The holidays are approaching, and if you haven’t bought a gift yet, a thoughtful, handmade holiday card can be a good idea. Even if you aren’t an artist, you can create festive images in easy ways. I used a free online website called Kleki to draw, but any medium will do. Check out the tutorials below:
Wreath
1. Draw a dark green circle. Make it thick, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.
2. Draw lighter green pine needles pointing in 1 direction around the circle
3. Add lighter and darker pine needles for a fuller wreath.
4. Color in accessories like pinecones, berries, and a ribbon
5. Shade the accessories with lighter and darker hues. Add a festive message on the ribbon or around the wreath.
Now, I just realized that my tutorial looks like the Olympic Rings. Wreaths are popular and versatile decorations year round, so you can use this technique to make cards for many different occasions.
Snowman
1. Draw 2 or 3 big, white-ish circles. The color doesn’t have to be perfectly white, it can be grey, bluish, or pinkish. The circle on top is smaller. It can sit on a mound of snow.
2. Shade the circles. Where is the light coming from? In general, the bottom of the circles is darker than the top. Use different shades of the same hue and a gentle circular motion to shade.
3. Color in the snowman’s features and outfit. Think beyond the traditional snowman and go all out with the fashion! Mine is going skiing.
4. Shade and add texture to the snowman’s outfit. Short strokes achieve a nice, knitted effect. Blurring in strokes works for fur.
Christmas Tree
1. Draw a dark green triangle for the base of the tree.
2. Draw pine branches in layers. Use a lighter green and decrease the thickness and you go up.
3. Shade where the layer gets overlapped and highlight where the layer sticks out.
4. Color in ornaments and tree decorations. Shade the ornaments with different textures. Use small dots for a sparkles and shades of the same hue for a shiny, metallic finish.
Winter Landscape
If you’re feeling ambitious, you can tackle a winter landscape. You can start out very simple with the sky and snow and work your way up to the mountain-scape or the ski resort of your dreams.
James Julier (James Julier Art Tutorials on YouTube) helped me get into landscape drawing and his tutorials are very thorough. I was able to independently draw landscapes after watching a few of his videos.
I hope you liked these holiday card ideas. Happy drawing!
