DIY Watercolor Christmas Card - How to Paint a Penguin for the Holidays

This post is all about how to paint a DIY watercolor Christmas Card. Specifically, I will show you how to paint holiday penguin.

Do you want to make a DIY watercolor Christmas card? This is a simple tutorial where I should you how to paint a holiday penguin on a blank watercolor card. You can use a pre-made greeting cards (sizes 3-1/2″ by 4-7/8″) or cut the card yourself from any watercolor paper. I recommend to use a good quality paper if possible.

Supplies

Strathmore Watercolor Cards (140 lb. cold press 3-1/2″ by 4-7/8″)
Professional grade watercolors (preferred)
Brushes (medium and small detailed brushes)
Sketch or drawing paper
Pencil
Pen
Water-based Sharpie
Scissors

Instructions

1. Sketch the penguin on plain paper

It’s super duper easy to draw a penguin. I sketch two circles (as you can see they are not perfect, but it doesn’t matter). I use the eraser to remove too much pencil, and then I outline the penguin. I use simple geometric shapes to help me sketch the head and to see where I want to place the feet.

Drawing Tip: Draw anything by breaking up your drawing subject into shapes: rectangles, squares, circles, etc.

You probably noticed that I like to do my sketches initially on plain white paper and then transfer the drawing to my watercolor paper. I do that because I get a cleaner drawing that way. I can mess up and practice on paper, erase and redraw without worrying about ruining my precious and expensive watercolor paper. Also, I get fewer pencil traces on watercolor paper, no erase marks, and the painting comes out looking nice crisp and very professional looking.

2. Paint the Penguin

I’m using a wet-on-wet watercolor technique on the body. I premix the colors to be somewhat between dark blue and gray. Then, I paint the head with very dark grayish blue with wet-on-dry technique. I leave the nose white. Also, I would like to mention that I avoid using black when painting. I think it looks too harsh. I don’t think I even have black dye in my palette. Instead, I have a dark grayish blue that I use as black.

3. Paint the scarf

For the red scarf, I mix different red colors and layer them over each other. I want the scarf to have variety and interest as opposed to monotonous one solid red color.

4. Add details

I continue to add details to the painting: eyes, nose, feet. Additionally, I decided to outline the body to create more contrast with the paper. My technique is composed of painting wet-on-dry and then adding water and softening the edges.