With your rinsed flat wash, load with a bit of white and proceed to lightly brush on the areas next to the previous red layers, making sure to blend as you do this. You can go back to previous colors to play with the layering. This will help complete the beautiful galaxy looking sky.
Beginner’s guide to painting a reindeer
Here is a super cute Christmas reindeer design that I have prepared especially for the holiday season!
The key to creating an animal design with a good placement is to look at the space you actually have available to paint on — it is not always necessary to fill the whole facial area with your design.
Sometimes, scaling down the size of the design, so that you can fit it in better with the features of your models face will give you a more correct and effective result.
Materials used:
- Paint pal luxe swirl #3
- Loew Cornell American painter angled brush 3/4
- Cameleon short blending brush #1
- I used a homemade one stroke for this, made from:
TAG skin color, beige
TAG gold
Global rose brown
Cameleon coffee brown - If you don’t want to make your own one stroke, then “Red fox” or “Tigress” from Natalee Davies will also look great
- Gold glitter
- DFX White
- DFX Black
Step 1: The Main Shape
First, I start by outlining the main shape of the design. If you are a confident painter you may find that you don´t need to do this, but I find it very helpful — especially when painting new designs.
For this reindeer face paint, it is important to place the eyes as far out on the sides as possible, as this is the way they are placed on a real deer.
Are you a beginner? Check out our Free Guide for Beginner Face Painter and learn where to start, what tools to buy and how to face paint many amazing popular designs!
Step 2: The White Areas
To continue with my reindeer face paint, I then move on to painting the main white areas, which is the muzzle area, the eyes and the inside of the ears. As you can see, I am not too accurate at this stage, with the exception of the area over the eyes.
The placement of the eye area is quite important for the symmetry and shape of the design – but as you will go over this area with your one stroke in the next step you will be able to blend the colors a bit more then.
Rudolph Acrylic Painting Supplies
- Tracing Paper
- Carbon Pencil
- Sketch Pencil
- 8″x10″ Canvas
Paints
- Red Acrylic Paint
- Yellow Acrylic Paint
- Blue Acrylic Paint
- Mars Black
- Titanium White
Brushes
- 3/4″ Flat Wash Brush
- #10 Filbert Brush
- #0 Detail Round Brush
Rudolph Acrylic Painting Steps
Follow these step-by-step instructions on how to paint your very own cute Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer face.
Want the Traceable Stencil?
If you want to get the full stencil for this painting, get the printable stencil here.
Step 1: Paint in Rudolph’s Fur
With your flat wash brush, mix together equal parts red and yellow with a bit of blue to create a brown color. This will be Rudolph’s fur. Then, using horizontal strokes, paint the entire canvas, leaving a 1″ horizontal strip about 1-2″ from the bottom of the canvas.
Step 2: Paint in the Collar
With your rinsed flat wash brush dipped in red, fill in the white strip towards the bottom of your canvas. This will serve as Rudolph’s collar.
Step 3: Paint in the Muzzle
With your filbert brush, mix your brown with white to create a very light brown. Then at the center of the canvas, create a 3-4″ square shape. Then add two triangles at the sides to represent Rudolph’s muzzle.
Step 4: Paint in the Red Nose
With your filbert brush dipped in red, paint a 3″ circle at the top middle of the muzzle to represent Rudolph’s big red nose.
Step 5: Paint in the Eyes
With a detail brush dipped in black, add two circles for Rudolph’s eyes and fill in.
Step 6: Paint in the Antlers
With your detail round brush, paint in the antlers. Start by creating a diagonal line and make some “branches” that shoot off either side of the center line, resembling a “Y” shape.
Step 7: Paint in the Mouth, Cheeks and Laugh Lines
With your detail round brush, paint a wide smile for Rudolph, making sure it extends from one eye to the other. I also added laugh lines under each of his eye bottoms for a more cheerful appearance.
To create the blushing cheeks, mix together red and white, load it onto your filbert brush, and lightly brush on the cheeks – I put the cheek color slightly off center from the eye bottoms.
Step 8: Paint in the Bells
With your filbert brush dipped in white, paint a series of 1″-2″ circles along Rudolph’s collar. I had mine spaced out 1/2″ apart.
Step 9: Paint in the Bell Details
With your detail round brush, add a diagonal line inside each of the bells. I added a dot at the ends of the lines to closely resemble the bell details.
Step 10: Paint in the Highlights and Ears
With your detail brush dipped in white, paint in Rudolph’s ears under each of the antlers. My technique was to make a rounded triangle (without the base) for the ears and a small squiggle inside the ear to represent the fur.
After that, add some highlights to Rudolph’s eyes and nose for an extra touch of holiday magic. You are officially done and have your very own cute Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer painting.
Christmas Reindeer Galaxy Sky | Easy Acrylic Painting Tutorial for Beginners
In this step-by-step tutorial, you’ll learn to paint a Christmas reindeer looking up into the snowy galaxy night sky using acrylic paints on canvas.
Disclaimer: some links used in this post are affiliate links, which means I’ll earn a small commission if you purchase using my links at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I think will be helpful to you and bring you one step closer to creating beautiful acrylic masterpieces!
Christmas Reindeer Galaxy Sky Painting Supplies
- 9″x12″ watercolor paper
- Palette, palette paper or plate for mixing paint
Brushes
- ¾” Flat Wash Brush
- #10 Filbert Brush
- #10 Flat Brush
- #0 Detail Round
Paints
- Mars Black Acrylic Paint
- Primary Blue
- Primary Red
- Titanium White Acrylic Paint
Christmas Reindeer Galaxy Sky Painting Steps
Follow these step-by-step instructions on how to paint your very own painting of Christmas reindeer looking up into the galaxy winter sky.
Want this Reindeer Stencil?
If you want the stencil that goes along with this tutorial, just click here to get it.
Step 1: Paint in the Galaxy Sky
With your flat wash brush, load it with blue and a tiny bit of black. Then, using diagonal strokes, paint in the upper 2/3 of your canvas, making sure to leave the bottom third white for the later.
With your rinsed flat wash, load with red and add several paint strokes in the same direction as the previous step, making sure to blend the red into the adjoining blue areas.
Not sure how to blend with acrylics? Follow this step by step guide to blend like a pro.
With your rinsed flat wash, load with a bit of white and proceed to lightly brush on the areas next to the previous red layers, making sure to blend as you do this. You can go back to previous colors to play with the layering. This will help complete the beautiful galaxy looking sky.
Step 2: Add in the snow flurries
With your flat wash brush, load it with white paint that has been heavily diluted with water. Then, pull back the bristles with your finger and release over the canvas to create a splatter effect resembling tiny dots. This represents either the snow flurries or the stars in the galaxy sky. Repeat this to create more stars if you wish.
Step 3: Add in the Snowy Hills
With your filbert brush, load with white paint and paint in the lower third of the canvas, making sure to cover over the area where the galaxy sky meets the ground. I decided to make the hill have some curves for a more natural look.
In addition, I added bigger snowflakes by using the stick end of one of my brushes dipped in white paint. Simply dip the tip into the paint and then tap it gently on your canvas to leave a small circle. Experiment with different size brush wood tips for varying snow flake sizes – i.e. a smaller brush stick will make smaller snowflakes.
Step 4: Add in the Pine Trees
With your flat brush, it’s time to make pine trees. Load white onto your flat brush, orient the brush tip so it’s aligned vertically and using just the tip, paint a 4″-5″ straight line, starting from the left side of the hill. You just made the trunk of your first pine tree!
Then, to make the pine tree itself, orient your brush horizontally and starting at the top of the tree trunk, tap your brush tip increasing the size of the stroke as you go down the length of the tree. You want to make sure your tree resembles a triangle in shape, small at the top and larger on the bottom.
I chose to make my pine tree trunks have a taller trunk, for a more modern look. You can add more pine needles to your tree if you want a fuller look.
Repeat this step to create lots of different pine trees all at varying heights. I decided to paint in four trees.
Step 5: Add in the reindeer
Using your reindeer stencil, place and trace onto your canvas paper. If you need directions on how to do this, read this helpful post on transferring stencils to paper.
Step 6: Color block the reindeer
Using whatever brush you feel comfortable with, load with white paint and paint in the body and antlers of your reindeer, being sure to move to a detail brush for the smaller, difficult areas like the antlers.
Step 7: Add final details
Then, proceed to add a few little details, like extra snowflakes or stars. From there, you have officially completed your very own reindeer gazing at the snowy galaxy sky painting.
