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Today’s easy watercolor painting for beginners is a watercolor gingerbread man.
This watercolor painting tutorial is perfect to put on a watercolor Christmas card or just to have fun painting for the holiday season!
Let’s get started!
Full video tutorial at the bottom of this post!
Supplies You’ll Need:
Watercolor Paper
Watercolor Paint
Round Paint Brushes
Two glasses of water
Paper towel
Pencil
Eraser
Paint Colors Used:
Burnt Umber
Payne’s Gray
Alzarian Crimson
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.
How to Draw a Ginger Bread Man
To draw a gingerbread man you are going to want to start with lightly drawing an oval for the head.
Instead of adding a neck in the center of the head, go straight into the arms starting at the bottom edges of either side of the head.
The arms are also an oval shape. Make these ovals a little smaller than the head point slightly upward. Then draw a short line down to the feet.
The feet are also an oval shape pointing upwards toward the arm. Connect the two feet by drawing a small hill in between the two feet.
And there you go! You have successfully drawn a gingerbread man!
Now you can add the details that make up the face, buttons, and frosting details.
I recommend drawing your gingerbread man out on a scratch sheet of paper, then transferring your picture onto your watercolor paper. Check out, How to Trace a picture onto a Canvas, for more details.
Step 1:
Grab your round brush and burnt umber paint and let’s get started!
Dip your round brush into a thick mixture of burnt umber and begin painting in the entire gingerbread man, leaving the eyes, mouth, buttons, and hand and foot details white.
If while you are carefully painting around the gingerbread man’s details and you notice your paint is drying, just reactivate your paint by adding a light wash of burnt umber over top to keep your painting from having blooms.
Let this layer dry before moving on to step two.
Step 2:
We now get to frost our gingerbread man, using white acrylic paint.
Grab a small detail brush, and begin adding a layer of white acrylic paint over the eyes, mouth, and foot and hand details.
For the buttons, we are going to use Alzarian Crimson to create bright red buttons.
Let all the little details dry before moving on.
Now, we are going to add some shadow areas to our gingerbread man to help him not look so flat against the page.
Take your small detail brush and dip it into a thick mixture of burnt umber. Using the tip of the brush outline the right side of the eyes, mouth, and buttons, and just the bottom half of the foot and hand details.
Step 3:
Another way we are going to help our gingerbread man stand apart from the white page is to give him a light shadow behind him.
Use your size 6 round brush to cover the entire area around the gingerbread man with clean water.
Then while the page is still wet, use a light wash of Payne’s Gray to tap in the shadow along the edges of the entire gingerbread man.
If you see any sharp lines appear as it dries use clean water to blend the gray paint out into the white page.
Let this layer dry before moving on to our last step.
Step 4:
We are going to finish off our easy watercolor painting with the splatter technique!
Before we splatter our paint cover up the gingerbread man with a scrap piece of paper.
Dip your size 6 round brush in a lot of water and a lot of red paint, then use your finger to tap your brush over your entire paitning.
If you like, move your scrap piece of paper and see if you need to add any splatter closer to the painting. If you want to add splatter closer, without adding anything to your paint brush lightly tap your brush as close to the page in the area you want to see more dots.
Let this final step dry and you are done!
Full Video Tutorial
Conclusion:
I hope you enjoyed painting this cute and easy gingerbread man with me today! If you did enjoy this painting, please consider sharing it on Pinterest!
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