How To Paint a Watercolour Christmas Card

Looking forward to this folks, we're going to paint a watercolour Christmas card. Now just to show you the actual Christmas card pack, if you like what I'm using, I've actually got it here. Do you like the jumper and the fact that it's snowing in the studio? I can promise you there's been no expense spared. I've been waiting to get this jumper on all year. It's actually snowing outside for real and it's kind of creeped in the studio. It's going to settle on the head. But anyway, welcome. Thanks for taking a bit of time out to join us today to have a go at some watercolour. This is going to be a demonstration, so I'll be painting fairly quickly at my own pace. It's by no means a workshop, so if you're trying to paint along, you might find it goes a little bit on the quick side. But you can always watch it back at any time. Now I've been working with Search Press for quite a large number of years, 12 years, something like that. I've published quite a lot of books with Search Press, including the bestseller which is Matthew Palmer's Watercolour for the Absolute Beginner. You can check out all my books in the links in the description below, so please have a look at those. There's all sorts of things in the description below. So if you fancy purchasing any of the materials that we're using today, there's also a link down in the description. Or maybe you fancy painting along with me on a live virtual watercolour workshop. Well, they are happening pretty much every single weekend, apart from a few that we miss here and there. In fact, there's one happening tomorrow, that's Sunday the 28th. I'll just have a little chat about that, folks. If you do want to have a go, you can see the information at the bottom of the screen here. I want to paint in step-by-step detail tomorrow, Sunday the 28th, a beautiful snowy owl. Look at the gorgeous pictures you can see down here. So do have a little think about booking on to that workshop. It's a £10 workshop. It's very steady, very slow, a nice steady step-by-step pace. This is going to be a bell to this. Hello if you've joined us live today. Look at this. We are decorated with wonderful, wonderful wintery watercolours. Try saying that after a couple of beers. I'll have no beer, I promise you. But anyway, enough waffle. Let's get on to the painting. Let me show you what I'm using here. I'll just bring the camera to this one. So it's a watercolour greetings card kit. Now you get 10 sheets of watercolour paper. You get 10 bevel mounts. You get 10 envelopes and the pre-scored card with instructions. Now we do actually sell these on the website on allthews.watercolour.tv. So do check out the website. You can see it here on the screen, allthews.watercolour.tv and do check it out. I want to pass this to my assistant who's hiding here. Look, there it is. Thank you. Pop that away, wherever that is. No idea. It's like the thing from Adam's family. Get down to the palette. So just want to briefly touch on the palette. I've got a few colours hanging around. So we have basically primary... Just keep these away. We've basically got primary colours. Nice and simple. We've got some blue. We've got some blue there. Which is natural blue in this case. We've got some red. This one is natural red. We've got some natural yellow light as well. And I've got some white paint. So three primary colours. Red, yellow, blue. I've got some white paint. All these are my own brand of colours. Again, everything is available on watercolour.tv. Click on the art shop. All these links in the description below. I've popped a square to them. And I have just a couple of brushes to be fair. That's all I want for this. Just a couple of brushes. So what we've got here is a size 6 round watercolour brush. And a size 10 round watercolour brush. So just two brushes is all you need for this. Because if you're painting Christmas cards. You don't want to be spending a lot of time necessarily on each picture. Depends how many friends you've got I suppose. But it's a quick process for me. And that is one of the things I really enjoy about this. Now the actual paper size is around about a 5 size. Okay. Roughly looking at sort of about sort of 9 inches by about 4. But anything goes. I have stuck this to a board. You can see that it's stuck to a board. And it is ready for action. Just going to get the camera nice and central. I just want to bear in mind if you're watching this back folks. Originally this was broadcast live on the 27th of November. During the Search Press Christmas virtual festival. So it's live and you never know if something's going to go wrong. Especially when it's snowing outside. The power might go off or something. So just bear that in mind. But hopefully it'll be good. Probably about sort of 20-30 minutes painting time on this picture. And that'll be a nice speedy paced watercolour demo. Again before I move on. If you do want to take part in a virtual watercolour workshop with me Matthew Palmer. There's one coming up every weekend. This one at the bottom of the screen as you can see here. Is the one that's coming up tomorrow. It's the same material as we've just mentioned. The primary colours, a couple of brushes. And you will produce a beautiful painting of a snowy owl. Everything is broken down for you. It's like one-on-one tuition. It's like this. You see me but I don't see you. And it's great. And the great thing is that you don't have to do it live. If you're too busy tomorrow or whatever. You can watch it back. It's yours to keep forever. So you can give it a few goes. Back to this then. So let's paint in this Christmas card folks. We're going to do a nice kind of scene with some sort of pine trees and that kind of thing. So a wintery sort of themed watercolour would work an absolute treat for this. It really would. I am going to start off very simply by taking some masking tape. And I'm going to remove the stickiness from this. You can see I've stuck this down already to a piece of wood. But I'm also going to pop this on. And it's probably going to go about a third. And I'm just going to lightly add a bit of character. So roughly a third up. I'm going to give it a few little bends and a few little sort of just a bit of a wave. Nice and sealed. Then we can paint in the sky at the top. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the size 10 brush to wet the top section of the watercolour paper. I want to go for a nice colourful sky. I'm not working to any reference material here. There's no photographs. There's nothing. I'm purely and simply working from my head. Which is quite worrying. But please do stick through to the end because you will enjoy this folks. It will not be like watching paint dry. Hopefully it won't be like watching paint dry. Plenty of water gone on there. Let's get into the old palette then. There it is. And let's pick up some colours. My first colour is going to be something quite warm because it's a cold day today. So we've got some yellow and a bit of the red. Again any three primary colours. Beautiful. So with mixed orange you can't go wrong with that. Let's get back to the picture. You can smell the fear. What we're going to do here is we're going to work up on an angle. And add some colour to the base. I want to go quite vibrant with the colours on this one. Because I think a snow scene can be a bit warm can't it? It doesn't have to be a cold picture. So that's an orange colour we've mixed there. Back down to the palette. Let's mix up some violet. We can mix violet simply by using blue of course and red. I mean that's pretty straightforward. There it is. Quite strong to be fair. Because maybe later we'll put some falling snow in this one. But we'll see how we go. I mean that's the great thing about this. I'm painting a sky. And I'm weaving it down. Crossing the brush over. And getting plenty of colour creeping in across that background. Please don't be afraid to use strong watercolours. Especially for something like a wintery scene. Because the contrast is going to pop off the paper. Again I just want to say this is a demonstration. And if you've ever purchased any of my books from Search Press. You'll know the quality of the books are very very high quality. Broken down. Beautiful step-by-step detail. That's what Search Press are really good at. They've got a 50 year history of producing quality. And that's what you're going to get from a Search Press book. So do please check out my books. Again link in the description below. Where you can buy some signed copies which is quite nice. Let's get close into this then. Let's get close into this little sky here. Beautiful. And what I'm going to do here is paint in some distant trees. All right I'm going to paint in some distant trees. And for this I want to make strong colours. Size 6 brush or is it a size 9 brush? I'm not sure which way to hold it. It's a size 9 now. But then it's a size 6 if we... It's been a long day today. Right what we'll do is we'll take some more blue. Lots of blue. Nice and deep for your blue. Add a little bit of green. Sorry I meant to add a bit of yellow. Which will turn it green. There we go. Beautiful bit of rich vibrance in there. Thick green is what we're talking about. Quite dark so probably you know 80% blue. That kind of thing. And here we're going to have some distant pine trees. A beautiful distant pine forest. And all the time I'm doing this which is quite nice. While the paper is a bit wet. Make sure your paper is still wet. Is it me or is it moist? Make sure you check it out. Lots of little vertical lines in the background. The paint is spreading. Imagine you're dropping ink onto a wet piece of paper. That's the kind of effect that we're trying to achieve here. And that's exactly what I'm interested in. On this particular stage of the picture. We're talking distance here. We're talking what's in the background. And this is just distance. Now I'm fading this off into the centre. So I've got smaller, less paint on the brush. And I love how the paint feathers. I love how the paint feathers. It spreads. It disappears. It becomes part of the background. What I want to do now is go for grey. Now you can actually buy a grey ready-made. It's called Matthew Palmer's natural grey. But here for this particular painting. We are just using the three colours. So we can mix this quite simply by mixing all three colours together. So your blue. Still snowing. I love it. Your blue. Your red. Your yellow. But if we've got that dark green. All we need to do in theory is just add a little bit of red to that. And the red into that green will actually go grey. Would you believe it? There you go. Beautiful grey. We've created a grey from primary colours. Which is better than actually using colours that contain black pigment. Because one thing you don't want to do for shadows and things is create dark areas. So nice and dark at the base. Yeah if you used Payne's grey for this it would just leap out at you. And Payne's grey does contain black pigment. So that's why I always recommend that people avoid that one. So I've gone for quite a tall tree. It's either a tall tree or a distant telegraph pole. Nobody knows. No one knows. But we can make it look more like a tree by adding some little vertical. Actually like a diagonal line to be fair. Pointing up towards the sky. So we're creating some little pine trees again. You know if you're painting a Christmas card for you know in mass production kind of thing. The one thing you don't want to do is spend a huge amount of time on each one. Unless that's what works for you. But look how that's given us that tree. And it's brought the tree closer to us. Now I'm going to bring another one of those in. Again I'm just using this number six brush folks. It is quite a pointy one. The paper is just at that starting point of drying now. So which is perfect for what I want for this particular little mini seasonal mini festive watercolor. The paper is still damp. It's a beautiful surface that I'm working on. It does make a difference having a good quality paper. So I always encourage people to get a nice quality watercolor paper. Nice and dark on that then. And this is the bit. This is the bit where people come unstuck. Let's come back. Remember we are originally live. Or be you might be watching this back at a later stage. Tilt it forward a nice gentle tug of that paper. And hopefully we've got no seepage. Because nobody wants seepage. Nobody wants seepage do they? But if you do get a bit of seepage down the back. Lower your tape. And if you lower your tape. You can just paint a extended tree. If that makes sense. We've got distance. We've got a little bit of close-up happening as well. Happy with that. As it dries. The light reflection. Can you see the light reflection? That's caused by the studio lights here. So that will disappear. But let's get creative at the bottom. While that's having a little bit of time to dry. Let me just have a little flick through. I'd love to show you. While that's just having a minute folks. Do please give me a moment. Have a little chat about a few things. First of all. I just want to show you this now. This is the workshop that's coming up tomorrow. Sunday the 28th of November. Paint a stunning snowy owl. Perched on a snow-covered pine tree. Step-by-step workshop. All the information is in the description below. And then the following week. The following week. We have this one. Sunday the 5th of December. Paint a vintage festive market. There's beautiful Christmas markets. With Christmas tree and snow and watercolors. Again all taught on a beautiful step-by-step basis. There's a link in the description below the video. You can check it out. You can watch it live. Or you can watch it back at any time. If you're watching this like this. Original live demo back at a later stage. Then please do. Still click the link in the description. And that will take you to the page. Where the up and coming workshop is. So there's always a live virtual workshop. Actually taking place. Now that is just about dry. What I want to do folks. Just want to show you a couple of my books. That I've done with Search Press. Here we've got the watercolor. Look at that for a close-up. Watercolor for the absolute beginner folks. This book is one of Search Press's. Best-selling watercolor books. So do please check it out. It's full to the rafters. Of step-by-step tutorials on watercolor. Painting in beautiful gorgeous. Search Press step-by-step detail. You can't beat the quality of these books folks. They are really well produced. And a big shout out to all the team at Search Press. That put so much hard work into these. The editors and the management. And the marketing guys. It really is a huge huge project doing a book. A book normally takes a couple of years. And from start to finish. So you can see. Look at some of the beautiful scenes. You can create here. So yeah. It's a book of two halves. Because the first half is very much. How to paint little mini things. Like painting figures. And you know. How to do trees. Reflections. And all the essentials. It's like a little bit of a watercolor guidebook. And that one is simply watercolor. So absolutely check it out. And then we've got one here. That's quite relevant to today in a little way. Watercolor mountains. I do love painting mountains. This is part of the Take Three Colors range. Again just head on over to Search Press's website. Have a look in the links below. You'll see the books. But this book here contains six projects. And look at that for a bit of inspiration hey. If that photo is not going to get you painting. Nothing will. Anyway. Six projects. Six. In fact nine projects. Actually there's nine projects in that book. All done with the three colors that we're using today. Do check it out folks. That is a beautiful one to have a look at. And we also have a book called Watercolor Animals by Matthew Palmer. Check that out as well. Painting Without Paint is a book that's based on using your tablet as well. And there's some up and coming books that are coming out in the new year as well. So do have a look. All the information is below the video. That should be dry by now. Let's get back to it. Get back to it and painting something at the base. Let's put a little bit of a little bit of landscape at the bottom. Yeah you can see it's just starting to dry now. It's still got a little bit of a sheen to it but it'll all settle in. Let's work at the bottom of the painting now folks. We can get close into this. And the color is going to be a violet. I want to use some violet in this picture. Okay. When you think of snow you think of white. But you do get shadows. And a good color for a shadow in snow is a violet. So a bit of blue with a tiny little spot of red works an absolute treat. So let's get that mixed up then. So basically we're going to use some blue. Not too strong. With a little bit of red. Just a touch of red. Less is more for the red. But that color will be perfect for painting a wintry shadow. I want to put some detail in this picture as we progress through. So using that color. Beautiful beautiful color. I want to go nice and dark in this corner here. Just using a number six brush for this. That's all. Clean brush. Got some kitchen paper because I do sometimes get a little bit emotional when I'm painting. So that's for wiping up the tears. Or for dabbing off the excess water. Which is a good thing to do. Especially when you're doing blending like this. Because you need to get that color. And you need to be tapering the color away. So it nicely fades into the distance there. For a nice snow scene. It's quite apt that we're doing this. Because it's been snowing here today in Derbyshire. Which is where I'm based. Derbyshire in the UK. It has been snowing. Which is good. Got a little bit of snow. Very cold. There we go. So that's got a nice shadow. And that shadow will lift it up. It'll bring it towards us. Now. Where's your light coming from? I reckon the light's coming this way. From the right hand side I would say that. So let's go for this. And let's pop in some. Let's pop in some shadows. Casting down from these tall. These two tall trees. Let's bring those right over. And then we'll get a few little lines coming this way. So directional lines. For these tall trees. Yeah the cast. The beautiful cast shadow. You can almost imagine there's another one. Off. Can I say off-piste? Maybe. I just did. I apologise. I'll cut that bit out. What we'll do is we'll bring this over. Like so. And that's giving it a lovely. Sort of light. Casting across the snow. Still adding more detail to this. Do bear with me. Little bits at a time. I want to pick up that grey. The same grey that I used in those trees. Just to be a little bit darker at the base of the pine trees. Because if the shadow is meeting. That object it's going to be really dark. So I'm actually using some of that grey. It's still there. It's just gone a bit dry. So I'm just adding a bit of water to it. Just to refresh. Perfect. And also if we get a little wee bit closer in there. We can also go in and just add a little bit of extra darkness. To the base of these trees as well. So really giving this a nice bit of darkness. A bit of shadow. Yes I want to put some snow on this as well. So do please bear with me on this one. Again very much a demonstration. So it's always important to keep them separate. Workshops and demos. A demo is very much. You know me working at my own little happy pace. And whereas a workshop is giving you guys time to you know sort of work along. Well nice that's good. Happy with that. That's got a nice little bit of a shadowy thing going off there. Nice bit of texture. Again it really wants just a little moment to dry that. And then we can have some nice nice detail. I'm painting a tall tree over here. That will not take long to dry. Not at all. And so I want to paint a nice tall tree. Let's come back with the camera. So you can see where we're looking with this. We've got a nice scene at that point. And I want to be mixing up a very dark green at this point. So if we get back to the to the palette. Very similar to what I used before. I can mix it over that same area. So it's lots of blue but quite heavy with the blue. And then just a little dot of yellow. And if you ever want to make a green darker. More like a sage tone. Just add a little bit of red to it. Just a touch of red but only a little bit. Too much will turn it brown. And it gives you a wonderful deep green. Pine tree kind of green going on. Which is what I'm interested in on this picture. Okay. Brill. What I want to do now. I think it's dry enough to do this actually. So I want to take another little bit of sticky tape. Masking tape. Stick it to the hand to remove stickiness. And I want to pop this just about here. On a slight downward slope. Just a little bit of a slope. Just going to pop that there that little bit. Now this is going to be the base of a tall tree. I've also got the grey handy as well. You know from the three colours that we spoke about. It's the blue first. A little bit of red. Which makes your colour purple. And then add a little bit of yellow. And that will give you a grey. It makes such a difference. Everything's got shadows. You know from shadows in your hand. To shadows in the room. It really makes such a big difference. So well worth the energy on that one. Okay. Let's go for this then. So let's start off with the green. That's the sort of main colour here. And I'm going to go for this. Now if this kind of thing scares you. Just close your eyes and do it. But we're going to paint a tall line. Steady on. Oh my heart's going. Since it doesn't. And then we'll paint in this tree. Now at the bottom of the tree. We're going to have more of the grey. So I've got the grey in the palette. You know the three colours. Nice and rich for this. Don't be afraid. Be terrified. Bring it in. And you can see can't you. Just how thick that paint actually is here. It's really strong stuff. And this is more of a close-up tree. Obviously. So that nice richness. And like I said I'll put some snow on this. As well to make it nice. And there's a few ways to add snow. I'll show you one particular way. It's worth checking out my YouTube channel as well folks. Which again there's a link in the description. There's hundreds of free demos on there. Over the years of me. Doing the old watercolour. So do make sure you check that out. Also check out the Facebook page as well. Matthew Palmer artist on Facebook. So have a little look at that. We've got a really cool watercolour group as well. Matthew Palmer's watercolour group. And there's lots of inspiration there as well. It's a great place to chat about painting. You can ask me questions there as well. So if you'd like to join. Do please check it out. It's as I keep saying everything is in the. Everything's in the description below. These branches are pointing up towards the sky. And then we'll get some little spots at the top. A beautiful rich colour for that tree there. I love that. Can't beat a nice pine tree. And of course because we've got some at the back. It really helps to give a nice bit of scale there. So you know feel free to make it as tall as you need to. But as long as it's taller than these two guys at the back. It'll work fine. So it's well worth having a little. Think about the scale of it. I'll put the grey at the bottom. That always gives a nice bit of shadow. And then we'll take the tape off nice and steady. Look at that. Oh beautiful beautiful. Okay we've got the violet still. You know for the shadow. Because we've got to put the shadow on. I'm just adding a bit of water to freshen it up. But it's still there loitering in the palette. Let's get a bit of a shadow. Gonna be quite a dark shadow here. Let's get a bit of a base. Again I'll just squeeze in some of that grey. Especially where it meets the ground. Because that will really help it to sit. Ground it. It's going to be quite dark down there isn't it. Lovely. And then I'm going to take that dark green again. And add a few little blades of grass and things poking up. In the foreground here little twigs and things. Kind of poking out of the snow here. This is better than being outside isn't it. It's a bit rough out there at the minute certainly. It's windy and everything else. So is it windy where you are? It's not very windy in the studio. Oh I did have a bit of a curry last night so. I'm sorry I can't help myself. Let's just pop some little spots and dots around here. Give it a bit of interest. And I want to put some shadows on these. They're quite nice as well so. Once I've put those little branches on. I always like to make them stand up these little branches. How would you make a branch stand up? You would add a shadow to it. So if I take some of that violet and pop some little flicks of violet. On the base of them. They do actually surprisingly look as though they are. Stood up don't they? They've got that bit of a shadow. I want to keep working on the shadow from that tree as well. Give that a bit more interest. Really nice. Nice to see that little bit of a shadow. Let's just come back and darken the base of that tree there now. Because it's all dry. Everything's nice and dry. Dries pretty quickly does watercolour. So there's no need to worry about drying times. And also you can reactivate watercolour as well. So it's never a major problem if it does dry a little bit. Just add a bit more colour to it. Brill okay. So that's basically the card waiting for some snow. It's made quite a nice little scene. I'm just adding a few little hints and things here. I've picked up some of the green there and popped a few little bits on the base of that tree. And that'll give that a bit more detail as well. Perfect. And then let's get down to the palette. I've got a scrap piece of paper here. But when I use white paint I like to put it on a scrap. The white paint I'm actually using is actually natural white. It's my own white colour that I've developed. It's a fluid white that's quite easy to paint with. So I just pop a squirt of that there. This is just Matthew Palmer white. Have a look at it on the website. You could use gouache. You could use goulash if you want to. Little tiny bit of water is all you need. Too much water and that just disappears. So it wants to be quite thick. I'm just using the number six brush here to pop some of that on. Beautiful thick watercolour white. Lovely. Back to the picture. Now what I want to do here is just... I'm sure you can see what we're doing. I'm going to start off by putting some falling snow I think. Put some little random bits of white in the sky. It doesn't want a huge amount obviously. But a few little random bits would give it a bit of a wintry feel. Nice. Yeah. It all makes sense. Obviously as much or as little as you want to. I'd also drop some of those over the top of the tree as well. You know, especially the distant trees. Because it looks as though the snow is obviously falling in front of them. And then using a dry brush. A dry brush is opposite as a wet one. So you basically tap off the excess on the tissue. And then I can pop some snow. Some of this white on this tree here. Just add little bits of white. If I'm honest the green is still a little bit damp. But it's okay. I'm still going to go for it. Because I'm using the white pure. There's very little water. A big mistake is too much water when you do use white. So watch out for the amount of water. Because what can happen is the paint just dries and disappears. So you've just got to make sure that you get the... That's good, don't it? Just got to make sure that you've got the consistency right here. So you can use masking fluid. But there's something nice about using white paint if I'm honest. Quite a fan of it as you can probably gather. A little bit of snow coverage on the tree. This is definitely the light watching paint dry. And then we'll add a few little hints in the background. I'm not too concerned about that. Because it's kind of in the mist. So as far as putting white paint on the background tree. I wouldn't be going over the top with it. A little bit is enough. If you've ever come across white. Whether it's my white or any white and you're using it. And it just like disappears. It's because you've got too much water on your brush. So just watch out for the amount of water that is on your brush. You can get your paint nice and thick. And that's what makes this white different. Is it's quite a runny white from the tube. It's not a thick white from the tube. So you don't have to really add any water. Just a damp brush is all you want for white paint. Or for this particular one anyway. That makes quite a difference, don't it? It looks very festive and a nice wintery scene there. With all the little bits of detail. And you've probably noticed me popping a little bit over here as well. Just a little bit in the foreground. To make it look as though there's a bit of a mound. Gives a bit of texture to it as well, don't it? Just in front of the tree. A little bit of pure white paint. Beautiful. Perfect. There we go. So a nice bit of white. It's quite addictive, this, putting the white on. One of my favourite bits. Little bits of texture. Little teeny weeny bits of texture. Really effective, isn't it, that? And you know what's quite satisfying? A good mound. You can't beat a good mound. And you get mounds with these kits. These are the mounds I'm obviously talking about. But you knew that. I'm going to pop that on because these come as part of the greetings card kits and we'll pop those on. And it makes a lovely little festive watercolour to warm up. It gives you a warm feeling in the stomach. Maybe that was the curry. But it looks really nice. It looks festive. It's got a bit of festive, festive cheer. All that's missing is a bit of mulled wine and we've nailed it. So that is the nicely detailed quick watercolour. You can see what a difference the white's made instantly. It's brought it forward, the falling snow. You can add as much detail as you like to these pictures. Of course you can. Look at the beautiful shadows that we've got in the foreground as well. Casting. The casting. And we'll zoom back on this. So you can see the whole card. And that is a watercolour Christmas card. A nice sort of A5 size. Roughly A5 size. Really enjoyed that folks. Big shout out again. A big thank you to all the all the folks over at Search Press for setting up this virtual Christmas kind of themed event. And a big shout out to Monica and the team that works on all the social media side of things as well. So thank you for all you do. Hope you enjoyed that folks. Do please think about checking out some of the books. Remember that's just a couple of books we mentioned here. Which was Matthew Palmer's Watercolour for the Absolute Beginner. And of course the Watercolour Mountains book. We've also got a book on painting animals as well. That's part of the Ready to Paint in 30 Minutes series. Just do a quick click on the link below and you'll see all the all the different books what I have published with Search Press. And I look forward to seeing you again very soon. If not have a great Christmas. That's probably the first time you've heard that. Have a wonderful Christmas. Enjoy the snow. And do think about booking on to one of my virtual painting workshops. Check out the Facebook page Matthew Palmer Artists and the Watercolour group as well. Matthew Palmer's Watercolour group. Have a wonderful winter painting season and I will see you very soon for some more watercolour painting. Keep that paint flowing.