Watercolor Christmas Gift Tag | Snowy Ornament

You might find today’s blog post useful if you’re looking for a little festive inspiration for something to paint. Plus, there’s an added bonus if you are wrapping any last-minute gifts and need some gift tags!

Inside of the Paint With Me membership community, I took members through 12 days of Holiday Tags, and each day we used a reference photo as inspiration for a gift tag.

I find that painting on something that will likely be thrown away (like a gift tag) puts less pressure on the painting and gives me permission to have more fun and try different things.

For this particular gift tag, I picked a reference photo that I immediately felt inspired to give a try but would be more approachable if I shrunk it down and treated it like a mini watercolor illustration.

If it helps, here are a few things I did to “simplify” this painting for myself: 

1. I ignored any background elements or texture and focused only on the main object

2. I used mostly simple colors straight out of the palette with just a little mixing

3. I did not “protect whites” and used white gouache instead

You can see how I put these decisions into practice in the YouTube video below:

I like to believe that sometimes we need these small painting “wins” to help us believe in our own abilities (because we do have them!) and in fact, little paintings like this can build a foundation for when we decide to take on the same subject or photo on a larger scale - whether we know it or not.

Painting anything, even once, quickly and imperfectly, creates experiences that we will carry forward.

I hope that you’ve been having fun in your creative practice lately. And if you’ve set it aside during a busy season, that’s ok too.

Sending you the warmest holiday wishes,
Susan