Sweet Gingerbread Designs + Tips on Painting Gingerbread

Start with a base color like Raw Sienna…
this can be regular Raw Sienna,
or a color with a designer name such as Honey Brown.

I like to shade with browns like Burnt Sienna & Burnt Umber, usually layering the two, then add some of touches of darker shading with Raw Umber.

Drybrush highlights with Raw Sienna + White + a touch of yellow.
Use a round sable or dome blender to drybrush (the brush needs to be perfectly dry), load a little paint on the tip and swirl in a circle on your palette to distribute the paint evenly, repeat swirl on a paper towel to be sure you don’t have any paint clumps, then swirl in a circle on your gingerbread starting in the middle of the area you want to highlight and work out to the edges softening the pressure and amount of paint so it blends out evenly. It’s better to start with very little paint and keep repeating until you build up your color.

Drybrush cheeks with Red + a little White and if you need to warm it up more,
add just a touch of Yellow (this will give you a nice coral color that is good for cheeks). Follow the same method of drybrushing as explained above.

If you have ued other colors in your design, I like to float a little of these colors on my gingers to bring the design “together”. You just want to add little touches in the shading or highlighting.

Icing is the finishing touch on gingers. You can line your icing with a White color, but recently I’ve been using DecoArt SnowWriters for dimensional icing, which gives them a really special touch. If you like a little bit of BLiNG, when the icing is dry, paint on a little Glamour Dust Glitter Paint – Crystal over the icing using a liner brush.