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How To Paint The Happy Snowman

You can do it!

LEVEL: EASY

( printable pdf  – The Happy Snowman by Deb Watson)

 The Happy Snowman

by Deb Watson

Materials

•  Paint: Cobalt Blue and/or Cerulean Blue, Permanent Rose (or any bright red), Gamboge Yellow (or any bright yellow),white gouache or acrylic paint
• Paper: I used 140 lb. Arches cold pressed paper – any good paper will do
• Brushes: ¾” oval Silver Black Velvet wash brush (or any large round that holds a lot of water and has a good point), a size 6 round brush for smaller areas and detail, an old toothbrush for flipping white paint for snow
• Wax free graphite paper if you want to trace the outline onto your watercolor paper
• Misting spray bottle
• An outline page is included at the end of the pdf version of these instructions. Download and print out the outline page.

Step One – Draw or Outline your subject

My original photo for this demo.

(You can download the snowman outline from the pdf link at the top.) To trace – use graphite paper to transfer the outline of the snowman to your watercolor paper or draw it on. To transfer, I tape the top of the watercolor paper and photo to a back board, slide the graphite paper between the photo and watercolor paper, and go over the outline on the photo. If you draw the snowman, be sure to put the curvy folds of the scarf in.

Step Two – Paint the background

The background needs to be fairly dark blue (good color saturation) so that the white snowman shows up. To keep from diluting my color too much, I paint the background on dry paper, working quickly. Use your big brush for this large area. Start painting with light blue(more watery mix) at the top to darker blue (more paint and less water) at the bottom, leaving the ground and snowman white. If the color doesn’t blend smoothly, spray it lightly with a misting bottle to give it a little more water. Paint right over the (branch) arms. Let this dry completely.

Step Three – Paint the snow shadows

Shadows on a round object should be fairly light in value and have soft edges. That is easiest to create if you work wet on wet. Mix the shadow color by mixing an orange with your red and yellow, then mixing orange with blue to make gray. Use your smaller brush for this. Wet the snowman with water and paint light grey shadows on the left side of the snowman to give it form, wet on wet. The shadows should seem darker than you want while they’re wet because they’ll dry lighter. Once the shadows on the snowman are dry, switch back to your big brush. Paint a light gray shadow over the snow behind the snowman to underneath the snow in front of the snowman., then add water to let the very front to stay fairly white (graded wash.) Let this dry completely.

Have fun with snowmen!

Step Four – Paint the details

Paint the scarf, hat, and snowman details, using your small brush. I made the hat red and the scarf with stripes of different colors, leaving white stripes in the mix. Paint the branch arms a dark brown or dark grey.

Step Five – Make It Snow

Use your small brush and any white paint (watercolor, gouache or acrylic) to add some snow on top of the hat and on the branch arms. Using an old tooth brush, wet it in clear water and wipe it off till it’s just damp. Then dip the end of the damp brush in the white paint. Flip snow on your painting by pulling your thumb over the bristles from front to back. To make flipped snow show up on white areas, use a light gray mix. Make this by mixing your white with a bit of your blue or gray mixture to make very light gray snow and flip that on the white areas.

What Did You Learn?

• Using a saturated color behind white makes the white stand out and is a very attractive combination in any painting.
• You can get soft, light color effects by painting on wet paper – wet on wet.
• Using a big brush for big areas and a small brush for small areas makes painting easier and gives you better results.

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Long Days

I had a great time at Jerry Greer’s photo workshop. We usually left at 5:30 a.m. to get to our shoot location before sunrise and kept at it till the sun went down – lots of hiking and not much sleep. (I can sleep when I go home, right?)

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Photo Workshops

This was my first workshop and I didn’t know what to expect. The teacher has planned the best spots for students to get stunning photos. He took us to the locations and showed us the exact viewpoint that gave the best picture. Then he helped us with the technical camera stuff. Even I, who have a hard time paying attention for very long, learned a lot. Now, I can paint a lot – I have reference photos galore and feel quite inspired.

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Basket Weave For Watercolor

Click on the above link for a pdf explaining how to do your own basket weave painting.

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This is a fun exercise for watercolor – taking two paintings and weaving them together like a basket (or the old potholders we did in girl scouts.)

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General Directions

I painted two paintings of red tulips, making each the same size. When they were dry, I sliced the middle of one vertically in 1/2″ increments, leaving the top and bottom on the painting unsliced. The other painting I cut in 1/2″ strips horizontally. I wove the horizontal strips through the vertical slices, lining up the two paintings as best I could.

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Watch For The Student Paintings In A Future Blog Post

I will be demonstrating this for my classes as a unique way to create a watercolor painting. They usually turn out very well, and are fun! I’ll take photos and post some of the student paintings in a blog later this month.

8 x 10 Watercolor mounted on cradle board

April 9, 2013 (at 7 p.m.)  I will be the guest speaker at the Hershey Area Art Association. I’ll be discussing all the new mediums that are available for watercolor painting -

• canvas
• Arches board
• aquabord (masonite panel) and pastelbord
• watercolor canvas
• watercolor paper on canvas stretcher bars
• watercolor paper mounted on cradle board
• There are so many new ways to display watercolor, just like acrylics or oils. I’m still experimenting myself. The above painting I did on 140 lb. paper and mounted on an 8x 10 cradle board. I managed to get a streak of the acrylic gel medium on the painting, so I painted the whole surface with the gel medium so it wouldn’t show.

For the talk, I’ll be bringing examples of all of the above and doing a demo of stretching paper on canvas stretcher bars and a demo of mounting paper on cradle board.

Watercolor on Arches Board 14 x 18 2012

Dark Background Painting Techniques

I just finished this watercolor painting of a red fox in snow. I started it as a class demo in how effective loose dark backgrounds are with realistic animals, not to mention you have the main part of the painting finished in twenty or thirty minutes.

• Step 1 – Mask your animal. You can’t work fast and loose on a background area if you’re trying to carefully paint around something. I use a toothpick to pull out the fur texture with the mask. (I buy big packets of cheap brushes at the craft store to use for masking and grandchildren and I use Pebeo drawing gum for masking.)
• Step 2 – I wet down the background area and painted in very thick (almost no water) winsor blue, perylene green and just a bit of raw sienna, then left it alone to dry as it would. If you want a dark area, you have to use dark paint. If you want it to mix on the paper, slop it on and leave it alone, which is kind of scary.
• Step 3 – The left side still dried a bit lighter than I wanted, so I sprayed it with a misting bottle to rewet it without messing up the wash, being careful not to spray the white snow area. Then I washed over the bottom left again with the dark colors.
• Step 4 – Using Pro white from Daler Rowney and a toothbrush, I spattered on some white ‘snow’, going in a direction to lead my viewer’s eye to the fox.
• Step 5 – Remove your masking and paint your animal and the foreground.

New Framing Methods For Watercolor

The red fox is on the new Arches watercolor board, so I have lots of choices on how to frame it. I could add a mat and glass and frame it like a traditional watercolor. Or I could spray it with varnish and frame it like an oil. I think I’ll varnish this one and frame it without glass. Unfortunately, the varnish is very toxic and it’s too cold to spray it outside, so I spray it in an unused bedroom, closed off from the rest of the house. After I give it three light coats, I’ll open the windows and air the room out.

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You Can Do It!

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This is an 8 x 10 watercolor on Arches watercolor board that I did for class.

I took photos step by step and wrote up how to paint it.

Click on this link for the pdf -Land and Water

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Happy Painting!

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P.S. This is one of six paintings that sold at the Lititz Outdoor Art Show on Saturday.

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  ‘Celtic Dancer‘

This is a 9 x 12 watercolor on Ampersand aquabord (Claybord textured) museum series  panel.  It is finished with a spray varnish and framed like an oil painting.

The model was a pretty young girl at a local Celtic festival, complete with the ringlet curls all the dancers wore.

I recently saw watercolors on panel at the Easton Waterfowl Festival and wanted to give them a try.

Painting on the panel is unlike painting on paper or canvas and would take some getting used to.  I think I’ll stick to watercolor on paper and oil on canvas.

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My First Attempt

These flowers were painted on 140 lb. watercolor paper stretched over an 8 x 10 canvas.  (An artist friend, Ona Kingdon, put how to do this step by step on her blog.  To see it, go to www.emotiveexpressions.blogspot.com and scroll down to the October 8th entry.)  Painting on the stretched paper was a joy and painting the sides was not as hard as I thought it would be.

Finishing

You can see the nice effects of the salt I put in the background wash while wet.  When I use salt, I spray the finished painting with a special spray to neutralize the pH.  Next, I sprayed it with a fixative for watercolors.  Now I’m going to varnish it and frame it like an oil.  (Used: Archival Mist, Aquarell-Fixativ)

Problems

Stretching my paper over an 8 x 10 canvas was easier than varnishing the stretcher bars and cutting a backboard, but the bulk of the paper and the canvas made it too thick to fit in a standard frame.  So much for shortcuts.