Floral Watercolor Tutorial

A few years back I used to do Design + Wine workshops around the USA and I think now is a good time to bring them online!

Watercolor Florals

Today we’ll be doing two different kinds of florals, one super loose and the other more line-y (that’s a professional term.) Then we’ll combine them into a pretty floral piece to hang up in place of having fresh flowers. Yay! I tried keeping these as simple as possible and if you take each one slowly, you’ll find it easy as well.

Here’s a worksheet to look at or print off!

Here’s whatcha need…

• Watercolor Paper (Arches is amazing, but Canson or Strathmore work great for beginners)

• Watercolors (I like to use Windsor & Newton)

• Watercolor Brush (Any size 4-8 would work nice, the larger the #, the larger the brush)

• Water Cup & Paper Towel or Napkin

Step 1 - Loose Florals

Okay let’s get started with the loose, watery flowers. To create these, you’re going to use lots of water. Stick to one color at first and put circular blotches on your paper as you begin to explore how less and more paint create darker and lighter shades. You can see on the worksheet that a lot of the loose florals only use one color.

If you find that you got the flower darker than you wanted, you can blot it with you napkin to remove some paint or else rinse out your brush, dry it, and dab your paper with it to “pick up” the water from the paper. Try to use more water than paint to get the florals light and airy.

If you want to add more colors to one flower, choose a color that is close to it, like yellow and orange. Begin by putting just a dot of the 2nd color on top of the watery first color and watch how it blends. Try not to control it too much with your brush, as you’ll get weird streaks if you do. If you want it more controlled, wait until it is completed dry and then you can add another layer.

Remember throughout this process that it’s important to leave blank white areas because you can’t paint back with white (it doesn’t work very well with watercolors!)

Step 2 - Dry Brush Florals

Let’s move on to those line-y flowers that are shown on the worksheet. These are more like drawing, and this is just a different way of painting that maybe you’ll enjoy or maybe you won’t. These flowers require more form than the loose florals, so to make it easy, it’s important to follow the lines you see on the worksheet.

For painting these, you’ll hardly use any water. It’s important to have a pointy brush so you can get the details painted without big blotches. To keep your brush dry, simply dab it on your paper towel occasionally.

Start each circular flower in the center and work outwards. When you look at a flower, break it up into areas: is there a circular middle? No middle? What shapes do you see repeated? If you find it confusing, break it up into sections and conquer each section. It’s a great skill to look at something and break it down into a simple drawing.

Putting the 2 styles together

Now that you’ve practiced both flowers, let’s put them together!

We’ll start with the loose ones and paint them close together in the middle of a new sheet of paper. It’s okay if they run together, but if you use dark colors, you may want to wait until the light ones dry so that they don’t take over all of your pretty light flowers.

Now let the loose florals dry completely!!!

Are they dry? Okay, now we can do the dry brush lines on top! I like to do some lines inside of the loose flowers and some lines outside of them. Leaves and dots are great fillers for any empty spaces.

Take a look at my piece below for a visual!

Thanks for joining me on this quick, at-home tutorial! Hopefully you’re better than when you started!

If you painted this, show me in your stories on Insta by tagging me: @haleybhop