7 Easy Watercolor Painting Tutorials for Beginners
This post is about easy watercolor painting tutorials for beginners.
Starting painting with watercolors can be an intimidating experience. But don’t dread it. You can start with these simple but effective watercolor painting tutorials for beginners to learn the basics of watercolor. Before we go into these free watercolor tutorials, I will review some quick tips to help you on this incredible creative journey.
Tips for beginner watercolorists:
Even as a beginner, you can paint any subject, but if you’re struggling, these tips will help you enjoy painting and avoid getting frustrated.
1. Keep the painting simple and avoid complexity
Pick one subject when learning to paint. Simplify as much as possible and remove any unnecessary elements. If you talk to professional artists, many do just that. They remove complexities and extra unnecessary things. A painting is beautiful when simple and to the point without any additional unneeded elements. I highly recommend reading my blog post about the 8 Principles of Art & Design That Will Make Your Art Better — the blog post goes into essential knowledge about composition that will make your art life so much easier.
2. Pick a limited color palette
Why do I recommend that? After years and years of painting, I came to this conclusion when I started teaching art. We can paint by intuition and select colors that we “feel” at the moment, but it doesn’t mean we’ll get a good result. However, picking the color palette ahead of time allows us to have consistent results every time we paint. And it’s so much easier to have a limited palette because we don’t have to spend extra time making decisions while painting. A limited palette will make your painting more cohesive and harmonic because you’ll repeat similar colors throughout the composition. A limited color palette simplifies the painting process, which means less frustration for you, and you can focus more on important things like composition, shapes, and the focal point. You can pick 2–5 colors or go with one color. There are some fantastic paintings done in monochrome.
3. Lastly, have the right supplies
I can’t stress this enough. Many new artists struggle and get frustrated because they don’t have the necessary supplies and tools to paint. Supplies are important! You don’t need a lot. Watercolors are great because it’s so versatile, but you need to know what you need for a specific painting. I recommend having the following as your starter toolbox:
Brushes – big, middle, small, and one specifically for details. The water pen works too.
Watercolor paper, tape, and board or watercolor paper block or sketchbook.
Mixing plate for mixing.
Paper towels (for wiping accidents and drying brushes)
Get two buckets of water cans. One to clean your brushes (it will be dirty). Second for painting (it will stay clean).
Hair dryer (this is optional but will help speed up drying between layers if you’re impatient like me)
Depending on your method, you’ll need salt, alcohol, serum wrap, or a sponge to experiment with painting techniques.
I compiled seven free watercolor painting tutorials for beginners. I also created a sketchbook series where I detail how to paint various subjects with watercolor, and I have more lessons on my youtube channel. Please access the playlist here.
7 Free Watercolor Tutorials:
1. Easy seascapes
Seascapes are beautiful and easy. They look effective as painting but are extremely easy. The lesson below shows how to paint a simple seascape from a photograph I took in Hawaii.
2. Painting the sky – the northern lights
Painting the sky is another easy subject to paint. In this particular tutorial, I show you how to paint the northern lights. It looks almost abstract. In this painting, I’m using the mainly wet-on-wet technique. The trick to this painting is to let the paint do its magic and mix on its own and not to control the pigment.
3. Abstract painting
Abstract painting can be complex, but a simple abstract painting is perfect for a beginner. You pick the colors and let the paint move in a wet-on-wet technique. It’s an ideal painting for learning watercolor behavior and practicing letting go.
4. Painting loose flowers
I use a water brush and a limited palette in this tutorial to paint these beautiful loose and plump peonies. For the full tutorial, visit How to paint loose peonies with watercolors or watch the video below.
5. Painting fruits
The following tutorial will show you how to paint a watermelon. It is one of my favorite fruits. It’s super fun and easy to paint it. I’m using a limited palette – 5 colors, wet-on-wet, and wet-on-dry techniques.
6. Painting plants
I have various tutorials on how to paint plants. In this tutorial, I show you how to paint succulents and cactuses.
7. Painting a simple city
This is a very simple tutorial on how to paint a city — it requires zero painting experience. And it makes a lovely holiday card. For more watercolor greeting cards, see my youtube playlist.
I hope these simple tutorials will inspire you to paint with watercolors, my favorite medium. If you have any questions about watercolor painting, please comment below.
Although watercolor can be intimidating for the beginner, these easy painting tutorials will help you to start and learn how to paint with watercolors in no time.
This post is about easy watercolor painting tutorials for beginners.
Leave a Reply