11 Easy Watercolour Painting Ideas for Beginners — Louise De Masi Watercolour Artist (2024)

Fear not!

Through my own series of tutorials, I'm here to guide you through some easy watercolour painting ideas designed specifically for beginners.

These projects are not only simple and enjoyable but also serve as a perfect starting point to get acquainted with the basics of watercolour techniques.

Each tutorial is crafted to help you gradually build your confidence and skills in this beautiful art form, ensuring that you have all the support you need to embark on your painting journey.

I hope you get inspired with the following watercolour painting ideas!

This tutorial covers a range of essential skills and methods, including:

• Transferring your drawing onto the paper using graphite

• Mixing different colours to achieve the perfect hues

• Mastering the wet-on-wet technique to blend colours effortlessly

• Applying the wet-on-dry technique for sharper details

• Learning how to charge colours for dynamic effects

• Enhancing the focal point with detailed focus

• Simplifying your subject by not painting every detail you see

• Working with a limited palette for coherence and impact

In thisfeather tutorial, you'll start with basic brush exercises to refine your technique before moving on to the main project. As part of the process, you'll delve into the art of creating watercolour blooms, a technique that lends a unique charm and texture to your work.

Emphasising the wet-on-dry approach, this tutorial ensures precise control over your medium, while a limited palette teaches the value of colour harmony from a selection of carefully chosen hues.

You'll learn to mix a rich, dark colour, essential for adding contrast and depth. This tutorial is tailored to build your confidence and skill in watercolour painting through practical, hands-on experience.

This eucalyptus leaves painting comes to life through a simple triadic colour scheme of red, yellow, and blue, infusing the artwork with freshness and vibrancy.

Inthis tutorialyou'll delve into the wet-on-wet technique, layering colours to create depth, while also incorporating some wet-on-dry work for added texture and detail.

You'll also tackle simple cast shadows, grounding the leaves and enhancing their dimensional feel.

Thisbeginner-friendly tutorialoffers a quick and straightforward painting project featuring a simple pot with leaves. It introduces you to a variety of techniques without being too demanding. Throughout the process, you'll explore the wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry methods, practice colour blending, learn how to soften edges, and discover how to leave a lost edge to create depth in your artwork. It's the perfect way to dive into the world of painting while picking up essential skills.

If you'd prefer to buy the tutorial and have lifetime access to it - it's available forpurchase here.

Daffodil

Here is a fairly simple daffodil watercolour painting that you canpaint in my tutorial.

After washing yellow all over the daffodil we take a look at the reference photo and locate all the shadow areas and paint them in. Then we turn our attention to the trumpet and bring that to life.

It contains wet on wet and wet on dry work that will help you develop your skills.

With all of my painting tutorials I recommend using 100% cotton watercolour paper. I use Arches paper but it's expensive so a 100% cotton paper that is less expensive for beginners is Stonehenge Aqua. I tried it out whenI painted some pandas on it. It handles the paint well but it's a fragile paper.

I have recently discoveredJackson's Studio synthetic brushesthat I recommend my beginner students buy. They have good snap and they hold their shape well. They are more affordable than the sable brushes I like to use.

You can find them here.