Painting Christmas cards, Watercolor tutorial

Hello friends! November is here and time to make some Christmas cards. So last year around this time I had this two weeks project where I shared a Christmas card a day on my Instagram. Some of them went totally viral so I thought for today's video put four of them together in one longer video. I'm using these non-cotton papers, watercolor papers from aqua pen. These are in A4 format but I want my cards to be smaller so first thing I need to do is to divide them into half. For brushes we need two different sizes, a smaller one for details and another round and pointy one for leaves. I think it's very fun to use everyday objects to paint with and many times it can make the process easier. So this is what I'm doing now and I think this technique went pretty popular last year and I'm seeing still some videos popping up on Instagram. It's very fun especially if you're painting with kids I think. So as you can see I'm using the watercolor but I don't add too much water to the paint so I want to have a thicker consistency so the paint sticks to the cup, mug or whatever you are using. Next we are going to paint the leaves and this is a technique I'm using. I'm utilizing the whole shape of the brush, picking up the paint, putting it down on the paper, press it down and lift it up. So with one single movement you can create these leaves and this is the technique I'm going to use for all other paintings. Now I speed up the drawing process using the hairdryer so that I don't smudge it when I'm painting the next one and as you saw paper can warp a bit especially since I haven't taped it down. While paper is still warm if you are using the hairdryer you can slightly bend it on the opposite side so that you can get a flat paper again. Be very careful though if you're using this method. And now add in some splatter paint to create some sort of texture so we don't end up with a totally white background. I recommend using plenty of water and paint for this technique. And while the first one is drying I continue with the next card which is going to be a Christmas tree. So the first one is not totally complete yet I just want it to dry before I can add details. And as you can see I use the exact same technique for brushwork just picking up also be a Christmas tree but in a different style, different kind of Christmas tree. However this time I want it to be exactly in the center of the paper and that's why I did one and this is going to be in the shape of heart. So to make it easier to paint I first draw the heart with a pencil, go over it with watercolors, just leaving some marks as a guide so I can easily continue painting the leaves around it. While we are waiting for this last one to dry I will show you a few alternatives you can pick for painting the decorative elements. So here I have gouache paints, I'm going to use the cadmium red, acrylic markers from Molotow and Posca and acrylic hobby gloss paints from a local Swedish brand I think. And then we have some metallic paint from Finetec, highly recommended, really good pigments in this palette. And I have a few ones from Colors by Vita which is a Swedish handmade watercolor brand. So just to get a comparison I will first add some watercolor, red watercolor, it's semi-transparent and we'll see how it will turn out after it has dried. So I think my favorites are the gouache, the cadmium red gouache from Winsor & Newton and Posca Rosso, the acrylic marker. Now let's give these metallic paints also a try. and I hope you have a lot of fun making your own Christmas cards this year. If you did feel free to share them with me on my Instagram. Thank you for watching and see you in the next one!