Snowman drawing in shades of gray

Snowman drawing in shades of gray

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Monday, January 22, 2018

Hope everyone enjoyed their snow days earlier this month! After learning about using value to show a three-dimensional form in their personal object still life drawings, 5th grade artists applied the same concept using chalk pastels. We looked closely at the illustrations in the book, Snowmen at Night, to inspire our own sketches for what our snowmen (or snow people) could be doing. Some ideas we came up with included making snow angels, skiing, snowboarding, snowball fights, and playing hockey.

In their sketch, students had to show some sort of action, and include a light source, whether it was the moon, a lamp, or a fire. Using their sketch to guide them, students then used chalk pastel to draw their own snowmen at night scene on larger colored paper. We discussed how to use other colors in combination with white to create a three-dimensional appearance to the snow.

We noticed that the illustrations in the book included many colors in addition to white to represent snow. For the areas of shadow, we used different shades of blue, purple, black and gray. For the areas of highlight, we used yellows and oranges to show light hitting a surface. This all depended on the light source in each student’s work, and which side of the snowman was closest to it. (Most) students enjoyed blending the soft pastel with their finger to blend colors together and fill in shapes.

The following classes, we focused on adding details to the snowmen as well as the background. Students got creative with their details, adding faces, winter accessories likes hats and scarves, trees, and even snow animals. We talked about how to add the shading and highlight to those details, such as the carrot nose or a top hat. Students also considered different ways to approach the sky, whether it was adding snowflakes, stars, etc.

Below are some examples of our snowmen at night drawings. Two students’ drawings were featured on the December winter concert program and some of our other snowmen at night drawings will be on display in the glass case downstairs soon!

Aiden, 5th Grade (Twomey)

Arthur, 5th Grade (Bellis)

Ava, 5th Grade (Psychoghios)

Bianca, 5th Grade (Psychoghios)

Breanna, 5th Grade (Twomey)

Daniel, 5th Grade (Bellis)

Dorie, 5th Grade (Psychoghios)

Elen, 5th Grade (Twomey)

Kate R., 5th Grade (Psychoghios)

Kiran, 5th Grade (Bellis)

Max H., 5th Grade (Bellis)

Nolan, 5th Grade (Twomey)

Pirada, 5th Grade (Twomey)

Rose, 5th Grade (Bellis)

Sila, 5th Grade (Bellis)

Sol, 5th Grade (Psychoghios)

Jaylyn, 5th Grade (Twomey)

Brady, 5th Grade (Domermuth Fantasia)

Yassemine, 5th Grade (Domermuth Fantasia)

Caroline A., 5th Grade (Domermuth Fantasia)

Oliver, 5th Grade (Domermuth Fantasia)

Snowman (watercolor, 2021) ⛄

Another day for another Christmas artwork to share it on today’s new topic that’s approaching at The Autistic Animator’s Desk. It is definitely a painting of a snowman, according to the title of the artwork here; not just a snowman, but a happy snowman standing in the middle of the beautiful wintery landscape, all happy and jolly that it’s Christmastime. Don’t we all always expressed a very happy and jolly mood in every Christmas? Why don’t we? That’s what makes Christmas such a magical holiday, known as the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

All done in full watercolor, at 9 x 12, it illustrates a happy snowman surrounded by the little animal friends, set in the stylized winter wonderland landscape with snowflake-like trees all decorated in red and green Christmas ornaments. Even though this the first time of me sharing you all this painting on this topic, this also makes my very first snowman painting I ever worked on. I can’t remember on having done any of the snowman paintings or drawings before this, although I have done one painting that featured a snowman, except I painted with two young boys building it, setting in a wintery park during Christmastime, and that was a painting I made it for my dad and give it to him as a Christmas gift eight or seven years ago, all done in acrylic on a thick canvas. So, in my opinion, I think this one here, done in watercolor, makes it the first snowman artwork I worked on.

If you noticed, there are no outlines, not even drawn with the sharpie pens, either in black or any colors. The purpose of it was not to make it into a watercolor drawing, for I didn’t want it to be any artwork drawing like the ones I’ve done from the past, only because that was done in the animation form. I only wanted to be as a painting, any kind of painting you would see in any different art medium, even how you see watercolor paintings in any art galleries, or even on Christmas cards in any store.

In a meantime, I will be working on a second Christmas watercolor artwork, it will be a full drawing artwork, instead of just a full-length regular painting like this one here, and I would like to have it post it either on December 24th (Christmas Eve) or December 25th (Christmas Day).

The second one will be a full Harry Potter Christmas fan art, illustrating one of the Christmas scenes in The Sorcerer’s Stone, the first of the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, so that’ll be fun and exciting. Believe it or not, this will be the first time working on a fan art illustration piece from The Sorcerer’s Stone, and I haven’t done any fan art drawings from the first Harry Potter book, and most of the fan art I have presented to you all were the ones from The Prisoner of Azkaban, The Order of the Phoenix, and The Deathly Hallows, along with bits of The Goblet of Fire and The Half-Blood Prince. Frankly, I even haven’t done some drawings for The Chamber of Secrets either, but I’ll get to it one day. I’m pretty excited working a fan art drawing piece from The Sorcerer’s Stone, and plus, it’ll take place in Christmastime in Hogwarts, and it’s during Harry’s first Christmas in Hogwarts. Sweet!

Next week, I will be posting the First Nutcracker Show story on Wednesday, December 15th , where I will share my story of the very first Nutcracker ballet show at seven years old, and how it changed my life for seeing my very first ballet to falling in love with ballet, and how ballet became one of my main focuses in art and animation. This will be posted on the day of the 20th anniversary – the exact day when I first saw my first Nutcracker ballet at the Canton Palace Theatre in Downtown Canton, Ohio, performed by Canton Ballet. If you don’t want to miss it, you can follow and subscribed to my blog, The Autistic Animator’s Desk to get notified any more of the latest new topics, from animation drawings, animation pencil tests, paintings, writing pieces, etc.

Let’s find out on how I came to work on this cute, little snowman painting in these steps down below here.

⛄ Snowman Painting 1 (Light Sketching the Whole Drawing) ⛄

The beginning of the project was first started during the Thanksgiving week, on a Sunday afternoon, on November 21st, just four days before hitting the main holiday. Though I didn’t want the actual outlines appearing in this painting, but the first thing I had to do was sketching the entire drawing.

I would use a pencil, and begin sketching in rough lines, but very lightly so that the pencil lines won’t be seen directly through the paint, even right after I have to erase the entire outlines. This was drawn on one of the pages from a 9 x 12 in. watercolor drawing pad. The first thing I had to sketch was the snowman, so that he will be standing in the center of the painting, next up were the animals, such as the squirrel and couple of birds, and then the winter wonderland background with snow on the bottom and the winter trees with ornaments on top.

The way I sketched the trees, you can see that it kind of makes you think of how you draw trees in a doodle or stick figure form, but it was important to draw those trees like that, not just because for the location where I want to put them, only because I wanted to draw and paint the trees to make them appear like large snowflakes, and I wanted to paint them in white. That way the main focus of the painting was to go on very colorful, but make it stylized at the same time, reminding you all like how you would see it in a Christmas card. Plus, I wanted the landscape to be very winter wonderland, and of course, it has to be all about snow, ice, and frost, but in a very beautiful way.

This was photographed on the same day, when I first started on the project.

⛄ Snowman Painting 2 (Coloring & Painting the Snowman, Squirrel, and Birds) ⛄

On the same day, right after I had just completed lightly sketching the whole artwork with the pencil, and then lightly erasing off the pencil outlines as I could, I can begin painting some parts of the painting in watercolor. This was done with my set of watercolor pencils, which allowed me to color the characters and backgrounds, and then painted it into a full watercolor medium, one at a time.

The first thing I started off were the snowman and the animals. The snowman was the first character to color, starting off with coloring the snow in four pencils mixed in four color combinations: blue, purple, gray, and white. The blue, purple, and gray, mixed with white, was very important part of coloring and painting the snowman, as well as for the snow background, which I will get to it later on in the next section, because it needed to have some basic shadows and details, and not just having to be all in white color, in order to make the painting appearing very realistic. Then, I would go on coloring the snowman’s bowler hat, using black and red; black for the eyes; dark brown for the arms and hands, made out of sticks; and emerald-green for the scarf. The ornaments hanging around each of the snowman’s stick arms were colored in crimson-red and emerald-green, which I would end up using for the ornaments hanging on the trees later on.

I colored and painted the squirrel in tan (light brown), and for the birds, I used crimson red for one bird on top of the snowman’s hat, and yellow for the second bird standing on the rock. These birds are cardinals, and cardinals are known to be Christmas birds, and they are famous to be seen in any of the beautiful Christmas paintings. Last year, I did two Christmas cardinal paintings in watercolor: one in black and white and the other in full color, and they were requested by my parents. My mom wanted the black and white, and my dad wanted the full color.

The snowman and animals were all painted in watercolor. Moving on to Thursday afternoon, on Thanksgiving, I went back to the painting to added the snowman’s mouth and buttons, including eyes for the animals, which I used the black sharpie pen for an easy touch. Both the snowman’s mouth and buttons were done with watercolor pencils and watercolor medium. When I first worked on painting the snowman, I didn’t add the mouth and buttons yet, because I wanted to painted the whole thing first, and then wait and putting the mouth and buttons, till the paint is dry. This is what I would call the easy steps in painting watercolor: just paint the main step first, wait till it dries, and then you can add more details to make the painting pop-out.

For the scarf, I went back to fix the shadows to darken a little bit more, and then drew the string lines on the bottom of the scarf, where you can see it in the painting there.

⛄ Snowman Painting 3 (Painting the First Half of Winter Background) ⛄

Now that both the snowman and animals are colored and painted in watercolor, as well as given features, such as the mouth and buttons for the snowman and eyes for the animals, the next step was working on painting the background. The first half of the background I began with was the snow on the bottom of the painting.

This was done on the same day as I was finishing up with painting the snowman and animals, which was Thanksgiving Day, on November 25th. It was during in the afternoon, and I thought I have time to go ahead and get started on painting the first half of the background before my mom and I can leave the house to go over to my grandmother’s for Thanksgiving. Just like the snowman, I used the very same colors to color and paint the snow, which was blue, purple, gray, and white. Along with it, I also used gray and black for the rock, where the yellow cardinal bird is standing on the right corner.

I first started off coloring the rock with gray and black watercolor pencils, and then, I would go on and colored the snow, but first, I began with scribbling shadows for the snow with mix of blue, purple, and gray altogether. Afterwards, I can take the white watercolor pencil, and colored the snow. And finally, whenever coloring was done, with much time I had, I painted the first half of the background. The rock was the first one to paint, so I can get that out of the way, and then, I would paint the snow, using a medium-sized paintbrush to paint the blue, purple, and gray mixed shadows, mixing with the white watercolor paint, that way the colors can make the shadows very detailed, beautifully. I would also use one of my small-tipped paintbrushes to paint some for the smaller details, like the shadows underneath the snowman and bits of snow laying on the rock.

Both of the second and third images were photographed on Thanksgiving Day, right after I have completed one part of the project to another at the end.

⛄ Snowman Painting 4 (Finishing the Rest of Winter Background) ⛄

With the first half of the background already painted and finished, it was time to finish the rest of it from up top, and that was the wintery blue sky, and three winter trees all decorated with red and green ornaments.

I went back to work on this project five days later, after celebrating Thanksgiving Day, and I just thought I go ahead and try finishing the painting. I end up working on the top part of the background from Tuesday morning to the afternoon, till that part was finished.

For the winter blue sky, the pencil I end up using was light blue, and I go from drawing the winter trees in the exact location for each, where I have sketched with the pencil, and then scribbling and coloring the sky. With the red and green ornaments, I would tend to draw and color them around each tree, while drawing the winter tree and coloring the sky at the same time. I must confess – I actually got started on coloring the red and green ornaments, right after I have finished painting the snow background.

Hopefully, if I can explain this very well, what I end up doing was coloring and paint half side of the sky and the ornaments, and then do the same thing for each side to another, starting from left to right.

Once that was finished, I took a white watercolor pencil, and colored and painted the winter trees for each. The focus on that was to make the trees very snowflake-like since it takes place in a winter wonderland, and the set has to look so wintery that everything has to look like it’s covered in lots and lots of snow. Another thing I added with the black sharpie pen was the hooks for the ornaments, and so, I drew little black lines for all of the ornaments, after painting the trees.

⛄ Snowman Painting 5 (Adding Snow Flurries and Complete) ⛄

Now for the last part of making this pretty Christmas painting, and that was adding snow! I took a bottle of white acrylic paint, dab the paintbrush to tip the brush, and go ahead and dab the paint all over the painting. If you noticed the yellow bird, I accidentally dab the paint onto the eyes, which you can see it in the image up here. But I was able to take a paper towel, and try my best to wipe the paint off, even though you can see bit of smudge there. You can still see its eyes a bit, but with bit of paint smudge. Sorry!

It was finished on November 30th – the last day of the month before moving on to the first day of December. It took me about a week to work on this painting through Thanksgiving week till the last day of the month, and so it was great.

I hope you all have enjoyed this painting, seeing the cute, little snowman with animal friends, enjoying a beautiful setting of the winter wonderland on this topic. I am looking forward for the next topic on sharing my story of my first Nutcracker ballet show, and the upcoming Harry Potter Christmas watercolor fan art this Christmas.

Take care and see you next time! Enjoy the wintery season! ❄

Link:

• Christmas Cardinals watercolor drawings (2 versions) (2020)