Christmas holly

Christmas Holly

Choosing a festive specimen to paint botanically can make for a wonderful Christmas card, or even a gift for a loved one. In this lesson, I'll be showing you how to approach painting a sprig of holly.

Tips for Painting Christmas Holly

• Select a specimen that has a pleasing shape, really spiky leaves, and that you're able to lay in a nice composition you can paint.
• When drawing the leaves, first sketch the midrib and then each side of the leaf. Don't worry too much about it looking like a leaf, just draw the shape you can see.
• Holly leaves are exceptionally shiny - this can be represented by contrasting the white of the shine with a really dark green.
• You often get pops of red reflected in the leaves, and this is a great detail to add in to make your painting feel even more realistic.
• Red can overlay the dark green to create beautifully dramatic areas of almost black in the darkest sections of the leaves.
• Introducing subtle hints of Cerulean Blue is a great way to intensify and accentuate the white shine.
• Try using a touch of green to create the shadows on the underside of the berries.
• You can also use red to add depth to the stalk.

What You Will Need

• Paper
• Pencil
• A sprig of holly
• Putty rubber
• Divider
• Acrylic brushes in size 3
• I use the Da Vinci Nova 5570
• Slightly old and worn out brushes for mixing paint colours
• Jar of water
• Watercolour paints
• I am using Prussian Blue, Aureolin Yellow, Permanent Alizarin Crimson and Cerulean Blue, all from the Winsor & Newton Professional watercolour range in the half-pan size.
• Ceramic palette
• Kitchen towel