Kleeschen’s barely out the door, Christmas already lurking around the corner. In December, so it seems, one simply can’t sit down to rest for more than a minute or two, at most. I won’t complain though, as I absolutely adore Christmas. It’s my all-time favourite holiday. Everything’s shiny and pretty, you get together with your family, and there’s awesome food. It’s just something about taking their time, coming home, and our various family traditions that has me mesmerized and makes Christmas so wonderful. I also strongly believe that no-one should be on their own during this time and it has happened before that because of that sentiment, we did have an unplanned guest at our table.
What else is part of Christmas, is often and for many to send postcards with their best wishes. How about designing those postcards yourself to make them even more special with your very personal touch? Or you can always make this Christmas tree into an ornament or a colouring page for children, which they can not only paint but also decorate with glitter and sequins, for example.
But first, we’ll need a tree. There are a great many different ways to paint firs. You most certainly know the typical, kind of triangular trees one often draws as a child. That’s what our drawing of today will be based on, only that it’ll be a little more ‘elaborate’.
(A handful of quick sketches of fir trees painted in different styles)
As pretty much every time we sketch, before doing anything, anything at all, we grab two differently coloured pencils. Now we can get right into it.
1. First, we draw an upward elongated triangle.
2. Then, we’ll use horizontal lines to divide the triangle into more or less equally sized parts. When in doubt, better make them a little bigger than too small.
3. Next, the triangle basically magically turns into a tree. Therefore we make the tip rounder and draw in a ‘level’ at each horizontal line. Each storey, if I may call it that, is supposed to look like branches (which rest on the larger ones below) and should be sketched out with casual, wavy lines. They can be uncontinuous lines so that they don’t reach straight from one side through to the other.
4. This step is entirely optional. If you like, you can add a (shooting) star or another kind of decorative tip on top.
5. We’ll continue with grabbing either a black fineliner or a green one for the upper and the brown one for the lower part and draw out outlines. If you go for the latter, make sure they’re darker than the colours you’ll use to paint your tree. Once the ink is completely dry, you may carefully erase the sketch.
6. Last but not least, add some colour and decorate your Christmas tree however you like it best. I might have gone a little overboard with the ornaments… 😉
One of my firs stands outside in the snow and as you can see, a bit of liquid glue and healthy dose of glitter do make for some pretty tinsel with a bit of extra sparkle. A real pro-tip I’ve learned first-hand: never ever sneeze while working with glitter… 😬
Another idea and option: draw the Christmas tree in a massively bigger size on some cardboard, cut it out, paint and decorate it, of course, and, which you can’t easily do with an actual fir, hang it from the ceiling. This may be just the solution if you have either overly boisterous kids or pets but aren’t quite ready to up on that Christmas tree just yet.
And that’s about it, short and sweet.
Next time we’ll move on to new year’s eve before we can (…might…) finally get some rest.
Until then, happy holidays!🎄
(Muic: Return To The Wild – Tobu ft. Michael Shynes)
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