Reindeer Against the Watercolor Northern Lights Sky

This craft uses a watercolor background I made in a  Simple Craft: Little House in a Watercolor Aurora Borealis which has all the details.

Watercolor Craft: Little Igloo Under the Northern Lights is also a follow up from the Little House but is more similar to the reindeer craft here in that it has only two cut out pieces in the foreground.

Here's the background I chose for the reindeer.

Watercolor northern lights for a background

Then I cut out some snow and sketched a reindeer and cut it out too.

Here's the parts all put together, just glue them all on

Reindeer in the snow for the foreground

I got the idea of this particular reindeer from an old Reader's Digest I had in my cabinet near the Alaska postcards. On page 108 of Dec 2010/Jan 2011 is a picture of reindeer as an introduction to the article "Reindeer Country." I liked the sweet face of the reindeer closest to the camera and tried to sketch it, but the picture cut off part of it's body and I had to use my imagination. So I went on a hunt for children's books with good reindeer pictures.

The best I found is Ted Lewin's The Reindeer People (1994). His illustrations are from his paintings.

I also found a nice picture of "Santa Claus and his reindeer" on page 62 of Culture of the World: Sweden by Delice Gan and Leslie Jermyn (2003).

So if you are up to a free hand sketch, these pictures will give you a good idea of what real reindeer look like.

Back to Ted Lewin's book. I was happy to find his painting of the northern lights with a Lavu, which he explains is a herding tent of the Sami also known as Lapp people. His painting is a much lovelier example of northern lights in watercolor than mine.  :)