Beginner Watercolor Holiday Card Tutorial - Vintage Ornaments

The holiday season is filled with a celebration of the new experiences and people in your home and a reflection of the past with each ornament and décor you add to the tree. Watercolor artist Bethany Carroz of West Oak Watercolor has created a beautiful step by step tutorial to celebrate the old with a holiday card filled with vintage ornaments. Discover Bethany’s tips for success to paint this beginner friendly holiday card using watercolor paint and Original Gold brushes.

Vintage Ornaments Holiday Card Supplies:

- KINGART® PRO Artist Watercolor Paint, 12ml (.4oz), Set of 24 Unique Colors 
- KINGART® Original Gold® 9040 Round Stroke™ Series Premium Golden Taklon Multimedia Artist Brushes – size 8 
- KINGART® Original Gold® 9350 Liner Series, Premium Golden Taklon Multimedia Artist Brushes – size 4 
- Watercolor paper – I cut my sheet to 10x7 so I can fold into a 5x7 card
- Jar(s) of water
- Palette to mix colors
- KINGART® PRO Graphite Sketching & Drawing Pencils, Set of 12 

Step 1: Lightly pencil in the shapes of your ornaments.  These are the 4 shapes that I will be using to create my ornaments.  You can add more shapes if your feel inspired!

Step 2:

- Paint each ornament using the pencil lines as your guide.
- You can choose a traditional color palette, or follow along using vintage inspired colors like I used on my card.
- To add some visual interest, you can add a thicker consistency of paint around the outer edges while the paint is still wet to create some depth, or even lift off some color with a clean wet brush (while the ornament is still wet) to create a shiny effect on your ornament.

*For the four ornaments shown, I used an ultra marine blue + black for my round ornament, a mix of crimson and burnt umber for the pink stripe, hookers green, and violet + yellow ochre for the purple teardrop ornament.

Step 3:

- For the final card, it looks nice if you can paint the ornaments at different heights across your card.
- Then, it’s time to hang your ornaments! Use a liner brush to draw a line from the loop of the ornament to the top of the card. 
- Get creative by adding bows to your string, or fun words / holiday themed sentiments!

Follow Bethany on instagram to get inspired by her watercolor painting talents!

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