First off, I am horrible at taking pictures, especially when I’m in charge of the event, so none of the actual class (I’ll include some of my original finished designs). But, this past Saturday I taught a Christmas Card painting class. It was so much fun! There were 12 students there, eager to learn a little bit about watercolor painting and especially eager to paint Christmas cards.

I decided to do 4 different designs, some very basic, and some a little bit more complicated but still within the realm of a beginner class. When I planned the class I thought we would paint one design and then I’d give them time to try the exact same painting a second time.

We started off with the Northern Lights. This is one that is a little bit harder, but one that most people look forward to trying their hand at. The difficulty comes from it being done wet on wet, you have to work quickly to get the paint laid down. But then have to leave it alone. Leaving it alone tends to be difficult even for experienced artists! This tutorial took the longest as there is a dry time in between the sky and the foreground trees.

When we finished the Northern Lights they were ready to just move on to the next painting, so then we painted a snowman. I had cutouts for those who didn’t want to freehand a snowman, and we got right to it with painting. This one went pretty quickly and we had fun with a salt background making it look like a snowy winter scene.

The third painting was a Christmas tree. This one I made more complicated than I probably should have. I had cutouts again to trace, but then wanting to create a snowy effect, we did a negative painting of foliage around the white of the paper creating what looked like snow on the pine boughs. It was a little bit harder to explain on my part, so a bit harder for them to paint. But we ended up with some very beautiful trees.

The last painting was Christmas baubles hanging off a pine bough. I had again made cutouts for a few different kinds of baubles so the tracing took just a few minutes and we were off and painting. We did a wet on wet technique just within the baubles and then a quick pine bough to hang them on. My students decided this one was the easiest of all.

After we finished all 4 designs, then I turned them loose on 4 more blank pieces of paper and everyone left with at least 6-8 hand painted Christmas cards to share with family and friends. When I turned them loose, several people who had seen some of my other paintings asked if I could help them draw a couple of different designs they’d seen me do in preparation, a bow, and a gnome. I gave brief instruction to the ones who wanted to try those as well.

The class ran from 10 am to 2 pm, but everyone who came was having so much fun painting that we didn’t actually finish until around 2:30 giving everyone time to finish up their last few pieces. Last year I tried to do a Christmas card painting class but didn’t ever get much traction with it, and eventually cancelled it. I didn’t know what to expect when I created the class again this year, but it went so well that I think I’ll do another next year. Thank you to all who came and enjoyed their Saturday painting with me!