Easy Watercolor Christmas Card | Christmas Tree

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Hey everyone! Today I am going to share my painting process of a watercolor Christmas tree with you today. This watercolor Christmas tree would be a perfect watercolor Christmas card to make for someone special!

Let’s get started!

Full video tutorial at the bottom of this post!

Supplies you’ll need:

Watercolor Paper

White Acrylic Paint

Watercolor Paint

Round paintbrush

Flat Paint Brush

Painter’s tape

Two cups of water

Paper towel

Paint Colors Used:

Sage Green

Ultramarine Blue

Payne’s Gray

Yellow Ochre

White

White Acrylic Paint

All of these colors can be found in this perfect beginner set of watercolor paints. This is the exact set I am using in the video above to create this painting. I highly recommend this product to you if you are looking for a beginner set of paints.

Let’s draw a Christmas tree!

We are going to draw a rough sketch of the Christmas tree to give us a good guidline for our watercolor Christmas card painting.

Using your pencil draw a soft straight line down the center of your page to make up the tree trunk.

Next, add short line facing upward, and as you draw down slowing make the lines longer and facing outward. As the branches get longer make them more of a squiggle line rather than straight.

Once you reach the bottom sketch in a stump for the tree trunk.

Lastly, let’s add out ornaments. You can follow my picture below or add circles where every you’d like to have ornaments on your tree.

Lightly erase your lines to they won’t be too visable when we paint over it.

I always recommend sketching out your pictures on a seperate sheet of paper, then tracing it onto your watercolor paper. If you’d like to learn more about that, check out, How to Trace a Picture onto a Canvas.

Step 1:

Grab your flat brush, and apply a clean coat of water over the entire page.

While your page is wet, grab your round brush and begin applying a dark paint mixture of ultramarine blue + payne’s gray to the outter edges.

Next, using a clean water on your brush blend the dark blue paint into the white page. Blend it as close as you can to the Christmas tree. We want the tree to remain white.

Let this layer completely dry before moving on to the next step.

Step 2:

This step is easy and fun!

Dipi your small round brush into your yellow ochre paint and fill in each ornamnet circle we sketched before.

Leave a little bit of white space on each ornament to give it a natural shine.

Let all the ornaments dry before moving on.

Step 3:

For this step I am going to break it down into three seperate sections.

Christmas Tree:

We are going to apply two layers to our tree to give it depth and natural shadowing.

Start by using your small detail brush to apply a light wash of sage green paint to the tree branches. Follow your sketch lines, and keep them messy and loose, avoiding the gold ornaments.

While your paint is still wet, dip your brush into the sage Dark Blue-Green paint (Green paint + Ultramarine + Payne’s Gray paint). Apply this color to the center of the tree banches, and just a little bit on the outter branches.

Snowy Ground:

Using white acrylic paint and a little bit of water to apply a white snoy ground beneath the Christmas tree. Allow the white paint to blend into the blue paint we applied earlier.

While your acrylic paint is wet, dip your round brush into a light mixture of Payne’s gray and apply a shadow under the Christmas tree’s trunk.

Snow in the Sky:

Lastly, cover up your Christmas tree with a scratch sheet of paper and using white watercolor paint and a lot of water, tap your brush over the entire painting to create a natural looking snow fall.

Congrats! You Did It!

I hope you enjoyed painting this easy watercolor Christmas card with me today! If you enjoyed this tutorial, please consider sharing it on Pinterest!

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