Lovely Loose Watercolor Flowers Tutorial

In this tutorial, Anna Maria walks us through how to paint gorgeous loose watercolor flowers. These simple instructions will inspire you to add florals to all of your paper projects, from greeting cards to gift tags!

1. Gather Your Supplies

To get started, here are the supplies that you’ll need:

• A jar or tub of water
• Watercolor paints (Anything works; I am using a Winsor & Newton Cotman set.
• Watercolor paper (I prefer 300 GSM 9"x12" pads). The thicker the paper, the less likely it is to warp.) Note: blank watercolor cards are also great for this project.
• Brushes (My favorites are sizes 0, 2, and 6 round brushes)
• Paper towel to soak up excess water and paint

2. Choose Your Colors

Next, choose the colors you want to use to paint your loose watercolor flowers. For this tutorial, I’m going to use yellow-green, dark purple, pink, magenta, and dark blue. You can use whatever colors you want, but I recommend choosing 2-4 shades that are next to each other on the color wheel for the flowers, and any shade of green for the leaves and the stems.

3. Paint a Poppy

Let’s start by painting a poppy-esque flower. Dip a medium size round brush into water, pick up some dark blue paint, and start by painting a “U” shape (1). Then, fill in the “U” shape so it looks like a side view of petals, and then paint a thinner squiggly shape above the lower petals. Be sure to leave a very thin white space between what is now the front and the back petals of the flower (2).