Last Updated on October 13, 2026 by Dee
Here’s how to paint an easy snowy stone cottage in winter watercolor, with a free outline template so there’s no sketching to do.
Pop your email in just below and I’ll send the cottage template straight over, with a painted reference and a page on how to paint it. Pin this for later too, so you can find the steps again when your paints are out.
Get the free snowy cottage watercolor template
Winter watercolor is the most forgiving painting you’ll do all year, because half of it is snow, and snow is just paper you leave alone. A pale sky, a few warm stones, two glowing windows and some soft blue shadows, and suddenly you’ve painted a cold, quiet evening.
Today we’re painting a snowy stone cottage, and the template is free. The outline is already drawn for you, so there’s no sketching and no perspective to wrestle with. All you have to think about is the paint.
Once it lands in your inbox, print it at 100% on A4 watercolor paper, then scroll down for the step by step.
Table of Contents
What We’re Painting
Quick answer: a little stone cottage in the snow, with a snowy roof, two warm windows, bare trees behind and a path winding up to the door. You paint the sky, the walls, the windows and the shadows. The snow stays as white paper.
I picked the cottage because it has everything that makes winter watercolor feel cosy: cold blues around the outside and one warm glow in the middle. It’s a lovely first winter landscape if you’re a beginner, and it doesn’t take long. Most people finish it in one evening, with a cup of tea going cold beside them.
The template comes from my Winter Landscapes set. It’s a clean outline printed straight onto watercolor paper, so you paint right over the lines. If you’ve never painted from a template before, it feels a bit like cheating for the first five minutes, and then it just feels like painting.
What You Need for Winter Watercolor
Nothing fancy. I’ll tell you what kind of color you need, so you can find something similar in your own box.
- A soft blue for the sky (any light blue, softened with a touch of gray if it looks too bright).
- A warm gray-brown for the stone walls and the bare trees. Burnt umber with plenty of water works, or mix a little brown into gray.
- A golden yellow for the windows.
- A cool blue-violet for the snow shadows. Mix your blue with a tiny touch of purple.
- A muted green for the door and a few tufts of grass.
- A size 8 to 10 round brush for the sky and walls, and a small one for the windows if you like.
- The free template, printed on watercolor paper, plus a jar of water and some kitchen roll.
If you’re shopping, these are lovely: the Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolor set has every color you need for this, the Escoda round brushes hold a big wet wash beautifully, and a Canson XL watercolor pad is a sensible paper for practice. A white Sakura Gelly Roll pen is fun for falling snow at the very end. A cheerful student set will paint this cottage just as happily.
Some links in this post are affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. I only link to things I actually use.
How to Paint a Snowy Cottage, Step by Step
Quick answer: wash a pale sky and let it dry, leave the roof white, paint the walls in a warm gray-brown with a few darker stones dropped in, add golden windows, then finish with cool blue-violet shadows in the snow and a few quick bare branches.
Step 1: a pale sky first
Wet the whole sky area with clean water. Touch in a soft blue-gray near the top of the page and let it fade out to almost nothing above the roof. Tilt the paper a little if it helps. Keep it watery and pale, because a winter sky is never a strong blue. Then leave it to dry completely before you go on, or the sky will run into the roof.
Step 2: leave the roof white
Here’s the bit everyone gets wrong: don’t paint the snow on the roof at all. Just run a thin line of pale blue under the edge of the eaves, where the snow overhangs the wall. That one shadow line tells your eye the roof is thick with snow, and the white paper does the rest.
Step 3: warm stone walls
Mix a watery warm gray-brown and wash it over the walls, stepping around the windows and the door. While it’s still damp, drop in a few darker stones with the tip of the brush and let them soften at the edges. Ten stones, not a hundred. Your eye fills in the rest of the wall.
Step 4: glowing windows
Paint the windows in a soft golden yellow and leave a hair of white paper round the edge of each pane. When it’s dry you can touch a slightly deeper orange into the bottom corner. That warm glow against all the cold blue is what makes the picture feel cosy, so don’t skip it.
Step 5: blue shadows, then stop
Mix a cool blue-violet and paint the shadows: along the side of the path, under the bushes, against the bottom of the wall. Keep them loose and broken. Then a few gray-brown flicks for the bare trees behind, a muted green for the door and some grass tufts, and put the brush down. Really. The white paper is doing more work than you think.
Three Secrets of Easy Winter Watercolor
These three ideas work for every winter landscape, not just the cottage. Once they click, snowy scenes get a lot easier.
1. The paper is the snow
You never need white paint for snow. Plan where the white goes before you start and paint around it. Bare paper is brighter and fresher than any white paint, and it’s the reason loose winter paintings sparkle.
2. Shadows on snow are blue, not gray
Snow reflects the sky, so its shadows are cool: soft blue, lilac, blue-violet. A gray shadow makes snow look dirty. A blue one makes it look cold and clean. Paint the shadows and the white around them suddenly reads as snow.
3. Add one warm thing
A winter painting that is all blue can feel flat. Give it one warm spot, a lit window, a red door, a golden lamp, the low winter sun on a tree trunk, and the whole painting comes alive around it. One is plenty.
More Easy Winter Watercolor Ideas
Once your cottage is dry, here are a few more easy winter watercolor ideas that use exactly the same approach: pale sky, white paper for the snow, blue shadows, one warm accent.
A lone pine on a snowy hill
This is probably the easiest winter painting there is. Wash a soft lilac-blue sky behind the tree and let it dry. Paint the pine in a deep blue-green with quick downward strokes, dropping a lighter sap green in while it’s wet, and skip little gaps on the branches for snow. The hill is just paper with a few curved blue-gray shadows. Done in twenty minutes.
A snowy woodland lane
A winding path through trees is lovely practice for depth. Paint the faraway trees pale and blue-gray, and the nearest ones darker and warmer. Leave the birch trunks mostly white with a few dark marks. The lane itself stays white, with a cool blue-violet shadow along each edge so it curves away into the distance.
Five more winter subjects to try
- A lamplit path. A dark lamp post with a soft golden halo, and a snowy path that fades into a pale sky.
- A frosted field gate. Wooden bars in warm gray-brown with snow sitting on the top rail.
- A village church in the snow. Pale stone, a snowy roof and one warm window.
- A row of snowy cottages. The same cottage method, repeated, with smoke curling from the chimneys.
- A frozen river. A pale blue-gray wash for the ice and reflections of bare trees, left loose.
For more landscapes to paint, my easy watercolor landscapes are a gentle next step, and my watercolor cottage paintings have more cosy little houses in every season.
Common Winter Watercolor Mistakes (and Quick Fixes)
- The snow looks gray and muddy. You’ve painted over it. Next time, leave it as bare paper and only paint the shadows. On this one, lift some color with a clean damp brush and kitchen roll.
- The sky ran into the roof. The sky was still wet. Let each wash dry before you paint next to it, or leave a tiny gap of white paper between them.
- Everything looks flat and cold. Add one warm thing: a lit window, a golden lamp, a red door.
- The trees look stiff. Paint bare branches with the tip of a nearly dry brush, flicking outwards from the trunk. Wobbly is good.
- It looks overworked. Stop sooner. Most winter paintings look best five minutes before you think they’re finished.
If you’re brand new to all this, my beginner’s guide to painting with watercolor covers the basics, like how wet your brush should be and why paper matters.
All 26 Winter Landscapes
Love painting these? The cottage is one of 26. Winter Landscapes is my set of 26 winter scenes drawn as clean, traceable outlines: the lone pine on a hill, a lamplit path, frosted field gates, a stone bridge, a village church, a narrowboat in the ice, sheep by the barn, a row of snowy cottages and more.
Each scene comes as a black outline page, a softer greyscale page that disappears under the paint, and a transparent digital stamp you can use in Procreate or for card making. It’s £7, an instant download, yours to keep.
You can browse all my other template sets in my Payhip shop.
Want a new set to paint every month? New watercolor template sets go up on my Patreon all the time: printed outlines, no drawing, just paint, with painted references so you can see where the color goes. Come and paint with me on Patreon →
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the snowy cottage template really free?
Yes. Put your email in the box near the top of this post and the PDF comes straight to your inbox: a cover with a painted reference, the cottage template itself, a page on how to paint it, and a peek at the full set.
How do you paint snow in watercolor?
You don’t paint it. Leave the snow as bare white paper and paint only the shadows, in cool blues and lilacs. If you want falling snow at the end, flick a little white gouache off a brush or dot it on with a white gel pen once everything is dry.
What colors do I need for a winter watercolor?
A soft blue, a warm gray-brown, a golden yellow and a touch of purple to mix a blue-violet for the shadows. That’s it. Any student set has those.
Is winter watercolor good for beginners?
It’s one of the best places to start. So much of the picture is white paper that there’s less to paint, and loose, soft edges look exactly right on a snowy day.
What paper should I print the template on?
Watercolor paper if your printer will take it, fed through one sheet at a time. Print at 100% on A4 with “fit to page” turned off. Ordinary printer paper is fine for a practice run, but it will buckle once it gets wet.
Final Thoughts
Winter watercolor rewards doing less. A pale sky, white paper for the snow, blue shadows and one warm window, and you’ve painted something that feels like a cold, still evening. Print the cottage tonight, put the kettle on and paint along. Then come back and tell me how it went. I’d genuinely love to see yours.
If this was your speed, subscribe to my YouTube channel for a new paint-along every week (you’ll find all the videos at youtube.com/@artsydee), and come and say hello on Pinterest. Pin this for later so you can find the steps again when your paint is out.
Happy painting!
Dee x
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Pin this for later, and grab the free snowy cottage template at the top of the post.