I do enjoy making my own Christmas Cards. Well. I say my own, but there’s the thing, see. Up until this year whenever I’ve made Christmas cards they have either borne copies of monochrome designs I’ve found elsewhere, or painted images also copied from elsewhere. Well, following the way that my watercolours came on in leaps and bounds during the 30x30 direct watercolour challenge in June, I finally took the plunge .
I have always said that
I am no good drawing or painting something out of my head. Well, during the
last fortnight I’ve had a good look at a lot fo the cards out there, and tried
to boil it down in my head to a process.
Stage 1 is to draw a
design lightly on the card. You’ll see that the three completed cards that I’ve
photographed each shows a snowy scene with a church. I’m not ready to create my
own landscape with figures – not yet, but I was confident that I could create
the shape of a fairly simple country church – several different churches as it
happens. I felt it was important to go light on detail.
Stage 2 is to paint the
sky and the snow. I have yet to try using masking fluid to create stars and
snowdrops, but let’s walk before we can run. I overpainted at lleast part of
the area where the trees would go, but left negative space where the church was
going to go. Using wet on wet I’ve achieved some beautiful effects and the sky
becomes a huge contrast to the snowy foreground. I then left the cards to dry
completely before the next stage.
The next stage was to
paint in the trees. Smaller trees in the distance first, and these I painted
lighter and in a bluey green. Taller trees which are closer to the viewer
greener and darker. I’d make the tops of the trees even darker, almost black,
but then use the negative space further down to suggest snow laying on the
branches.
Stage 4 is the first
pass over the church building. I painted in the yellow windows, then allowed
them to dry. Then I worked from light to darker, building up more definition on
the church walls, and applying blue shadows where wanted on the snowy roofs.
Stage 5 is the second
pass over the church building. This is for putting in the darkest shadows
beneath the rooflines, window frame details, door and wreath on the door if I
used one, That completes the painted image.
Stage 6 is writing
Merry Christmas on the card. I did this with fineliner because I feel more
confident with my use of fineliner than a paintbrush for lettering. Here’s the
cards :-
I’m really pleased with
these, because they are my own designs, from my imagination, and a big improvement
from the pigswill I usually produce when working from my imagination.
