No paint brush? No problem! Use an ordinary pencil to create a beautiful painting of snow covered trees! This activity uses nothing but paint, a pencil, and some paper to create a pretty piece of art! It is appropriate for all age groups and is a quick and easy way to create out-of-the-box, imaginative artwork.
Supplies:
A dull or broken pencil
A piece of paper
Green, white, and brown acrylic paint
A Surface to put the paint on (I used a clipboard, but a plate or bowl could work as well)
Optional supplies:
Pink paint (to make flower trees instead of snowy trees)
Step 1:
To begin, pour out all three colors (green, white, and brown) onto your palette. If you don’t have brown paint (like I don’t), you can mix together orange and black!
If you wish to make flower trees instead of the snowy trees, replace the white paint with pink paint and follow all of the same steps unless instructed otherwise.
Step 2:
Next, we’re going to start painting our trees! In order to do this, cover the tip of your pencil with brown paint and drag it in a straight line down the page as shown. You may have to repeat this process several more times in order to create a completed line, which will cause it to look more like tree bark. This will form the trunk.
Next, create little offshoots from the trunk that stretch away from it in a diagonal line. This will form the branches. You can also create smaller offshoots from the branches to create even smaller branches. Repeat this process to create as many trees as you would like!
Step 3:
After the tree truck and branches are done, we will add the snow-covered leaves. To start, cover the eraser of the pencil in white paint and dab the paint near the end of the branches. To get the globs of paint off the eraser, I first deposited paint near all of the branch ends on the same tree as shown in the picture. After the eraser was mostly clean, I went back to the ends of the branches and
tapped around until the white dots were spread evenly.
Then, I went back in with some green paint on my eraser (cleaning it isn’t necessary) and put a small dot of paint in the center of the white dots. I then spread it around in the same manner, making sure that the green stayed in the center of the white dots without traveling outside of them. Acrylic paint dries pretty quickly, so I recommend working on one tree at a time instead of doing all of them at once!
If you wish to create flower trees instead, cover the eraser of the pencil in pink paint and dab the paint near the ends of the branches. Tap around until the pink paint is spread around the end of the branches. It is not necessary to add any green paint to the branches. It’ll look just like the picture when done, except for instead of being white and green, it’ll be pink!
Step 4:
After the trees are done, add snow around the trees by covering the eraser with white paint and tapping it around the top part of the paper. Be sure that the eraser doesn’t have any another color of paint left on it!
If you are creating flower trees, you can either skip this step entirely or add little dots of pink paint falling down from the branches to simulate falling petals. Depending on how big you want the petals to be, you can use either the eraser end or the writing end.
Step 5:
Next, cover the tip of your eraser with green paint and tap in a straight line under the bottom of the trees to give them some grass to stand on. You can also add white paint on the edges to add some snow.
After the trees have been given a base, add more green paint all around the bottom of the page underneath the tree bases and add in snow wherever you
would like!
If you are creating flower trees, do the same thing but without adding any white paint!