Christmas Painting Ideas for Beginners

Christmas is the one time of year when a painting has a deadline. You want it dry and on the wall before people arrive, or wrapped and under the tree.

That makes the subject matter more than usual. Some Christmas scenes are kind to a first-time painter. Others are full of tiny lights, dark windows and reflections that will still be half done in February.

Here is what makes a festive subject easy, ten scenes worth painting, and how to tell whether you have time.

What makes a Christmas subject easy to paint

Four things decide how hard a Christmas canvas will be. None of them is how pretty it looks in the photo.

Big shapes first. A wreath, a door, a snowy field and a plain sky are large areas you can fill in a few strokes. A string of fairy lights across a dark porch is a hundred small ones.

Then the split between light and dark. Squint at the picture. If you can still tell where everything is, the design has edges you can follow. Night scenes with a lot of dim detail are the hard end.

Then the colors. Red berries, green needles, white snow and one warm window are four nobody can confuse. Six shades of gray blue in a twilight sky are a different kind of evening.

And snow. A white or faintly blue field is the most forgiving area in any winter painting. It is large, it is simple, and it makes whatever you put beside it look brighter.

There is a fifth thing that is not about the picture at all. Our canvases come lightly tinted, so each shape is printed in a soft version of the color it will become, never bare white. On a Christmas scene that matters twice over, because the numbers stay readable in evening lamplight and a sliver you miss in the snow is already close to the right shade.

If you would rather have the picking done for you, our beginner collection is sorted on exactly those grounds.

Ten Christmas scenes worth painting

All ten are in our Christmas collection, and they run roughly from the easiest evening to the longest. If none of them is quite right, the same ideas apply to anything in the full catalog.

1. A cardinal in fresh snow

A red bird on white is as simple as a Christmas subject gets. The snow is one big area, the bird is a handful of clear shapes, and the red does all the work without any help from you.

It is a good first canvas for anyone who has never painted. It is also the fastest way to get something festive on the wall.

2. A wreath on a plain door

A wreath is a ring of repeated shapes. Once you have painted four or five needles and a couple of berries you know how the rest will go, and the hand settles into it.

The plain background behind it is the reason this one is easy. There is nothing competing with the subject, so a stray brush mark has nowhere to hide and nothing to spoil.

3. Poinsettias in a pitcher

Flowers forgive a shaky hand. A petal is slightly the wrong shape and it still reads as a petal, which is not true of a face or a window frame.

Poinsettia leaves are wide and flat, so you get large red areas instead of fiddly ones. The pitcher gives you a little white and gray to break it up.

4. A front door with the lamp on

A lit doorway is the warmest Christmas subject there is, and it is mostly made of straight lines and flat panels.

The one tricky part is the glow around the light. Paint the dark areas around it first and leave the pale shapes until last, so the light looks like it is coming from somewhere and not pasted on.

5. Ornaments on a table

A still life keeps everything close to you. No distance, no sky, no weather. Just round things on a surface, which means smooth curves and clean highlights.

You paint a shiny ornament as a set of flat shapes. Each reflection is already drawn out as its own numbered area, so you fill it in and the shine turns up by itself.

6. A deer beside the treeline

One animal against snow is a reliable subject. The background is simple, the animal is the only place with detail, and you can take your time on it.

Fur looks hard and is not. The design breaks it into bands of light and dark that you paint one at a time, and the texture appears once they sit next to each other.

7. A cat up to no good in the tree

A pet in the decorations suits a numbered canvas well. An animal has clear edges to follow, and the tree behind it can be as loose as you like.

Save the eyes and the nose for a session when you are fresh. They are small, they are the part people look at, and they are more fun when your hand already knows the brush.

8. A lane of snow-covered pines

A lane pulls the eye into the picture, which makes a simple scene feel like more than it is. Snow, trees, a track and a sky is four big areas and not much else.

Work from the top of the canvas down so your hand rests on dry paint. Trees are the one place where small shapes gather, so leave the needles until the snow is done.

9. The tree on Christmas morning

This is the scene most people picture when they think of a Christmas painting, and it is a step up. A tree is hundreds of small shapes, the presents underneath are lots of different colors, and the lights need care.

It is worth the extra evenings. Paint the wall and the floor first to get the bulk covered, then the tree, then the lights last.

10. A whole village under snow

A village is the long project of the ten. Rooftops, windows, lamps, figures and a lot of small warm squares of light. Every one of them is tiny.

Pick it if you like the slow kind of evening and the date does not matter. Pick something else if it has to be finished by the twenty-fourth.

If you do take one on, start with the sky and the snow, then do all the roofs, then all the walls, then the windows. Finish one surface across the whole canvas before you move on. That keeps you in a single pot for longer and stops the thing feeling endless.

Colors that still look right after the decorations come down

Red and green read as Christmas and nothing else. That is lovely in December and a bit loud by March, and a painting you spent three weeks on deserves longer than three weeks on the wall.

If you want it to stay up, pick a winter palette instead of a festive one. White, gray blue, pine green, bare wood and one small warm light will hang happily in February.

The other way round works too. Keep the red and the gold, and keep the painting with the decorations. Bring it out each year with the boxes, which is its own small pleasure.

Either choice is fine. Make it on purpose rather than finding out in January.

One thing worth checking before you order is the room it will hang in. A warm red and gold painting sits well on a cream or wood-toned wall and fights a cool gray one. A snow scene does the reverse. Hold the product photo up on your phone against the actual wall for ten seconds, which is a dull piece of advice that saves a lot of regret.

Finishing in time to hang it or give it

Work backwards from the day you need it.

A simple design with big open shapes takes several evenings of an hour or two. A busy one takes a few weeks of relaxed sittings. Then add a full day of drying before you hang it, and longer if you want to varnish it.

Our kits ship in six to ten business days, so an order placed in the first week of December still leaves room to paint, dry and wrap. Later than that and the honest answer is to treat it as a January project, and give something else on the day.

If you are short of time, the two things that help most are a larger canvas and a simpler subject. Roomier shapes paint faster than small ones, even though there is more canvas to cover.

There is a second route worth knowing. Order the framed option and the canvas turns up on a wooden stretcher, flat and ready to paint, which saves the night under heavy books that a rolled canvas needs first. On a tight calendar that one night matters, and it also means the painting can go on the wall the day it dries, with no frame to sort out.

And if the date is the problem rather than the painting, there is nothing wrong with wrapping the kit itself. A box with a canvas and the paints in it is a perfectly good thing to open, and the person who gets it chooses their own evenings.

Questions people ask about Christmas painting

Can a Christmas canvas be done in a week?

A simple one, yes, if you sit down with it most evenings. A village or a tree scene, no. Pick a single subject on a plain background if the week is all you have.

Should a first-time painter avoid festive designs?

No, as long as you choose the right one. A cardinal, a wreath or a still life is as easy as anything else we sell. It is the night scenes full of small lights that catch people out.

Classic or Large for a festive design?

The larger one, if the design has any detail in it. Classic is 12 by 16 inches and Large is 16 by 20 inches, and the bigger canvas gives every shape more room. Lit windows, figures and tree lights all survive better at 16 by 20, and they are faster to paint there too.

Can I paint my own Christmas photo?

Yes. Send a picture and it comes back as a custom kit with its own numbered canvas and matched paints. Bright, sharp photos work best, and indoor shots taken by lamplight are the hardest to use.

Do I need to varnish it before it goes on the wall?

No. Varnish evens out the finish and protects the surface, and plenty of people skip it. If you do want to varnish, let the paint dry fully first and test a corner.

What do I do if I cannot finish before Christmas?

Leave it set up and keep going into January. Nothing about the canvas or the paint cares what the date is, and the middle of winter is the best stretch of the year for a quiet hour at the table.

Pick the one you want to look at

The easiest design is the one you actually want finished. Wanting to see it done is what gets you through the dull middle stretch, and no amount of big simple shapes makes up for a picture you picked because it looked quick.

If you are starting from nothing, our beginners guide walks through the first canvas in order, from setting up the table to hanging the finished painting.