Next use any brush to paint the red stripes on the door trim and the chimney (I used my #5). The exact color of red I used was cadmium red medium.
How To Paint A Gingerbread House
Learn how to paint a Gingerbread House with acrylic paints on canvas. This was so much fun to paint! I’ve been wanting to do a gingerbread house painting for awhile now and finally put a tutorial together for it. This tutorial will guide you through the steps of how I did this painting but it’s certainly open for a lot of customization!
This is a fun Christmas Canvas Painting you can do with your kids as well. I provide a traceable so you don’t have to worry about drawing the house. Think of all the creative possibilities and types of candies you can add to this design!
Enjoy and happy painting!
- Canvas 11″ x 14″
- Acrylic Paint
- Cadmium Red Medium
- Cadmium Yellow Medium
- Light Green Permanent
- Hooker’s Green
- Primary Blue
- Light Blue Permanent
- Mars Black
- Titanium White
- Raw Sienna
- Burnt Umber
- Brushes (I am using the Royal & Langnickel Zen Brushes)
- 3/4″ Flat (or any large size wash brush)
- #4 Bright
- #5 Round (or 4 or 6 if you can’t find 5)
- #10/0 Liner
- Traceable
- Graphite Paper
Download Traceable Here
You’ll need a large wash brush (I used a 3/4″) and the colors light blue permanent and titanium white. Double load the brush and paint long up and down strokes. Let the colors blend on the canvas without blending all the way together so that it looks “icy” in the sky.
Create your own gingerbread house painting
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Supplies
- Watercolor paper
- Watercolor paint
- Oil pastels
- Paintbrushes
- Paint palette and water dish
- Painters tape and wooden board (optional)
- Pencil and eraser
Instructions for your gingerbread house art project
1. First, take your watercolor paper and tape it down to a wooden board using painters tape. This helps to keep the paper from buckling as you paint and helps the paper to dry nice and flat.
If you don’t have a board to tape your paper down to, you can skip this step.
Draw a dot in the middle of your paper where you want the top of the roof to be and then draw two lines for the roof. Add in the sides of the house.
Draw the snow drips coming off of the roof. Add in a door and windows on either side.
Use a small plastic lid or paint bottle to trace three circles above the door and windows for the wreath and candies.
Kids can draw a tree, lollipop, or even candy canes as decoration around the house.
Finish off your drawing by adding in the gumdrops and any other special touches kids want to draw in.
2. If the drawing of the gingerbread house is too dark, use an eraser to lighten the pencil lines up a bit. This way the pencil lines won’t show through the oil pastel.
Using a white oil pastel, draw snowflakes in the sky, outline the roof and color in the snow drips, and trace over the lollipop stick and the swirl lines.
Remind kids to press hard with the oil pastel to ensure the best results when painting over with watercolors.
3. Paint over the sky with clean water. Remind kids to be careful not to paint inside the house, tree, lollipop, or gumdrops.
While the paper is still wet, use blue watercolor paint to paint the sky, being careful not to paint inside the house, the tree, or over the gumdrops.
This technique is called a wet on wet technique, for more details on this type of painting take a look at these 5 easy watercolor techniques for kids.
Let everything dry completely before moving on to the next step.
4. Use white oil pastel to go over some more details on the gingerbread house. Trace over the door and draw in stripes for the candy cane details.
Trace around the windows, draw around the two circles above the window and add in the candy details. You can follow my example for the red and white candies, make them striped for a candy cane look, or turn them into lollipops.
5. Paint the gingerbread house with light brown watercolor paint, being careful not to paint inside the windows, circles and the door.
6. Let kids choose the color to paint in the lollipop and paint the tree with green and brown paint.
7. Paint inside the windows with yellow paint. Then paint around the door with red paint to add a candy cane detail or any colors that you choose and finish off the two circles above the windows.
8. Choose a color for the door and paint the door. Let everything dry completely.
Use oil pastel to add a small door handle to the door once the paint is dry.
9. Use green and red oil pastels to draw in the wreath above the door.
10. Choose a few oil pastel colors to color in the gumdrops at the bottom of the painting.
I love how this gingerbread house painting turned out! Using oil pastels as a resist technique and to add in details really helps to make this art project extra colorful!
There are so many fun watercolor techniques for kids to try! Take a look at my collection of watercolor painting for kids for more fun and creative ideas.
More Christmas art projects kids will love
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Pin this art project for later
Yield: 1 gingerbread house painting
How to Make a Gingerbread House Painting
Use watercolors & oil pastels to create this gingerbread house painting! A great Christmas art project for kids with a step by step tutorial.
Prep Time 5 minutes
Active Time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 5 minutes
Difficulty Medium
