This gingerbread house painting uses oil pastels and watercolors and is a great Christmas art project for older kids and tweens to make! Kids can add their own special touches to their paintings making each one unique.
If you are looking for more Christmas projects for kids to make take a look at our collection of creative Christmas arts and crafts for more fun ideas!
This art project uses a watercolor resist technique that we have used many times before! Take a look at this watercolor Christmas tree that uses colored oil pastels and this reindeer painting that uses white oil pastels as a resist.
Create your own gingerbread house painting
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Supplies
- Watercolor paper
- Watercolor paint
- Oil pastels
- Paintbrushes
- Paint palette and water dish
- Painters tape and wooden board (optional)
- Pencil and eraser
Instructions for your gingerbread house art project
1. First, take your watercolor paper and tape it down to a wooden board using painters tape. This helps to keep the paper from buckling as you paint and helps the paper to dry nice and flat.
If you don’t have a board to tape your paper down to, you can skip this step.
Draw a dot in the middle of your paper where you want the top of the roof to be and then draw two lines for the roof. Add in the sides of the house.
Draw the snow drips coming off of the roof. Add in a door and windows on either side.
Use a small plastic lid or paint bottle to trace three circles above the door and windows for the wreath and candies.
Kids can draw a tree, lollipop, or even candy canes as decoration around the house.
Finish off your drawing by adding in the gumdrops and any other special touches kids want to draw in.
2. If the drawing of the gingerbread house is too dark, use an eraser to lighten the pencil lines up a bit. This way the pencil lines won’t show through the oil pastel.
Using a white oil pastel, draw snowflakes in the sky, outline the roof and color in the snow drips, and trace over the lollipop stick and the swirl lines.
Remind kids to press hard with the oil pastel to ensure the best results when painting over with watercolors.
3. Paint over the sky with clean water. Remind kids to be careful not to paint inside the house, tree, lollipop, or gumdrops.
While the paper is still wet, use blue watercolor paint to paint the sky, being careful not to paint inside the house, the tree, or over the gumdrops.
This technique is called a wet on wet technique, for more details on this type of painting take a look at these 5 easy watercolor techniques for kids.
Let everything dry completely before moving on to the next step.
4. Use white oil pastel to go over some more details on the gingerbread house. Trace over the door and draw in stripes for the candy cane details.
Trace around the windows, draw around the two circles above the window and add in the candy details. You can follow my example for the red and white candies, make them striped for a candy cane look, or turn them into lollipops.
5. Paint the gingerbread house with light brown watercolor paint, being careful not to paint inside the windows, circles and the door.
6. Let kids choose the color to paint in the lollipop and paint the tree with green and brown paint.
7. Paint inside the windows with yellow paint. Then paint around the door with red paint to add a candy cane detail or any colors that you choose and finish off the two circles above the windows.
8. Choose a color for the door and paint the door. Let everything dry completely.
Use oil pastel to add a small door handle to the door once the paint is dry.
9. Use green and red oil pastels to draw in the wreath above the door.
10. Choose a few oil pastel colors to color in the gumdrops at the bottom of the painting.
I love how this gingerbread house painting turned out! Using oil pastels as a resist technique and to add in details really helps to make this art project extra colorful!
More Christmas art projects kids will love
Easy Watercolor Christmas Cards for Kids to Make
Mixed Media Christmas Tree Art Project
Follow me on Pinterest for more amazing project ideas.
Pin this art project for later
How to Make a Gingerbread House Painting
Use watercolors & oil pastels to create this gingerbread house painting! A great Christmas art project for kids with a step by step tutorial.
Materials
- Watercolor paper
- Watercolor paint
- Oil pastels
- Painters tape (optional)
- Pencil and eraser
Tools
- Paintbrushes
- Paint palette and water dish
- Wooden board (optional)
Instructions
- Tape your watercolor paper to a wooden board using painters tape. This is an optional step but it does help to keep the paper from buckling as it dries.
Start by drawing out your gingerbread house scene with a pencil. Draw the roof first, and then the sides of the house.
Draw in the snow drips on the roof.
Add in the windows, door, and candy details above the window and a circle for where the wreath will go above the door. Using a small plastic lid or paint bottle works well for a circle template.
Have kids draw in a tree and lollipop on either side of the house.
Finish the drawing off by drawing in the gumdrops at the bottom. Use the photo example above to help with your drawing. - Use white oil pastel to draw snowflakes in the sky, trace over the roof, and color inside the snow drips.
Draw over the lollipop stick and swirl lines with white oil pastel. - Paint the sky with clean water first, being careful not to paint inside the house, the tree, lollipop, or gumdrops.
While the paper is still wet, paint the sky with blue watercolor paint, carefully painting around all the items that are not going to be painted blue.
Let the paint dry completely. - Use white oil pastel to trace over some of your pencil lines inside the house. Trace around the windows, draw around the two circles above the window, and add in the candy cane details around the door.
- Paint the gingerbread house with light brown watercolor paint, being careful not to paint inside the windows, circles, and the door.
- Use watercolor paint to paint inside the lollipop and the tree.
- Paint inside the windows with yellow paint and paint the detail around the door.
Paint the candy circles above the windows. - Have kids choose a color for the door and paint the door. Let everything dry completely.
Use oil pastel to draw a small door handle on the door. - Use green and red oil pastels to draw in the wreath above the door.
- Color in the gumdrops at the bottom of the painting with colorful oil pastels.
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