Holiday cards 2020
So things went a little odd this year and I didn’t have time to digitally draw Christmas cards to send to friends and relatives. I had time to start one drawing and, however, found that I did not have time to order the paper versions in time. The cards would have come to me before Christmas Eve, but I would not have had them sent them out in time. So it occurred to me that if I were to do a small project where I would do small paintings in a day or two.
At first, I thought the idea was quite impossible when artistic painting or drawing had been pain all fall. I was already stressed by this myself and I was already panicking in my mind that the hopes were too high. After a while, I realized one really important thing: art doesn’t have to be accurate and the end result “perfect” to be art and bring joy to people.
I am very stubborn to thinking that the published work must to be really polished, so that they could share or public. And no mentioned, to send them to friends or relatives. This puts unnecessary pressure on the artist that they should always able to create perfect art and be super productive. So I took it upon myself to do the project where there aren’t so much planning but to create cards mainly for practice and personal enjoyment.
I choose familiar and safe topics like natural landscapes, animals and Christmas decoration. I have already had a break from watercolor painting myself, so I decided to go for inspiration for the painting tutorials on Youtube.
Next, I’ll go through most of the cards I made and also link to a tutorial video that will allow just about anyone to start practicing watercolor work. Some of the cards are entirely my own ideas, with no instructional video. For these cards, I will open a little about how the cards were made.
I recommend everyone to grab the watercolors and play with them inspired by the videos below!
The Northern Lights
I wanted to look for an easy guide to painting the northern lights, and I did find more instructions for this – but they required more time than I had initially thought of using for the cards. However, I thought I would not abandon the northern lights theme but eventually decided to include it in the project even though it is not quite the easiest task to make.
The “wet on wet” technique works well with northern lights and dabbling with colors was quite therapeutic when you can’t fully control the result but the water does its own magic in the paper surface. Another important role is that the paper used is watercolor paper, so that the paper can withstand all the amount of water that the technology needs.
More information about the card:
- Completion time: maximum half an hour (drying of the layers took a large part of the time)
- Painting style: wet on wet
- I made two cards with this subject
- White cardboard
- Image area size: ~ 11.7 x 6.2 cm
Materials:
- Winsor&Newton - watercolors
- Derwent Inktense - watercolor pencils
- Black and white Wennström watercolors
- Canson Mix Media 200 g/m² (120 lb) - paper
Winter view
This is simpler than the previous topic: a winter landscape. In the end, I didn’t choose a completely similar background idea as in the tutorial video, but I applied the elements of the card mostly from my own inspiration. Here as a base for “wet on wet” as well as splash painting.
More information about the card:
- Completion time: 15 minutes
- Painting style: wet on wet
- I made one card with this subject
- White cardboard
- Image area size: ~ 11.7 x 6.2 cm
Materials:
- Winsor&Newton - watercolors
- Derwent Inktense - watercolor pencils
- Black and white Wennström watercolors
- Canson Mix Media 200 g/m² (120 lb) - paper
Snowing
This is similar to the previous topic: winter spruces in the snow. Here, too, the base is wet on wet at first, as well as splash painting. In addition to watercolors, I also used white acrylic paint on the branches of the foreground spruces.
More information about the card:
- Completion time: 10 minutes
- Painting style: wet on wet
- I made two cards with this subject
- White cardboard
- Image area size: ~ 11.7 x 6.2 cm
Materials:
- Winsor&Newton - watercolors
- Derwent Inktense - watercolor pencils
- Black and white Wennström watercolors
- Canson Mix Media 200 g/m² (120 lb) - paper
- Liquitex: MATT Titanium white - acrylic paint
Wreath with gold foil
This card is the first of the cards in the same instructional video. Wreath-themed card, for which I also wanted to test the gold filing with double-sided tape. Using the tape, I also made gold-plated tapes for the corners of the work.
More information about the card:
- Completion time: 5 minutes
- I made one card with this subject
- White cardboard
- Image area size: ~ 11.7 x 6.2 cm
Materials:
- Winsor&Newton - watercolors
- Derwent Inktense - watercolor pencils
- Canson Mix Media 200 g/m² (120 lb) - paper
- Double-sided tape and gold foil
- Washi -tape
Christmas tree with foil star
These cards are one of the cards in the same tutorial video as previous one. A very simple spruice with snowflake spots, to which I also wanted to add a gold-plated star with double-sided tape. I wanted to decorate the edges of the card with different washi tapes that bring vibrancy to the card.
More information about the card:
- Completion time: 5 minutes
- I made two cards with this subject
- White cardboard
- Image area size: ~ 11.7 x 6.2 cm
Materials:
- Winsor&Newton - watercolors
- Derwent Inktense - watercolor pencils
- White Wennström watercolor
- Canson Mix Media 200 g/m² (120 lb) - paper
- Double-sided tape and gold foil
- Washi -tape
Winter view in dome
I made my own variation for my card compared of the tutorial video. The moon scene background are similar but I wanted to make the work as a Christmas tree ornament dome. In addition, I painted other elements around the dome with a gold and silver watercolor.
More information about the card:
- Completion time: 15 minutes
- I made one card with this subject
- White cardboard
- Image area size: ~ 11.7 x 6.2 cm
Materials:
- Winsor&Newton - watercolors
- Derwent Inktense - watercolor pencils
- White, black, gold and silver Wennström watercolor
- Canson Mix Media 200 g/m² (120 lb) - paper
- Liquitex: MATT Titanium white - acrylic color
Fox and elf
This card is the first of my own ideas, where of course I used the same techniques like on earlier cards. With the characters, I designed a simple lineart plan and then used a light table to redraw lines for the number of cards I wanted. However, I only had time to make one card of this pair, but I will definitely continue to make more of these two.
More information about the card:
- Completion time: 20 minutes
- I made one card with this subject
- White cardboard
- Image area size: ~ 11.7 x 6.2 cm
Materials:
- Pigma MICRON - fineliner
- Winsor&Newton - watercolors
- Derwent Inktense - watercolor pencils
- White Wennström watercolor
- Canson Mix Media 200 g/m² (120 lb) - paper
- Liquitex: MATT Titanium white - acrylic color
Steps:
- Lineart using light table
- The background colors of the background are wet – on – wet technique
- Multible color layers
- White watercolor with splash technique
- Used a brush to paint white acrylic paint for parts I wanted
Finnish spitz in the snow
Another card with my own idea. I started making these cards around Finnish Independence Day, so I wanted our national dog breed Finnish spitz to join to the project. In this card, I reproduced the outline plan with the help of a light table. With acrylic paint I used splash technique to create snowfall like many other cards I made in this project.
More information about the card:
- Completion time: 20 minutes
- I made one card with this subject
- White cardboard
- Image area size: ~ 11.7 x 6.2 cm
Materials:
- Pigma MICRON - fineliner
- Winsor&Newton - watercolors
- Derwent Inktense - watercolor pencils
- White Wennström watercolor
- Canson Mix Media 200 g/m² (120 lb) - paper
- Liquitex: MATT Titanium white - acrylic color
Steps:
- Lineart using light table
- The background colors of the background are wet – on – wet technique
- Multible color layers
- White watercolor with splash technique
- Used a brush to paint white acrylic paint for parts I wanted
Cat and Christmas ornament
For third card theme I chose cats and Christmas decorations . On these cards, I wanted to test double-sided tape and foil again. Also, I had recently bought a new metallic water soluble color and decided to test that purple on one of the cards and oh how fine the color glitters! Too bad it doesn’t show in the pictures, I should shoot a video of glitter effect sometimes. I might need to have to order the rest of the colors from the same series.
More information about the card:
- Completion time: 20 minutes
- I made two cards with this subject
- White cardboard
- Image area size: ~ 11.7 x 6.2 cm
Materials:
- Pigma MICRON - fineliner
- Winsor&Newton - watercolors
- Derwent Inktense - watercolor pencils
- Gold Wennström watercolor
- Canson Mix Media 200 g/m² (120 lb) - paper
- Double-sided tape and gold foil
- COLIRO 046 Vibrant Purple -metallic water soluble color
Steps:
- Lineart using light table
- The background colors of the background are wet – on – wet technique
- Multible color layers
- Golf foil card: I cut pieces of the desired shape from double-sided adhesive film and place them where wanted
- I peel off the protective film from the adhesive film and press the foil to the work
The end result of the project
I got the project done and most of the cards have already reached their new owners on time. As for the cards that have gone abroad, we are still a bit open, maybe they will show up there after Christmas and will not be left wandering endlessly without getting there.
The amount of painting enthusiasm left of these was that I think I would do more of these types of card experiments. I got idea to offer these kind cards commissions, which means that already next year I will be offering cards of this style to order! The works would be themed, but otherwise I would do them with the artist’s freedom for a fee of the desired amount well in advance of the Christmas season. Let’s see what the future holds!
If the previous blog post was about projects that haven’t been completed then at least this is now successfully completed! For once, I overcame myself by taking it easy and just finished things without worries about the end result. I will try to learn from this project, maybe I could finish others projects too. Of course, the co-operation projects have their own chapter, I could tell about them in the next blog post!
Very good Christmas time for everyone!
Regards,
