How to Paint a Cat Reaching to a Christmas Tree

In this lesson i will be showing you how to make your own cat Christmas painting. This is a lesson for an intermediate artist.

You will need a pencil to sketch out your design. For the painting you will need red, blue, yellow, dark blue, light blue, dark blue, white, and a dark and light brown. Optional- You can use a gold to paint the edges.

Before you paint your background sketch out the scene of your cat. For the background of your cat painting use a dark blue and cover beside the tree above the ground. You will go a little inside the outline of the cat and tree that will insure there is no white showing on the final product. For the lights in the background see step 2.

For the light string you will want to get a little bit of white on the ends of your paint brush. Then you use circle motions with your paint brush blending into your background. Wash your paint brush off and add some of the dark blue colour onto the outside of the lights using circle motions to blend in the lights. This will make the lights look bright. Once your light circles are completed connect them together using lines in between. TIP- When making the lights make them in a half rainbow so they drop down adding dimension.

To add the moon put white on your paint brush once more use circle outward motions to start the moon. When doing the circle motions make them as far outward as you want the moon to be. Once the moon is dry go over it with a fine tip brush in circle motions to add texture.

To add the snow on the ground paint a squiggly line on the ground. To make it look like piles of snow you can blend a nice dark blue. You blend the blue in by making a dark squiggle at the top and blend a dark blue into the white snow.

To add the cat, paint a light brown background in side your outline. You may need to apply several coats depending on how much dark blue you got on the cat outline. To add fur on your cat add streaks of different shades of brown in short and long lines. For the paws add a white on the bottoms. If you want a settle set of paws you can blend the white into the brown, if you want the paws to stand out you can make a line where they meet the brown ( when the brown is dry ) and they will stand out a lot more. It really just depends on your preference.

For this step we are going to focus on the pines and branches. To start paint straight green lines for the base of your branches this will help sort everything in your tree out instead of turning into one blob of green. You will put small green lines coming out of the green sticks. These will serve as the pine needles in the tree. Make these in different shades of green. When dry add more little lines to add dimension. TIP- For faster drying you can use a blow dryer on LOW.

To make the tree look like it’s been out side for a while add a little snow piles on the branches of the tree these are one of the easiest steps along with the ornaments all you do to add the snow is put five rainbows shapes in a row with a flat bottom. Then to make it look like it’s been snowing for a while add snow dots all over the canvas on the tree on the cat and especially on the background.

For the finishing touches add the Christmas ornaments. They are one of the easiest touches to add simply add solid colour circles of yellow, red and a light blue. Once the solid colour is dry add circles of a different shade of the solid colour background. Then once that layer is dry add the same circles but this time in white and a little bit less of them because you don’t want to stand out too much and cover the background colour.

Your cat painting is now complete! If you have access to a finishing varnish that would add gloss to your painting it would add a lot of shine and a nice finishing touch to it. OPTIONAL- You can also add gold along the edges to finish!