Last year, we had so many requests for a tutorial to paint holly. This year we moved this blog post over to its new home right here. The great thing about any Folk Art design is that once you have learnt the techniques, you can use them to create a range of different designs to create unique patterns and ideas.
In this blog post, we are going to use those skills we learnt in the holly tutorial to create a beautiful holly wreath - perfect for a lovely Christmas project.
What you will need for this project:
Water pot and palette
Pencil
Paper towel
Dotting tool
Flat brush (No 8 or No 6)
Americana Acrylics paints used*:
Holly Green
Splendid Gold (Dazzling Metallics)
Santa Red
Antique Gold
Warm White
Lamp Black
*if you do not have these exact colours, work with substitutes. Dark greens work the best for holly leaves.
Lessons you will need:
Pivot stroke flowers from our Folk Art Masterclass*
*If you don't want to add these flowers or don't know how to paint them, why not substitute them for a flower you prefer? Hinderloopen, vintage roses or rosebuds would all look beautiful in those spaces.
Print your design onto an A4 sheet (or larger if you prefer). Using your A4 transfer paper and pencil, transfer your design onto your chosen surface.
Using the "How to paint holly" tutorial as your guide, begin by base coating each holly leaf with your chosen green paint and leave to dry.
Note: if you are painting on to a black or dark surface, you will need to base coat each leaf using warm white first.
Next, edge the leaf with the Antique Gold or Splendid Gold. You can either float the colour, or edge with liner brush comma strokes as shown above.
Using the same colour and your liner brush, add a central vein to each leaf. Unlike our original tutorial, we only added one central vein to each leaf on our design.
Once these details are dry, paint your chosen flowers. We added pivot stroke flowers from our painting Masterclass but you can choose the flower you are most comfortable painting. To create the flowers, we double blended Antique Gold and Warm White.
Once these are dry, using the Antique Gold and Holly Green, paint 's' stroke leaves in the gaps you are now left with. If you do not feel comfortable painting the 's' strokes, why not paint comma stroke leaves or just add dotty daisies to fill the spaces?
Using the larger end of your dotting tool, add the centre detail to each flower with the Lamp Black (if you do not have black, a dark brown would work beautifully).
Leave your art work to dry - we do not want any smudges at this point!
Finally, using a very large dotting tool (or the end of a round pencil or crayon), add your berries to each sprig of holly. To add variety, we added a mix of two and three berries to each sprig.
Sit back and be proud of your project as you leave to dry.
If you create your very own holly wreath, we would love to see it! Feel free to tag us in your projects on social media.
Until next time x