Painting Christmas Elves

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This is essentially a follow-up lesson to my zombie painting tutorial. Both zombies and elves are based on the human figure but in both cases it doesn’t matter if the proportions aren’t precise because they are, after all, fictional entities. This relieves students of the pressure to be precise and (hopefully) free up their creativity.
The artistic aim was to paint an elf. The educational aim was to further raise awareness of the human form, practise mixing colours and think about highlighting and shadow.

This is a basic walk through of the elf-painting process using chalk and acrylic paint on ordinary white paper.

The materials and my model of the painting process.

Stage 1

Draw the elf in chalk. This doesn’t need to be particularly precise.

Stage 2

Paint the parts that are behind other parts. For example, the elf’s face is UNDER his hat; his hands are UNDER his sleeves; and this elf’s boots are UNDER his trousers. Notice how the colour is much darker where these elements will meet the ones that I am going to paint on top.

Stage 3

This elf is complete apart from a few details. Notice how the eyes are dark ready to have eyeballs painted on top. Another thing to notice is that the colours are not uniform and are darker where clothing over and under the chin, arms and feet which would ordinarily be in shadow.

Stage 4

Go ahead an paint the details on your elf now 🙂

The Results




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