Person's hand holding a paint brush painting a white card with a pine cone and leaves next to a paint pallet and bowl with paint

Festive Pine Cone Cards Tutorial with Natural Earth Paint

As the weather gets colder and the holiday season begins, you may find yourself spending extra time indoors with more time off than usual. To beat the winter blues and brighten someone's day, try our eco-friendly pine cone card tutorial, featuring our Earth & Mineral Pigments!

Supplies:

Blank piece of white paper surrounded by Earth & Mineral pigments, a paint pallet with various colors of paint and a palette knife

Step 1: Mix a small amount of each Earth & Mineral Pigment color with the natural paint binder of choice to make enough paint for the design. We used our Natural Gouache Paint recipe for this tutorial, but you can also use our Natural Acrylic Medium, Natural Watercolor Paint, or Egg Tempera Paint.

Person's hand holding a pencil and drawing out the shapes of leaves and pinecones on the white piece of paper they are going to paint.

Step 2: Lightly sketch out your pine cone design, complete with pine cones, pine needles, leaves, and berries. You can also skip this step and take the freeform painting route if you like.

Person's hand holding a paint brush that has been dipped in the blue paint in the palette and bringing it into an empty bowl

Step 3: Mix up a brown shade for your pine cone painting. We started with Ultramarine Blue...

Person is now adding Venetian Red to their Ultramarine Blue with the paint brush in the white bowl

 

...Added some Venetian Red to the mix...

Finally they added some Orange Ochre to the white dish to create a warm brown and now their hand holding the paint brush is getting ready to apply paint to the white card

 

Step 4: ...and finally mixed in some Orange Ochre for the perfect warm-brown shade to create the underpainting for the pine cone. Add a small amount of water to your paint to keep the underpainting light. 

The artist is now using Emerald Green to apply color to some of the leaves that they drew in pencil on the white card

 

Step 5: Paint in the leaves in your design with some Emerald Green. 

The artist has added some Orange Ochre their the Emerald Green to achieve a warmer shade of green for some of the other leaves.

 

Step 6: For the pine needles, add a bit of Orange Ochre to your Emerald Green paint for a slightly warmer green shade and paint away. You make want to use a thinner paint brush for this step to get more precise detail. 

The artist is now adding in some darker shades of brown on top of the pinecone

Step 7: To add details to the pine cone, paint small strokes over the underpainting you created earlier with your undiluted warm brown paint. 

The artist is now adding a greenish-brown to a different set of pine needles.

Step 8: Add even more Orange Ochre to your warm green shade to paint your additional pine needles. 

To finish it off, the artist is adding some red berries to the branches to using Venetian Red

Step 9: Add some bright berries to your design with Venetian Red paint. 

Step 10: Paint in some outlines with your Natural Gold Mica paint wherever you feel like your design needs a little extra shine. We're loving the green-and-gold combo on the leaves!

Step 11 (optional): Add any additional details to your pine cone painting. We added some lines and texture to the design with natural ink, but you can finish your painting any way you like. Happy holidays!

 

Interested in more crafts featuring Natural Earth Paint products? Visit our Nature Crafts DIY page!
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