Step by step: Soldier & Lady making a snowman

Pencil sketch. The background being grey, I chose a toned paper so that I would only have to add colours and white on top of it. It’s from a Toned Blue Mixed Media vellum surface pad from Strathmore. The blue tone really passes well for a grey, luckily, as it’s the only toned paper I have. 4 in. X 6 in. (10.2 x 15.2 cm), 184 lb. (300 g/m2)

I have only a few tubes of good gouache paint and a few tubes of watercolorlur too to draw from in order to mix the colours. I knew the painting colours would not be faithful to the original, in particular the Lady’s dress which was pink and fuchsia. I started with the red. I mixed burnt sienna gouache with titanium white opaque watercolor but ended it with a pinkish orange. I then added Indian red watercolour and was satisfied and painted the Soldier’s jacket, omitting the parts that were going to be a different colour. Then I painted the dress. I added white and a little bit of Prussian blue to the red mix. The resulting colour was plum, and this was fine. I added more of the red mix and some brown I had from a previous painting and used that for the darker parts of the dress. Then I used titanium white watercolour to paint the snow, leaving untouched the areas of the footprints and shadows.

I needed a few shades of grey for shadows on the snowman, under the dress, and on the soldier’s leg behind the snowman. for the faces I applied white and brown. Then I used some ivory black to decorate the dress’ fur, paint the hat, boots, Soldier’s hair, the snowman’s stick and eyes, and the shadow against the tree trunk. The Lady’s scarf was supposed to be blue and dark green, but with a dark plum dress I thought leaf green was going to be better.

Snowflakes! I used a white Posca pen to add dots that I immediately tapped with my finger to spread the ink unevenly. Then I added yellow ochre to my green and finished the Soldier’s hat, the top of his boots, the decorations on his shoulders and the handle of his sword.

I wasn’t happy with their faces so I attempted to make them better only to fail. In retrospect, the faces were fine as they were!

I fiddled some more with their faces and as soon as I had managed to make them look a bit less weird, I stopped. I made them look happier in the process, so it’s all good. I added a touch of white for the teeth, which aren’t visible in the original, but since their faces were so dark, I thought it would be a good alteration.

I didn’t want to write on the painting in case my mum wants to frame it. So I folded a white sheet from my cheap watercolour paper block, cut a couple slots and inserted the painted. I will write inside and will mail everything tomorrow!