How to Paint Cup of Christmas 🎄 Acrylic Painting Tutorial

Hi everyone, I'm Joanie Young and you're watching the condensed version of Cup of Christmas. The full-length tutorial is now available on Patreon. Thanks for watching, enjoy the video. Starting off with my biggest one here, you can use any type of brush you want. This is just for pre-painting the canvas gray, so I happen to have a number 50 filbert. Again, it doesn't matter, you don't have to have a number 50 filbert, just any large brush that you feel comfortable with covering the canvas with. You're also going to need a little toothbrush. I like to use this for just spraying around to give a very soft look for snowflakes and stars. And then my series of brushes. I've got a number 14 filbert here, I'll be using this to paint the cup and the saucer with. And I'll be using a number 20 flat brush to flatten out the saucer and a little table or shelf, whatever the teacup and saucer are set on. Then I've also got a number three round brush I'll be using for the berries and small details inside the teacup, the house, etc. And I've also got my number two liner rigger brush for maybe a ribbon, anything thin and long and wispy looking. So I'm thinking of like the pine needles that are going to be around the plate or on the little saucer. So that will really come in handy. And I'm going to demonstrate how you use all of these brushes, you're going to learn a lot of different brushstrokes, color mixing, color blending, and how to build up a painting to make it to the foreground to make it look like it stands out and almost kind of looks 3D. So it's going to be really, really easy. Hope you guys are looking forward to learning how to paint this. And let's go ahead and get started. And then I'm just going to take a whole bunch of this light gray just directly from the bottle. And I'm going to start coming around the edges of the canvas first, no particular brush stroke, add a little bit more here on my brush. And let's come down here on the bottom. I'm going to keep bringing it in till the white spot in the canvas gets smaller and smaller. I want to have a light area to work with for my warm sky that we're going to use the yellows for. And I'm going to take my number 14 filbert brush for this next step, and a little bit, no water at all, just a little bit of each yellow. And I'm going to start adding it around the edges like this, slightly over the gray. I'm going to flatten the top a little bit like this, just kind of go back and forth, making it a little bit wider than the rest of the shape of the cup, the size of the cup. I'm going to take a little bit more, this time on the tip of my brush. I'm going to go down, scoop in, and what you want to do is make it narrower down here on the bottom, and it'll come down flat like this. Now we're going to make it even bigger than this, but I just want to start off with these colors and a basic shape first. I'm going to take a little bit of white on my brush now without washing the other colors out, and I'm just going to soften. So this golden color that we're adding for the background serves two purposes. So it makes the soft sunset behind the house, and it also is going to be the light inside the house, so inside all the windows. Okay, with a clean brush, I'm going to take some of my burnt sienna, and I'm going to go just above the top of the cup, and then bring it down a slight little scoop under. This will be our coffee or our hot chocolate inside, whatever it is that you like to have in your tea cup. Maybe it's tea, coffee, or hot chocolate, and I'll add a little bit extra just to add some shadows or depth there, and then a little bit of white and just here in the center. Okay, with a clean brush, I'm going to go ahead and take my sap green and a little bit of phthalo blue. I love this color, so yeah, it's making like an emerald green color, and I'm going to go around the edge, making it wider, and then right underneath, bringing it down, and then slightly out, and then in. Same on this side. I'm just going to gently scramble, pushing my brush flat on its side. Now you can make the shape of your tea cup a little wider if you want. I want mine to be just a little bit wider like this, and I'm going to come around the inside of the cup, bringing up a little higher, of course, and then just flatten the bottom. Okay, and then we're going to have the saucer. We're going to start it partway up the teacup, so you're just going to add a little rounded curve like this, straight here, and then rounded. Bring it down and around. I'm going to take a little bit of black with the blue and the green, and I'm going to come around, just catch the edge, using the tip of my brush. I'll be able to create a little bit more shadows this way in certain areas. You don't want to add it everywhere, and then just brush back and forth. Now I'm just dry brushing, but you could add a little bit of water to your brush if you want. With a clean brush, I'm going to take some white, and I'm going to come around right here and go inside the rim of the teacup. Then I'm going to turn my brush upside down, have white on the tip of it, and I'm just going to add a little line on the top of the cup. I'm going to add a little highlight, gently brushing over part of that blue-green, and a little bit on the base as well. I don't have water on my brush. It's pretty dry. I'm just adding a little bit of white to it to make this frosty minty color. I'm going to take some more white now, and I'm going to come around the inside of the plate. Now we'll leave a few areas a little darker for some shadows, and I'm going to take some burnt sienna and a little bit of black, and I'm going to come up and kind of just wiggle with my brush and create little gentle little scoops to almost make the plate look a little bit ornate. So you can swirl up and then come down to a little V or a little point and just do that around the edges. I'm not going to go too much around the sides with this color though because I want this to be in shadow and the darkest area. So I'm going to brush underneath back and forth, a little water, burnt sienna, and black. What I'm going to do is take more burnt sienna, a little bit of the warm yellow, and I'm going to just come across the left side with it. Okay, I'm going to take some white with the yellows, and I'm just going to come around and add a little bit of scoops and swirls. So scoop in, out to a point, around, just to make the plate look a little bit more antique. And if you want to really make yours precise and even, I don't. I like mine to be just a little bit more freehand and random, but you can always sketch yours out first. Then I'm going to take my green, my blue, and a little bit of black, mix them up on there. I'm going to start from right here. I'm going to add a spot right there, and then right down here is where it will come down. So I'm going to kind of curve in, turn and curve, let it kind of just pop out a little bit right here from the cup. And then I'm going to go around, curve, I'm going to add a little bit of white, and a little bit of the burnt sienna along with that. I'm going to add a highlight. So I'm going to start very thinly, using barely any part of the brush, just a little bit of the tip right here, and then I'm going to start to push and then let off. Push and then let off. I'm going to make it a little bit brighter this time, using more white, and then come over the top with a little highlight like that. So I'm going to take just a little bit of water, a little bit of water on my brush, and some white. It's okay if your white is tinted a little bit, like I've got here with just a tiny bit of that burnt sienna, and you want to make sure that you don't have too much water on your brush. And then I'm just going to push gently, wiggle, kind of like when you're painting smoke. You want to make it see-through, and you can make it a little ruffly looking. If you happen to add too much paint and it's not see-through, just go over it and loosen some of it off with a little bit of water, working on the scene inside the cup. I'm super excited, I love this part, I love creating little landscapes inside of other things. So first time for a teacup, what I want to do is add a little cottage here. I'm going to be using my number three round brush, and I'm going to start off with some burnt sienna, little bit of black, so you don't need a lot of black for this, and I'm just going to add a little triangle like this first. You don't want to start it down too low, we want to have some snowy foreground and maybe a little path. So just add a triangle like this, and then a line inside, and then across for the window. Because it's on an angle slightly, it's going to be thicker, the shadow line here. Then what we're going to do is come inside it, so you want to leave an overhang. You're going to come inside it and add a square. Now inside the square, you're going to add a thicker line. It can be in the middle, but I'm making mine a little bit off more to the left. Okay, then I'm going to add a line down the middle of each of those, and then across, across, across for some little windows, or little like the grid in the windows. Okay, so we're going to make this a little thicker across now. We're going to come down on an angle like this, bring this up, and make another triangle. We're going to fill that in, paint that in. I'm going to bring this peak up a little bit higher. I'm going to just mix up a little bit more paint here. Remember a little bit of black, like 90% burnt sienna, 10% black. Now we're going to go follow this line here and go across, then up on an angle, down a little thicker on that side, across, down. Make sure you have that overhang, so you start the inside of the house, the bottom of it inside here, so you're leaving a little area outside. We'll pick up some more burnt sienna now, go down the center and across, add a few little windows. Make this part a little thicker, just push firmly down, and then right in here as well. Push, pull down, and then just go across. Add a line down here, a line down here, this one's got to be thicker here in the middle though, and then we'll just go over that a little bit more, a few more windows, and we're going to join the roof, so this has to go up higher. Remember you've got your triangle here, triangle here, and we'll paint this in, and then we'll add some snow, of course, on top of the roof after. Okay, so there's our cozy little log house or cottage so far. I'm having so much fun with this one, I hope you guys are liking this one too. I'm going to take just a little bit of black with a clean brush, and I'm going to come in right on the inside here, make this darker, adding some dark dark shadows now around the edge, and then right down in this area here. So we're going to come in, come down, and then in right here, scoop a little bit right up in there. Okay, I'm going to take more burnt sienna with that black, I'm going to come inside right there, so where we want to have more shadows, a thin one here, and then a thicker one here, just like we did here. Okay, then we're going to come down on the side, I'm going to take a little bit of blue with my burnt sienna, see the color it makes, and I'm just going to have sort of a little pathway here, just a little something like that. So what I'm going to do is with my number three round brush, now you want to make sure you dry this area off first, and I'm going to go over and add warmth from the light in the windows. I want to just warm up those logs on the house, so by taking my warm yellow, you can take a little bit of the cool yellow too, mixing that with a little bit of the neon red for that pretty color. What we're going to do is just glaze over some of the areas here, add a little bit of white to those colors, and I'm going to start adding some snow out front here, and the snow is reflecting the light from inside, so that's why I'm tinting my white with those colors, so just a little bit like that. I'm going to go on the top of the roof, bring it down, drop it down here in this little peak area, add a little line of it here on the other side where it overhangs, and we'll have the chimney in here somewhere. I'm going to add more white in some areas to make it thicker and brighter, and a little bit here. Paige is cleaning my brush off, I'm going to take a little bit of burnt sienna, a little bit of black, and I'll add a little little line like that, add a little bit of white for some smoke coming up, and a little bit of snow on the top. Now what I'm going to do is take just a little bit of blue, a little bit of naphthol crimson, a little bit of white, and make sort of this smoky blue color, and add this for some shadows along the snow line of the roof, and a little bit on the smoke just so that, you know, it shows up a little bit more against that sky. Then we'll add some down here. We've got a little hint of the path in there, and I'm going to pull up a tree trunk with the same brush, number three, round, and I'm going to add blue, green, a little bit of black, mix them up, twist, pull and roll, so you have a nice point on the tip of your brush to work with, and we'll add one here, and another one here, and then maybe just a bit of a smaller one when I'm on the side there. I'm going to be using my number 14 filbert brush, and I'm going to take the same colors, a little bit of blue, green, and black, and I'm just going to start on the top, tapping lightly side to side to fill that tree out, and let's go over to this side now. This one's got a lean to it, I like those ones, kind of helps to draw you into the center, that cozy house, and let's not forget about this little one here. Okay, so I just dried this off, and I'm going to take some white, and because the base of the trees are darker, once this dries it'll kind of look like a lighter shade of that blue and green. Now all I'm doing is just, not carefully at all, I'm just dabbing, kind of tapping, and then you can even, to give it more of a natural look, you kind of just roll and twist the brush around, starting with the top, push and tap, and then as the branches start to get a little bit bigger and heavier, you can just make it look like that snow is weighing those branches down. I'm going to add a little bit more here. Okay, now we're going to go over to this side, get a little tap, push and roll. It's taken a while to get to this stage of this painting, but I hope you guys see why it's important to take your time just kind of scumbling around here, a little bit of leftover white on my brush. So I'm going to use the number three round, and I'm going to start off with some berries, and I'm going to take my Naphthol Crimson with a little bit of blue and black, just want a dark base first, and we're going to make the just simple shapes of round little berries. I'll do like a little group of them here. Now this is just the base coat, so we want it to be a little darker first, right, and not too thick. You want to have thin to thicker layers, because if you put this layer on too thick, you won't be able to add the brighter colors that you want. So let's kind of just bring some up here over the side of the cup. Now if you're a Patreon member, you're going to be enjoying this full length tutorial. I hope you guys know how much I appreciate your support on Patreon. Without you, I wouldn't be creating still. I think I'm going on six years of being on YouTube now, so I'm going to thank you guys a lot. I'm going to add a little hint of this berry color to the house as well. This is just so fun, adding little scenes inside of things. Maybe we'll have a few that are have fallen off and they're on the table. I'm going to add a little shadow underneath them, so your little round shape, I'm going to be adding a few here, so making it kind of blobby looking. No water at all for this next step, just paint only. We're going to take a little bit of naphthol crimson and we're going to paint part of the berries. You're going to leave them dark towards the bottom and around the edges using our bright neon red. If you're not sure about what color you can use, if you don't have neon or if perhaps you don't have naphthol crimson, just use any bright reds that you have. You can make them brighter by adding a little bit of orange or yellow, maybe a little bit of white. Okay, clean brush. The next color I'm going to be adding is my neon red and I'm going to add little dabs of it here and there, sometimes just a little dab, right? You want to make each one different. Okay, now I'm going to add just a little bit of white, just a little dab, make them look a little bit frosty, our little pine branches, and for that I'm going to be using black and hooker's green or sap green, a little bit of light olive green. Then I'm going to add a little branch coming out here, so just a little line like that, and then maybe another one here and another one just here. Starting with this number three round brush and then I'm going to switch over to my rigor liner brush. So what you want to do is just pull little lines like you're painting a like a palm tree or palm plant. Now you're going to naturally go over some of those berries so that it looks 3D and like the berries are behind or in between. Let's mix up a little bit more here. Okay, as you can see here I've got my long rigor brush, this is a number two. You can use any liner brush that you have if you don't have this one here. You want to get it a little bit wet and what I'm going to do is take, to make it look kind of frosty, I'm going to take some white and just mix it in with the first base coat we used, which is the hooker's green or sap green, light olive green, and a little bit of black. So again a little bit of water in there and then just pull and wisp. Now I need a little bit more white in there for that to show up, so just make sure that you don't make it all completely the same color. I'm going to take a bit of black, blue, and Nassau crimson, and I'm just going to add a little bow right here, a thick line there, round, in, pull it in, a little dab on the inside for the knot in the bow, bring it up, a little arc right there, back in, and then push, wiggle that off. You'll have the bow just coming over the edge of the plate there. Okay, I just dried this off a little bit. I've got a clean brush and I'm going to take some crimson red, the Nassau crimson, I'm going to add a little dab inside the center of the bow, and we're just going to paint a few little lines like this. I'm using thick paint so that it all leaves, you know, like a texture when it dries. Thin, wide, thin it out, wide, so that the ribbon has movement to it. Take a little bit of that neon red, wherever the ribbon goes up is where you're going to have more highlights. When it goes in, it's going to be shadowed. I'm going to take a little bit of blue and black and go just inside the other side of the bow. I've got my toothbrush here, and what we're going to do is you just want to dunk your toothbrush in the water. You want to gently scrub it around. Now I'm going to just go straight white, but you could tint your white with other colors to make more of like iridescent looking snow, I guess, or you could also add a little bit of sparkles after if you want, and all I'm going to do is just turn it like this and pull back and let it spray wherever I want that snow to be. I'm going to have it inside the landscape. Okay, so I've added a soft spray with the toothbrush. I'm going to add a little bit more steam and maybe just kind of dot and dab around here for some bigger snowflakes. Okay, I'm going to call this painting all done. This was really, really fun. I hope you guys enjoyed this one and learned a lot. Bye!