongated diamonds coming out from that center point. Make sure you leaving enough of gap in between each of them. Join the outline and then fill them in. Then in each of these gaps, paint a thin line, and then two short ones on each side. This time we are going to paint eight diamonds in a circle. Start with your center dot again and then four diamonds as before, top, bottom, at the sides, and then paint in the ones in between. You may wish to draw this out with pencil first because it can be a little trickier, and then getting that balance right. For the final one, we are going to make it a bit rounder. Start with your central point then start at a point and curve around back to the middle again to a point and fill it in. Do four of these, and then do four smaller ones in the gaps. Now we have quite a few different ideas for how can paint stars and snowflakes, which will really make your pattern in the Christmas eve and the festive. There are so many more stars you can do for these. Continue to practice or try to have a play around if you want, and come up with more designs of your own. In the next and final video for this section, we'll be looking at different ways to make white patterns. 8. Practice Individual Elements Part 5: In this video, we're going to look at how we can make white patterns with colored backgrounds and I'll show you three ways I do this. Firstly, we'll paint around our pattern. When I'm doing it this way, I usually prefer to draw around my pattern first with a fine pen. Let's draw around a few lines of different shapes. I'm going to start with some diamonds. Next, let's do a row of trees. Now I'm going to draw a couple of lines to separate these rows and then let's draw a couple of reindeer. Now we can paint around them. I'm starting with the line at the top to section off and then I'm just painting around each shape. Maybe you want to trace again start with the line at the top and then continue filling in around each tray. Now to the reindeer it's a bit delicate, so I'm working a little bit slower working around the end of these and that just gives you a few simple examples of how you can use white patterns with a block colored background. Next, let's paint a few blocks of color and we'll draw the patterns on using an opaque white pen or opaque white paint if you have it. This is much better for more delicate patterns which you can't easily paint around like snow drops, dashes and snowflakes. The darker the color that you use for the background, the more contrast there will be, and the more the white will stand out. Now, we just need to wait for these to dry before adding our patterns on top. Now, that's dry, I'm going to start with my White Gel Pen, and add some small dots for snow. I find that you can't always just touch the pen to the paper with these Gel Pens. Sometimes, you have to use a little motion to get the a gel flowing. If it's not coming out with just a touch, then use tiny circular motions for these dots. In the next block, let's try out some simple dashes. In the last one, let's draw out a snowflake. Start with your cross, you may need to go over the lines again to make them opaque, then your diagonal lines, and adding these little arrows on each line. You can also add in a pattern in the center if you want, little lines joining up each line in the snowflake, and then we can just draw some more to fill in the space around it too. The final method to create white patterns is using masking fluid. This is a masking fluid that I'm using, and I'm just going to decant a little into this pot, so the rest of the fluid doesn't dry out whilst I'm using it. I'm using my size zero silicon shaping tool, which is great from masking fluid as it doesn't damage it. You can just peel off the silicon end once it's dry. I'm just going to paint a few different patterns using my masking fluid, starting with the half star, then some dashes, some diamonds, a couple of trees. Once our masking fluid has dried, I'm just going to paint over it with a solid block of color. You can see at the base of that tree I've smudged a little, but I can fill that in later with some extra paint. I'm not worried about that. Once the paint is dry, make sure that you take of any of the paint that is resting on top of the masking fluid. Otherwise, when you rub the masking off, that paint will smudge across the page. Then, just gently rub the masking fluid off. Try not to pull it as this might rip the page. There are a few different simple ways that you can include white patterns into your design. I hope you found this helpful. Now, we have a whole page full of ideas for individual elements to your patterns. Now, we can move on to looking at colors, and how we can combine these patterns into a design. Before we move on, I'm just going to show you how I remove my paper for my watercolor block. Using my flat palette knife, I just insert it into this gap at the top, and then gently run it around the edges separating the paper from the block. Now, we have our page and I'll store this in my folder to refer back to for inspiration whenever I want to design a Christmas Pattern. Let's move on to looking at colors and combinations now. 9. Practice Combinations Part 1: Now that we have our page of individual elements, we can start to think about colors and how we can combine these elements to make patterns. I have drawn four columns on a new page in the same way as before. We can use this to experiment with different colors and combinations using our first page as a reference guide. Have a look at what colors you've got in your palette and think about what colors you want to use. Then we can make a little swatch area at the beginning that we can refer back to. Some of the most common colors of Christmas are bold reds and greens and their complementary colors so they work well together. With these patterns I tend to keep it quite simple in terms of colors and I usually only use a couple or even just one, keeping it monochrome. Starting with the red, my favorite red is scarlet lake. It's a really bold primary red, so it's great for berries and stockings and other Christmas decorations. If you don't have this, but have permanent rose, which is one of the winter Newton primary colors. You can mix a little yellow with that and produce a very similar color to the scarlet lake. Next is my green, which is sap green. This is another fairly pure color which is nice and bold and great for simple foliage. Next, for some less bright colors, I like to use my Indian red for some more muted darker combinations. Again, you can make this by mixing your red with a bit of green or a bit of brown to make it more neutral. Similarly, I like to use indigo. This is a really nice dark wintry color, and these two can work quite well together. I also like to use a dusty pinky purple color. This mix is scarlet lake and French coach maroon. But you can just have a play around with wherever red and blue mixes you have to find a pinky purple mix that you like. Finally, this is my pthalo turquoise, which is a nice icy blue. Those are just some of my favorite colors to use for these patterns and what feels wintry to me. Have a play around with your palette and choose your own colors that you like. Let's look at how we can combine our patterns. We can work with one color or multiple colors, as I've said. Let's start with one color and play around using different values. We'll start with painting adjacent patterns and then we'll move on to layered patterns. Think of this as some time to experiment with different patterns. Some will work really well, some may not, and that doesn't matter, but hopefully you'll find some favorite combinations that you can use in your work and refer back to. The way I like to think of these patterns is in sections. You have fuller sections which can be full of small details and lines and you can have your focal points in a bigger main section, which will have borders to section off from the rest of it. We can just play around now to see what works well together. Let's keep it really simple to start with. Start with a thin line with a fairly concentrated color. Then we can add in a more diluted block of the same color underneath. Then give out to the darker mix and make it dashed line. Just a really simple combination here to start with. Now let's go for something a bit more detail. I'm using my Indian red now. Start with a fairly big zigzag line and then within that we can paint these half-stars. Start with the baseline, then add in the vertical line with the two diagonal lines on either side. Then we can add in a dotted line underneath. Using a more diluted mix, fill in the top part of that zigzag line with triangles. We can finish the top of with a dashed line and then maybe another line on top. I'm also going to add a line underneath. That's just one section that works well that we can include in our designs. You can see just by using different values of the same color, it can make it look really nice and interesting. Now let's choose one of our basic shapes. Let's go for a diamond and paint a row of diamonds. Then we can encase this in a zigzag line above and below it. Now I can add in some simple dots inside each of these triangles. Then paint a line at the top and the bottom to section it off. These are just really simple ways to combine some of these patterns that we practiced earlier. Just play around with different sizes in different widths. Paint a wavy line, and then we can paint a thick one underneath. I'm going to paint two lines and then fill it in. Then another one underneath. Just simple things like using dots to fill in gaps works well. Let's paint that square up down pattern and then add dots into each of the squares. There are just a few ideas for adjacent monochrome patterns. Next, let's move on to layering our patterns. 10. Practice Combinations Part 2: In this video, we'll be looking at simple ways to lay our patterns. Let's start by laying down some fairly diluted blocks of color. Don't make these too dark as we want to add some details on top once they're dry. I'm starting with my Surf Green. Now I'm using my Pinky Mix, which is my Scarlet Lake and French Ultramarine mixed together. For the next one, let's paint some basic shapes and we'll lay onto this. Start with a diamond, then a heart, and a circle. You can add some dots in between and just section this off with a line at the top and bottom. Let's do a few more blocks. Next I'm using my indigo. Now I'm going to paint a block with my turquoise. For the final block, I'm using my Scarlet Lake. We need to wait for them to completely dry so we can paint crisp layers on top. While we wait, we can go back and fit at any space we have left over to carry on trying out other combinations. So here let's start with a zigzag. Then fill the top part in. Now we can leave a gap and fill the bottom part in with a bit more of a diluted mix, so it'll look like the zigzag is now white. Then we can add a line at the bottom and add a dash at the top. That's another simple cute little filler pattern that we can use in our work. Once these blocks have dried, we can start painting our shapes and patterns on top. Starting with the green, let's paint some trees. I'm using my smaller brush now to keep these nice and fine. On this pink block, I'm going to paint some hats with a small dot in between each one. Then we can paint a dash line at the top and bottom as a border. Next with these shapes, we can paint smaller darker shades within each one of these. So a smaller diamond, and so on. For this one, I'm going to layer it with darker stripes. So I'm starting by just going a little darker, and spreading these out evenly. Now I'm going to get back with an even darker mix, to paint a line in between each stripe. I particularly like using these stripy patterns for the edges of jumpers, and hats, and mittens, because I feel like they give them a good finishing area. Next, let's paint some zigzags. I'm going to do another one a little lighter on top, and I'm going to do a dark one underneath. I'm going to add in a line at the top here as well. Finally, for the red one, let's do some diagonal stripes on this one. So again, these are just a few ideas to how you can lay your patterns, but the options are endless. Take some time to have a play around with ideas for yourself. Next, we'll be moving on to combining focal points and borders. 11. Practice Combinations Part 3: In this video, we're going to practice painting some larger focal points and then add some borders to them. Let's start with a large snowflake. I'm going to be combining red and green for this one, so the snowflake will be in red and the border will initially be in green, but then we can add some red to balance that out. I'm painting a little diamonds in these gaps, and then I'll add the arrows at the end of each line. Now moving on to the green, I'm starting with the line. We can add some dots into this zigzag and paint a dash underneath that. Moving to the top, I'm going to start with a dashed line, and next this curves which come to a point. I'm going to add a line above this and then some dots inside each curve. The video cut out there for a minute but on to add a block of red to balance the color around at the bottom and a zigzag underneath. Adding some red to the top would work well, as way to balance it out even more. Let's move on to a white focal point. For this, I'm going to grab my pencil and draw out fast to make sure it's nice and neat. I'm going to draw two of those reindeer we practiced earlier facing each other. I'm also going to add a zigzag line at the top and bottom to border it. Now I'm going to fill in this with my indigo, and I'm not going too dark but not too light. We can now add some little details in these triangles. I'm going to paint nicely to half-stars in that, and then add a dash at the top. I'm going to do exactly at the same at the bottom as well. Let's add the dark block of color to the top and the bottom to section this half. Using my white gel pen, I'm going to add in some small dots for [inaudible]. I'm very happy with the way this one is turning out, is a nice choice of values and of the white pattern in there. We'll do one more combination and then I'll leave it to you to fill out the rest of your page with you own choice and combinations. Let's start with row trees, then add a thick line of green above and below as a border. Now we can start to decorate this border, so add a dashed line underneath, then another line, let's add a zigzag on top, add some dots inside, and then add a line on top, okay. So now I [inaudible] the rest of your page, choose a focal point, choose what color you want it, and whether you want one color or two mix out with two or even three colors, then add a new borders. I hope you find these practical sessions useful. In the next few videos, we'll be moving on to the projects where we'll be painting a jumper, a hat, and some mittens. 12. Project Jumper Part 1: As I mentioned earlier in the supplies video, you will find a downloadable PDF document in the resources section which has the outline of each of these projects. You can either trace this onto a paper with a light box or if you're using a block like me or you don't have a light box, then you can just cut them out and draw around them. Our first project will be the Christmas Jumper. For this, I will be using a simple color scheme of red and green. I'll be using my scarlet lake and my sap green I showed you earlier. As you can see, the main focal section with the snowflakes is red, so I've balanced this out with the green rim at the top and bottom, a smaller green section further down and then a mix of red and green fillers throughout. I like to have two paper towels on hand, one to use for my brush to take off any excess paint and one to rest my hand on so I don't smudge any other work on the page. I'm going to start by drawing in a few sections with my pencil first. I don't intend to draw in too much though. I find with these patterns they can be much more fun to make up as you go along and just improvise as the painting progresses and you see what space you have. But it's really a personal preference so you can draw in as much as you want. One thing to bear in mind as we paint this is that as your painting progresses, your space may differ to mine. If you find that you have more space or less space, just adjust your patterns. You can just add in a couple of more filler, lines, dashes, zigzags if you have a bit of extra space or you can just take something out. I'm first drawing an edge around the top and this will be the top rim and another curved line a little bit further down which would be the top of the main section and another line further down for the bottom of the main section and I'm going to continue this line on the arms slanting upwards on either side. I'm going to be using my size 4 round brush again and I'm starting with my sap green. I'm going to add this to the top section around the collar. We don't want to make this too dark because we'll be adding some lines on this in a darker layer. Whilst I have this green on my brush, I'm going to fill in a block of green at the bottom as well. Again, don't make this too dark as we will be building on this. Normally I would recommend you work from top to bottom of your painting as much as possible just to avoid smudging it as you work down. But as we have this on our brush already, I don't want to waste the green. When you're using two complimentary colors like this, like red and green, bear in mind that you will need to make sure you wash your brush well when switching between the colors otherwise you can easily muddy them and take away their vibrancy. If you find it easier, you may wish to use two separate brushes, one for your red and one for your green. Next we're going to go for red and we're going to paint this line that we drew in which is the top border for where the snowflakes are. Then we can add inner small zigzag underneath this connecting to the line as a little border and I'm going to add a tiny dot inside each of these triangles. Now we can do the same along the bottom border, painting over those pencil lines first and then painting in that zigzag. Then add a nice tiny dots in each triangle. Now we can paint in the first snowflake in the center. We're going to start with these four diamonds. They don't quite touch in the center. We will need to reach all the way to the top. You can start by marking small dots where the top and bottom diamond will meet with a small gap in between. You can mark at the top and bottom as well. If you want to, you can draw these out first with a pencil if you find the easier. Now painting the top diamond shape, leave a little gap in the center, and then paint in the bottom one. Now paint in the other too. Then we can add in the detail in each gap starting with a line in the center, and then two small ones on either side. That's how snowflake is done. We want to paint one on each side as well, the same size. Let start with the left side. I'm making sure to move my paper towel under my hands or I don't smash that green room at the bottom. Start with marking the two center points, and then painting that top diamond shape. Now painting the bottom shape, and painting the one on the right and the one on the left. Then we can add lines into each of the gaps. Next, we can move over to the right side doing exactly the same again. That's our main focus section complete. Now let's move back up to the top. I'm painting a block of red in between the rim and the border, leaving a gap of white at the top and at the bottom. We can add a thin block of red underneath the bottom border as well. We have quite a lot of red in there now, so it feels like it needs some green to start balancing it out a bit more. Let's start with a green line underneath that red. Then let's add in a dashed line underneath this. We leave that one for now as we do a bit of a less detailed part in there a bit later. Let's just concentrate on this middle section for now. 13. Project Jumper Part 2: Next, let's paint in that square pattern up across, down across. We can add a dot into each of these squares. That's a good amount of filler area with some close-knit details. Now we can go back to the red and add in a slightly a bigger pattern. Add in a red line to start with as a little border, and another one underneath, leaving enough gap for seeing stars inside. Inside this just paint a row of simple stars, starting with a cross and then two diagonal lines. Then paint a red dash underneath. Now we can have a slightly a larger green focal area underneath this. As it feels like it needs a bit more green in there. Let's paint and a block of diluted green and once this is dry, we can then paint some trees over the top. While we are waiting for that to dry, we can continue down with a pattern underneath. Add a green line and then let's add some curves coming out of that. I'm going to go down to the bottom and draw a line just above that rim. If you start to run out of space, you can cut out one of these patterns or alternatively, if you have more space than I do, then just add some more filler rows in of lines, dashes, xx whatever you want to. Now I can paint in nice little half-stars, starting with the bases. Then going back to the red to balance out painting this exact line over these half-stars. If you have ramie, you can paint this in diamonds above the zigzag line. If you don't you can have just do a small dot and maybe a line. Don't make this too dark as we can liar this with a smaller darkish shape inside once it dry. This green should have dried now so we can get back and paint in our trees. Trees which have a star you prefer out of the ones that we practiced earlier. I'm going to paint a dot in between each of mine. Now I'm going to ask them vertical stripes to this rim at the very bottom. Dark diamonds into these diamonds now. This is looking pretty good to me. Once you're happy with how you'll midsection looks, we can move on to the arms. For the arms, I'm going to start with a fairly big block of red midway down around the elbow area and add this to the other side as well. This will help balance that block of red at the top. Underneath that I'm going to add in a green zigzag line and then add in some dots in between and repeat this on the other side. Now for some simple fill in stripes, so one underneath the zigzag and a few in that gap above the block of red. In that final space I'm going to add in some red lines, I will write in a dashed line as well and then continue with the lines. Then finally, I'm going to add these vertical stripes to the green rim. I'm also going to get back to the top and do the same for the collar. We are almost done now, I'm going to use an eraser just to get rid of some of the pencil lines now at the outline. I'm using my tombow mono eraser with it's fine point to get rid of the pencil. Then because we have this big white gap in that main section, I'm going to paint a very pale wash just to the edges just so it's obvious where the edge is just to give it that definition. Using my fine three zero brush, I'm just adding a very, very diluted red to the edge. Then cleaning the paint of my brush, drawing it slightly, and then blending that color around. It's really, really subtle. I'm just concentrating on that white section on the edges and on to these arms joins. I'm not going to be filling in any other gaps. We have now finished off first project. I hope you're happy with the jumper. Don't forget to apply it to the project Gallery. I really can't wait to see it. Next, we'll be moving on to a hat. 14. Project Hat Part 1: Our second project will be this hat. For this, I've kept it monochrome, so I'm only using one color for this. I'm using my indigo. You can use whatever color you wish. Once you have your hat outline drawn out, just connect that bottom section with a line across. Then we can draw in our main focal point, which will be our hearts. Start with two lines for the border. Then we can draw the hats in. Draw your first hat, and then draw a slightly bigger hat around it. Add in a small circle next to that. Then we can draw in our next hat. We'll just alternate these all the way along. The reason we're drawing these out is because we want to leave a white gap around that inner hat. Now, we can start painting using my round size four again, I'm going to grab my indigo starting with a fairly pale wash. I'm going to start with the bubble at the top. We want to fill this all in. As you work around the edges, make a bit jaggedy with strokes coming slightly outwards and upwards, just going over that pencil line. We'll leave that for now to dry, and come back to it later to build up the layers. Now, we can go to our hat section, and paint in the background. Again, we're going to be using a fairly diluted mix for this. We're painting around these circles and around the outer hat outline. I had to pause the video for a moment, so if it dries like that, and you can see where it's overlapping then just go over it with a slightly darker wash, and blend it in. Now, using a more concentrated color, we can add some details above this section. Start with a dashed line, and then add a thin block of color. Going back to a more diluted mix, paint another block from the bubble downwards, leaving a white gap for another pattern. In that gap, we can paint two lines of zigzags. Now, that bubble has dried, we can go back, and build on it with a darker color. Start from the bottom, and use curved strokes going upwards and outwards in the form of the circle. Go back to these hearts, paint in each center heart with a dark mix. Making sure to leave a white gap between the background. Rather than pay attention to the pencil line now, pay attention to making sure the white gap is consistent all the way around. Now, we can add in the details below. Add in a line, and another thicker line. Then you can go back, and add a dashed line over dots if you want to at the bottom of that block of color. 15. Project Hat Part 2: Now I'm going to add a row smooth diamond underneath here. Let's add a zigzag line underneath that. Now using a diluted mix again, fill in the area from that bottom line to just below the zigzag leaving a thin white gap. Now let's add some more detail into this top area. We're just going to paint some stripes in here. They are going to start as a slight curve underneath that bubble, and we want to slowly make them straighter as they go down, so that by the time we get to the bottom of this block, they will be parallel with the bottom edge. Now let's paint in the bottom section with the power wash. We can just leave this to dry for a few minutes. I'm going to paint a thick line above this bottom area to separate it from the rest. Now, that its dry, we can paint in some stripes in the bottom section. To separate that top part even more I'm going to paint a dark line above these stripes and add a dashed line above it to fill in that space. Now, on either side of these darker stripes, I'm going to paint in a dashed line just to the edges. Then in between each stripe, I'm going to paint a thin line. I think we're pretty much done now. Again, I really hope you've enjoyed this one. I can't wait to see it, so please do upload it and leave me any feedback you have. Next, we'll be moving on to the mittens. 16. Project Mittens: For the third project, we'll be painting these mittens. For this, I'll be using a pink mix which is Scarlet Lake and French Ultramarine, and my icy blue fallow turquoise. But again, you can use any combination you like. Once you've drawn them both out with the thumbs on the inside, draw in a string that connects them. Start near the inner edge, bring it down, curve it round, wave it around, and bring it back up to the inner edge of the other one. Next we can connect this bit here as well, because we'll be painting the thumb separately and do the same on the other one. Now draw in two lines to mark that focal section where we'll be painting some Snowflakes. Now we can start painting. I'm going to start with my pink and paint a block of color at the top, and we'll build on this later, so don't make it too dark just yet. I do find it easier with mittens to do both as I go along, rather than paint one completely and then the other. I'm just going to move that line down a bit as I think it's a bit high on that one. Okay. Next underneath this pink, let's paint a block of blue, leaving a thin gap of white in-between. Again, don't make it too dark as we'll be adding to this later. Going back to the pink and using my final brush, I'm going to paint in the Snowflakes now. I'm going to add a dash line above and below for a border. Now let's do the same on the other one. Next let's paint. A thick line of blue underneath that dashed line. Now, back to the pink, so let's paint a zigzag line underneath that blue strip, and then within the bottom triangle we can paint those half stars. On the top we can paint some pout triangles, and then underneath paint a dotted line and then a thin line. Now repeat this is on the other side, starting with this zigzag line, then adding in these half stars. Now we can go back to the blue, we're almost at our bottom rim, so if we just paint a line, and a dash line, then we can paint the rest with a block of color. Now let's paint the thumbs, and these are going to be mainly pink with some white stripes, so I start at the top with a block of pink, going about a third of the way down. Paint a thick strip underneath that. Leave a bit of thicker white gap and before, and then fill in the rest with pink. Do the same on the other thumb, and we'll build on these with some darker pink stripes. Now we can build up some layers, so going back to the top, we can use a darker pink to add some more detail. Add a little block of pink at the top, follow this with the stripe, then add a dash line at the bottom. With this pink, I'm going to go back and darken up those snow flakes, as they look a little bit too pale. Now, I'm going to go back to the blue and with the darker blue, we can have some six outlines in this block. I'm going to add three in total. Start with the darker one in the middle, with space of one above and below. With a slightly pearlier mix, add another one above and then add another one below. With the same blue, I'm going to add some vertical and horizontal lines to the bottom room to give it some detail and then we can do the same on the other side starting with these exact lines. Using a darker pink, we can build some border stripes into the thumbs, so start at the top, then add a few lines in, then add a thicker stripe of pink below the white. I am repeating on the other one. Finally, we just need to paint in the string, so I'll be using the dark pink for this again and we are done. Well done if you've completed all three projects now. I can't wait to see them. In the next video, I'll be showing some tips for how you can design your own patterns. 17. Tips for Designing Your Own Patterns: Now we've practiced our individual elements and looked at ways to combine these elements and practice the three different projects. I wanted to share some tips with you for how to design your own patterns. Firstly, choose your colors. I'd recommend keeping it simple and just going for one or two colors by experiment and find out what works well. As we've seen, just by varying the values of one color, it can create some really interesting designs like the monochrome hat that we painted. Next, decide on your focal point. You can refer back to your individual elements page for this. Whether it be snowflakes, reindeer or something else is good to have the idea of the focal point. Then you can work outwards from the making, the filler areas and the smaller focal areas using your borders, your lines, dashes, and your simple shapes. Work in sections. I find it easier to think of these patterns in sections. Start with your focal point, like we said in the last tip and section it off for the border. How we did with the jumper and then work on a filler section and then a medium shaped section, maybe another filler section. You got another small focus section here. Then the end sections. The top of the bottom we've got the ribbed blocked areas. Don't overthink it. Keep it simple. Once you have your focal point, you can just improvise and fill in the rest as you want to. It's a really relaxing way to do it. You don't have to put too much pressure on yourself to make it perfect. Just make it up as you go. Balance out your colors. If you're using one color for a focal point, try and make sure you include that color in another area of your piece as well to balance it out like in the rims and at the top and the bottom. Go slowly so that these are great exercises for slowing down and working on your brush control. If you rush it, you're likely to make mistakes and then you miss out on how relaxing these projects can be. Okay, so those are just a few of my tips to how you design your own patterns. Next, I'll show you how I turned my patterns into tags. 18. Tips for Making Tags: Now that we have our final pieces, we can turn these into gift tags or other pieces like greeting cards or name cards. In this video, we'll be concentrating on gift tags. You can either cut these out directly and use the original for the tag. For the jump for the hat, you can cut them out around the painting. But for the mittens because of this string, you would need to shape around them like a circle or square. You just need to leave some extra space when you paint them. You can then add sim writing to these them if you wish. Alternatively, you can scan them into the computer and digitize them, which means you'll be able to adjust the colors, correct any smudges change size. Also makes you'll be able to duplicate them and make as many tags or cards as you want to. If you're new to digitizing, then you can check out another of my classes, which is a comprehensive class on how to use Photoshop to digitize your work. Starting from how to scan your work and covering short basics, and then looking at different ways to edit and remove the ground. I'm just going to give you a brief overview here of how I made these tags because you can check out that class for more information. With these pattern designs, they were little trickier to digitize because they have so much whites pace in them. I'd recommend first adjusting your colors using levels and then removing the background manually with a mask and the brush carefully going around the edges. The digitizing class is broken down into sections, so you can check out the videos on color adjustments, masks, and brushes. I then opened a new A4 size document in Photoshop and made six circles on the page for the outline of these tags using the ellipse tool. These are just Iva, and have half centimeters diameter and are pretty close together so I can squeeze the six of them in on the page with a margin around them. I then printed these off onto some lightweight cod, which would go through my basic printer and then just count them out with scissors. Then used to circle punch to make a small hole at the top of each one and added some raffia. You can also use normal ribbon or twine works while as well. It just follows to Iva and pushed it through from the front and then loop to Iva. Rafia is a bit thicker could be a bit more fiddly, but I really like how it looks. That it, if you have any questions about any of this, then you can just leave me a message in the discussions board. 19. Final Thoughts: Firstly, thank you so much for taking this class. I really hope you have enjoyed it. I really enjoyed making the class and practicing all of these different patterns, and it really helped me unwind and I hope it did the same for you. Please do share your projects with me and the rest of the students from your practice pages of individual elements and combinations to your final projects, upload them to the project gallery. You can also upload your work to Instagram and tag me so I can see it there. If you have a moment, please do leave me a review. They do mean so much to me. I read them all and they're really helpful for other students to see when deciding whether to take the class or not. Finally, if you fancy taking another winter class, then do check out my snow globes if you haven't already seen it. You can also check out any of my other classes on watercolor if you want to try out some other fun subjects. Happy painting, and I hope to see you again soon.