Watercolor Painting Ideas to Get You Painting - 14 Quick Ideas

Watercolor painting is an enjoyable and relaxing art form. It uses water to move color that makes it feel voluntary and often amazing. This guide comes with the packed watercolor painting ideas from simple practices to complicated projects, specially designed to give you more informative insights into techniques, materials, and composition. 

Even if you are picking up a brush for the very first time or finding new challenges , these subjects will motivate you for your next piece of art and painting ideas in watercolor.

We will explore more than dozens of detailed project ideas using simple language, making sure that you can concentrate on the fun and enjoyment of painting and not get confused by art vocabulary.

Section 1 - Getting Started: Simple Tools and Essential Tips

You should know something about your materials before going deep into the painting ideas, as it will make a big difference. You need the right supplies not the most expensive ones, but much cheaper and good in quality.

1. Paper is Your Foundation 

In watercolor, the paper is the most valuable stock that you have. It holds the water and coloring.

• Watercolor paper is measured by its weight (like 140 or 300 gsm). Thicker paper (300 gsm or heavier) is best because it prevents buckling (wrinkling) when wet.

•  This is the most common texture. It has a minor tooth (roughness) that grabs the coloring very easily and is good. It is great for most subjects.

• This paper is very smooth. It is excellent for detailed work like portraits and illustrations, as the paint can expand around a little.

2. Choosing Your Paint and Brushes

Watercolor paint comes in tubes that are wet and in pans as dry cakes. Tube paint is often richer in pigment (the real color material) and gives brighter results. Pan paints are greatly portable and excellent for quick sketches.

Brushes: Start with three good brushes:

• A large round brush for big washes and backgrounds (size 10 or 12).

• A medium round brush for general painting (size 6 or 8).

• A small detail brush for fine lines (size 1 or 2).

The Light-to-Dark Rule

This is the most important rule in watercoloring. As the medium is transparent, you must always paint from light colors to dark colors. You can easily make a light color darker by adding another layer (glaze or layering), but it is very hard to make a dark color into a light color again. The white of your paper is your brightest light.

Section 2: Easy Watercolor Painting Ideas for Beginners

If you are getting a start, you will need the details that let you practice control over water and color without getting worried about the perfect details. These are the best watercolor painting ideas for beginners because they teach you the basic techniques.

Idea 1: Practice Washes with Simple Color Blocks

A wash is a body of watercolor that is a large area of color applied with a wet brush. Practicing washes is the best way to start.

How to do it:

1. The Flat Wash

This is a smooth layer of one color with the same value (lightness/darkness) across the whole area. Wet your brush and mix a good amount of paint on your palette, and then paint a stripe from left to right. Reload your brush and touch the bottom edge of the first stripe, pulling down the color to create a new stripe. Keep on going till the area is covered.

2. The Graded Wash

This wash smoothly changes from a dark, rich color to a light, pale color or even to clear water. Start with the same dark stripe as mentioned above. Before painting the next stripe, dip your brush in clean water and mix slowly with the remaining paint on your palette. This will make the color lighter. Paint the next stripe, carrying the color down and making it lighter every time.

Idea 2: Painting the Cosmos: Galaxies and Starry Skies

One of the greatest reward-giving and easy watercolor painting ideas is painting a galaxy, as the natural flow of the paint does the great work for you. It looks complex, but the surprise is that it is very easy.

How to Do It:

1. Wet-on-Wet Magic

Make a generous layer of clean water on your paper. Do make sure that the paper is wet and shiny but has no pools. This is the wet-on-wet technique.

2. Charging in Color

Start dropping in dark colors (deep blues, purples, and black) onto the wet surface. Now look at the paint spread, flow, and blend easily by itself. This technique is called charging the color. Now let the colors mix a little by leaving some light areas for the ‘nebula’ clouds.

3. Creating Texture

While the paint is still wet, sprinkle a few grains of the salt technique (coarse salt works best) on the dark areas. The salt will push the water and coloring away, creating cool and unique star-like textures (that will look like granulation).

When the painting is completely dry , mix thick white acrylic or opaque watercolor and use an old brush or a toothbrush to splatter tiny dots of white paint across the surface of the stars.

Idea 3: Basic Botanicals: Single Leaves and Silhouettes

Botanical art, like painting flowers and plants, is a classical art painting idea for a watercolor subject. Start with something simple like a single leaf or a basic tree shape.

How to Do It:

1. Shape First

Use a light pencil and draw the basic outline of a leaf on your dry paper. Shape will keep your colors in boundries and will hlep you complete your picture with precision.

2. Apply Color and Lift

Paint the whole leaf shape with a medium-strength green wash (wet-on-dry technique). The paint is still damp (not soaking wet); rinse your brush and dry it almost completely on a paper towel, and then gently touch the center of the leaf where the light should hit. This technique is lifting color, as it removes pigment by creating a soft highlight down the center vein.

3. Adding Detail

When the leaf becomes entirely dry, using a small brush, use brown or dark green to add the final sharp vein lines (wet-on-dry for fine detail).

Idea 4: Simple Food Art: Fruit and Sweets

Painting still life subjects like fruits is a great way to learn about light and form. A simple apple or a donut does the work greatly perfectly.

How to Do It:

1. Build Form with Layers (Glazing)

First you should draw a circle about the size of the given fruit, because it is the easiest part. Now lightly color that circle (pale red for apple) and let it dry a bit.

2. Create Shadow

Now for the shadow, you should mix a darker version of the same color (darker red). It should be intense and dark, and you can mix it with other colors like blue or green to simulate a shadow. Then apply it on one side opposite to the light to create a glaze of darker color, illuminating a shadow effect.

3. Define Edges

After the previous processes, continue drying and painting more layers, but all of these new layers should be thin and minimal. Define your edges and use the wet-on-dry technique to keep everything clean and prevent the colors from mixing or bleeding.  

Idea 5: Loose Flowers (Embracing the Bloom)

And if the clean lines are difficult for you, then you have to accept the unpredictable characteristics of the watercolor. This is the easiest watercolor painting idea, as it is the most artistic one indeed.

How to Do It:

1. Wet the Shapes

Sketch the figure of a poppy or a rose delicately. Use a wet brush, and do not wet the whole paper. Apply a water wash only in the petal shapes that you want to paint.

2. Drop in Color

Now you have to soak your brush in (red, pink, or purple) color by mildly touching the edges of the wet figure. The color will instantly spread or flow into the area that is wet. This will make the petals merge and will make them soft and also will give a loosened, dreamy look.

3. Happy Accidents

If you accidentally drop the clear water onto a soaked area, you should make a bloom or back run (sometimes its called a cauliflower shape). These happy accidents often look like natural flower textures for the loose florals. You have to learn to accept them.

Section 3: Cool Watercolor Painting Ideas: Adding Technique

This time when you feel easy with basic lifts and washes, now you can go for more advanced subjects that need combining different techniques. For enhancing your skills more, these are the cool watercolor painting ideas. 

Idea 6: Misty Landscapes: Mountain and Trees

To practice graded washes and dry brush effects, special scenes with atmosphere like fog and mist and landscapes with great details are great to practice.

How to Do It:

1. The Sky Wash

You can start with a large graded wash for the sky by going from a medium blue at the top to clear water near the horizon line. Now let it completely dry.

2. Distant Mountains (Misty Effect)

Mix a very pale, grayish-blue, or purple. Paint the mountain range near the top of the horizon line by using the technique wet-on-dry. The pale color and soft edges (that you can make by touching the painted edge with a clean and soaked brush) make the mountains look far away, veiled in atmospheric perspective.

3. Foreground Trees (Texture)

Use a darker color. Soak your brush, but you need to clean most of the water with a paper towel. This technique is called the dry brush technique. Drag this barely wet brush over the paper where your trees or bushes are. The dry brush skips over the texture of the paper, creating the rough and broken look for bark, leaves, and rocks.

Idea 7: Architectural Sketches: Doors and Windows

Painting an old doorway or a charming window of the buildings needs control over straight lines and also maintaining the highlights brighter.

How to Do It:

1. Protecting the White

You need to keep the perfect white if you have certain small highlights, like the reflection on a windowpane, by using masking fluid. This is a liquid rubber that you paint on paper. You can paint over it when it is dry.

2. Creating Hard Edges

Many of the building elements need crisp and clean lines (hard edges). By using the wet-on-dry technique, load your brush with enough color and water so that it flows cleanly but does not bleed excessively.

3. Adding Shadow

Painting shadows are difficult to make it look real , three dimensional and architectural.

Idea 8: Creating Texture: Pet Portraits

One of the greatest ways to learn about building texture through layering and controlled brushing is capturing the look of feathers, fur, and scales in a pet portrait.

How to Do It:

1. Light Underpainting

You can start with a very light layer (glaze) that covers the main body of the pet that will create a light tone.

2. Building Fur

Wait for the first layer to dry. Use a small pointed brush for fur and then use the dry brush technique. Soak the brush in a medium-dark color and paint quickly with short strokes following the direction of the fur growth. It is because the brush is dry; the strokes will naturally look broken and textured like animal hair.

3. Detail and Eyes

You have to use your finest brushes and the darkest colors (Wet-on-Dry) to paint the final details like pupils, whiskers and the edges of the nose. To make them more natural and alive the eyes should have small areas of pure whiteness of the paper (carefully painted around and preserved with masking fluid).

Idea 9: Mixed-Media Fun: Ink and Wash

For beginners and experts, the satisfying project is mixing watercolor with a permanent ink pen or marker. As it allows you to use the pen for accurate lines and the paint for soft color.

How to Do It:

1. Start with the Sketch

To draw your painting, you have to use a waterproof ink pen. You can draw a few mushrooms, a simple house, or a coffee cup. You have to focus on the key details and outline.

2. Add the Wash

When the ink is fully dried, use your watercolors to apply color. It is because the ink is permanent, and you can paint on it without any tension, as the lines will not spatter.

3. Controlling the Contrast

Where you want the line work to stand out, use light washes. Little rich and darker colors can be used where you want to feel more solid watercolors. This project is a great way to use your analogous colors (colors next to each other on the color wheel, like blue and green) to make the schemes more pleasing and balanced.

Section 4: Abstract Watercolor Paintings Ideas: Play and Freedom

Because of its fluid and unpredictable nature, watercolor is genuinely great for abstract watercolor painting ideas. The abstract art is totally about the color, composition, and movement, not the reality.

Idea 10: Pure Color Flow: Freeform Abstract

A perfect idea to be uncontrolled acceptance of the water and color flow. These are the ideas based on your imagination. Let your brush and imagination flow freely on the paper.

How to Do It:

1. Get Soaking Wet

Use the wet-on-wet technique all over the paper. To make the water run, you can tilt the paper.

2. Experiment with Color

Drop in two or three colors that look good together (for example, yellow, deep indigo, and turquoise). See them flow, blend, and make new unexpected shades. This is a great practice to create a variegated wash (a wash with multiple colors blending).

3. Add Texture

When the art is still very wet, you can spread a few tiny beads of rubbing alcohol on the painting. Impressively, the alcohol propels the water and color by adding texture and making ring-like shapes more natural and cool.

Idea 11: Controlled Abstract: Geometric Shapes

If you are not interested in accurate randomness, then use strong color combinations and simple shapes for a good abstract look.

How to Do It:

1. Use Masking Tape

To make stripes, squares, and triangles, apply masking tape to your paper. It will protect the areas and will give you perfectly straight and hard edges.

2. Color Temperature and Contrast

Choose the colors that make high contrast, like complementary colors (colors opposite to each other on the color wheel, like orange and blue). Paint the exposed parts by using different techniques (some dry brush and some flat wash).

3. Reveal the Design

Let the paint be completely dry, and then slowly peel off the masking tape to view the clean, white lines that are separating your colored shapes. This process will let you see carefully on the composition (the way elements are arranged) and color theory.

Idea 12: Abstract Landscapes

Make an idea of a landscape (sky, water, mountains) and break it down in mood and color rather than exact shapes.

How to Do It:

1. Simplify and Plan

You can select a natural scene (a photo from a recent trip or a good plein air reference) and choose three main colors, one for the ground, one for the sky, and one for the middle area.

2. Focus on Wash

You have to use large brushes and lots of water to cover the paper fast and quickly with the chosen colors and let them spread and meet where the colors match. You do not have to be worried about drawing perfect lines; just be focused on the general placement of the horizon.

3. Implied Detail

You can use the splattering method (Idea 2) with a darker color at the bottom of the piece to suggest small trees and bushes without actually drawing them. The minds of the viewers will fill in the missing details based on the large blocks of color.

Section 5: Project for Focus and Detail

These projects need more control and patience for the artists who enjoy challenges and want to spend more good time in completing and perfecting the details.

Idea 13: Detailed Portraits and Figures

Painting a detailed portrait (a beloved person or a house as a house portrait) needs many layers to build up natural skin tones, shadows, and textures.

How to Do It:

1. Drawing is Key

Having a start with a very exact drawing because you cannot simply hide drawing mistakes with transparent watercolor.

2. Glazing Skin Tones

Using multiple thin glazes (layers) of color to make flesh tones. Do not ever use a single, thick layer. Use pale pinks, yellows, and even blues to slowly make up the depth, waiting for every layer to dry before adding the next one. This will keep the skin looking brighter and transparent, as it is the wonderful magic of watercolor.

3. Focus on Shadow

Use cool colors (like watered-down purple or blue) to paint the shadows and to show the shape of the face.

Idea 14: Realistic Travel Scenes or Still Life

If you are interested in making a natural scene from a trip (travel scene) or a complicated still life like a crystal vase, then you need control and patience.

How to Do It:

1. Plan Your Whites

Make decisions on the brightest points (like reflections on glass or water) and use masking fluid or draw carefully around them.

2. Work in Sections

Other than painting everything quickly, focus on one area (like the sky), give it time to dry, then go to the next area (the background buildings), and keep going. To keep all the edges clean and controlled, it uses the continuously wet-on-dry technique.

3. Use Lifting for Light

To catch the shine and transparency of water or glass, use the lifting technique again and again to smoothly remove color from the painted areas by making the reflected light illusion.

Conclusion

Watercolor is a standard of discovery. Even if you are focusing on simple enjoyment with easy watercolor painting ideas or dealing with complicated projects like a detailed portrait. This learning journey is about balancing water and color.

We have covered many of the great watercolor painting ideas, from abstract freedom to controlled realistic ones, and provided you with the easy and simple instructions and more valuable deep insights you deserve, like using the cold-press paper for texture and mastering the wet-on-wet technique for soft blends.