Hello, Steemit!

In Instagram I found a contest of Christmas cards with rare species of animals. I decided to participate, as I had not previously dealt with postcards.
The first animal that I chose from the list is the Amur tiger. I wanted to work with different art materials and have time to make at least two or three postcards. This time I stopped on oil paints. I took very thick cotton paper as a base.

      The difficulty of working with oil paints on paper is that, at the first stage, the paper needs to be thoroughly saturated with paint to make the picture bright and clear.

Initially, I thought up the plot of the postcard and sketched the outlines in pencil.

Began to squeeze the paper with paint. For the background, I chose ultramarine, wanting to show New Year's Eve. For snow mixed ultramarine with titanium white.

Moved to the central figure - tiger. Since at this stage the details are not particularly important, I applied wide shaping strokes that imitate the hair of the animal. For the color I used gold ocher, Indian yellow paint and a mixture of white and burned umber.
Also, the spruce branch on top of the picture was painted over with emerald paint and with the main colors I drew a Christmas ball and gifts.

When the paint was absorbed into the paper and dried, it turned to detailing.
I drew with fine brush more and more details on the picture, added a silver Christmas ball and details on gift boxes.

At the final stage, I maximally enhanced the detailing, added contrast by means of shadows. Added light highlights on the Christmas balls, tiger hairs. Drew stars in the sky, falling flakes of snow. Added greeting inscription on top of postcard. In the background, painted the outlines of the forest. I drew shadows on the snow, gave a loose texture to the snowdrifts. My postcard is ready.

Thank you for attention!

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