Santa Painting Tutorial Ideas: Creative And Magical Holiday Fun!

Get Your Ho-Ho-Holly Jolly on with a Santa Claus Painting!

Get ready to create your own holiday magic with these Santa painting tutorial ideas!

In this article, I have three St. Nick step-by-step acrylic painting video recommendations for you! Each one focuses on Santa from a different perspective and all three will teach you a ton of techniques you can use for future paintings. I’ve even included extra tips for each Santa painting tutorial to help guide you through the process.

Ready to create a painting that is sure to become a cherished holiday decoration for years to come? Let’s go!

Best St. Nick Painting Tutorial For First Time Painters

If you’re new to acrylic painting and are someone who enjoys stretching their creative muscle during the holiday season, let me suggest this awesome and really easy Santa painting tutorial by The Art Sherpa.

This is the perfect step-by-step Santa painting video if you don’t want to deal with the fine details of painting Santa’s face. In this tutorial, you’ll paint St. Nick from a unique angle and there’s enough space to make this painting into a cute Christmas sign with your favorite holiday quote! If you’d like some ideas on fonts to use for your quote, and how to download them to your computer, check out my article “How to Paint a Christmas Card”.

Painting Skills You’ll Learn

• How to make Santa’s red suit pop against a red wall
• How to add dimension to fabric
• How to paint a Christmas gift with a bow
• Learn a technique that makes acrylic paint look like oil on Santa’s hat and coat

H3: Extra Santa Painting Tips

• If you decide to paint your background a different color, you’ll need a cool tone and a warm tone, in the same paint color, that play well together when mixed together and also get along with whatever black you’re using (experiment first!)
• Don’t be afraid to add your own flair to this Santa painting
  • Add a Christmas tree
  • Add stockings and lights to the wall
  • Paint a fireplace
  • Add a darkened doorway
• Use a light hand when trying to blend the paint
• Seeing brush strokes in your finished painting is a good thing! This painting is meant to be filled with texture and brush strokes really help with that

Easy Landscape Painting Step-by-Step Featuring Santa and His Sleigh

Next up, we’ve got a wonderful nighttime snowy landscape painting featuring Santa on his yearly trip. In Michelle the Painter’s “Here Comes Santa” painting tutorial, you’ll use a limited color palette and only a couple of brushes. You’ll also find a link to a free download of the finished painting, in the description box below her video, that you can use as a reference photo.

Painting Skills You’ll Practice

• How to blend your paint right on the canvas
• How to paint moon glow
• A unique way to paint trees
• How to paint an easy silhouette of Santa on his sleigh with reindeer galloping across the moonlit sky

Extra Tips for a Successful Santa Landscape Painting

• If you would prefer to make the water part of the painting into a field, use the technique she shows you when painting the foreground but use lighter colors since the snow would be pretty bright because of the moonlight
• If you’re having trouble with painting Santa’s sleigh and reindeer, take a look at these free downloadable images that you can use as a reference or print and use as a traceable

Gorgeous Santa Portrait Painting Tutorial

This Santa painting tutorial, “Learn to Paint Santa Claus Portrait” by Angela Anderson, focuses on Santa’s face and everything that goes into making him look like the jolly ol’ St. Nick you’re used to seeing during the holiday season. 

Although this is a long video, don’t let that scare you off! Portrait painting is all about light, shadow, and lots of layers.

Painting Techniques Covered

• Learn lots of color mixing
• Learn skin tones, including Santa’s rosy cheeks
• How to paint Santa’s eyes with a bright twinkle and lots of smile lines
• How to easily paint Santa’s mouth
• Creating texture in the hat cuff and pom-pom
• Painting a super easy nose
• How to use shading to create folds in Santa’s hat

Helpful Tips to Simplify Kris Kringle’s Portrait

• When you are blending by using the wet in wet technique, you want to use enough paint so it won’t dry too quickly but not gobs of paint
• If you have a blending medium, this would be a great painting tutorial to practice using it
• There is no free traceable for this Santa painting tutorial but Angela does explain how she goes about sketching Santa’s face
• Remember, you’ll be painting over the sketch of Santa’s face so don’t get too wrapped up in the details
• You are only sketching out a guide of shapes on the face so you really only need to focus on proportions (where to put the eyes in relation to the full head, where to put the nose in relation to the eyes, etc.)
• If you are still having trouble sketching the face, take a look at this tutorial that shows you how to draw a face
• Make this painting your own by painting the background in whatever color fits in with your holiday décor
• The holly and the snow that Angela adds near the end of the video are bonuses and not really necessary. You’ll have an amazing Santa portrait without the extras
• This would make a wonderful Christmas card
• I think it would be funny to frame Santa’s Portrait and add it in with your family photo gallery (What, Santa? Oh, yeah, we’re closely related….haha!)

Final Word on Painting Santa

The best part of following along with a Santa painting tutorial is that it’s like the adult version of coloring a Santa picture in the days before the Christmas break begins, when you were a kid. It brings up old feelings of excitement and the belief in magic that only Santa Claus can inspire.

Any one of these painting recommendations of the jolly big guy would make lovely Christmas cards or gifts. Plus, you’ll learn a ton of skills that will be super helpful down the road. Have fun!

How Would You Incorporate One of These Santa Paintings Into Your Holiday Décor?

More Articles Related to Holiday Paintings

• Paint a Santa Gnome
• Find More Free Santa Images
• Paint a Snowy Landscape
• Paint a Snowman
• Paint a Decked-Out Christmas Tree

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