The Easiest Way to Paint Loose Watercolor Flowers - A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

One of the perfect, beautiful, and magnanimous watercolor painting techniques for the beginners is impressionistic watercolor, especially in flower painting. The main goal of this technique is highlighting the image, colors, and natural position of the essence, not the exact details.

Here the word “loose” represents that we have to freely let the water and colors mix consistently on the paper that will make bright washes with color and soft flowing edges. Compared to the classic styles, this technique is much easier, as it consists of watercolor painting with details that is often pressurizing for the beginners.

This guide is for your dream of painting dazzling and breezy flowers with relaxation and a tension-free mode of no precision skills. By using a pre-sketched drawing book, we will guide you with truthful techniques that will make your first try for easy watercolor flowers outstandingly enjoyable.

Why Loose Watercolor is Perfect for Beginners

Sketching and drawing are often the hardest fears in learning the method “how to paint watercolor flowers.”  It needs years of practice to make natural-looking flowers stabilized. 

So here are your best fellows to help you in the shape of pre-sketched watercolor flower books. As the drawings are pre-made in this book, it helps you to go deep in the enjoyable part of painting and color addition by forgetting the tension of the fearful drawing-making process completely.

Loose watercolor technique guides you to aim for your 100% skills achievement goals for the watercolor technique precisely. It is specially designed for you to handle the flow of water and color without the perfection of making the lines. As it is a relaxing and fun habit from the beginning, it boosts confidence in painting. Honestly, it is a much easier way to paint flowers.

Essential Tools for Watercolor Flower Painting 

To start the journey, you will not need many more costly tools. It is good to have simple tools. Your beginner watercolor tutorial requires basic equipment that is enlisted here:

• Pre-Sketched Flower Watercolor Book: It is the body of this lesson. With delicate images of different kinds of flowers, these books consist of high quality watercolor paper material.

• Watercolor Paint: The best set of pan watercolors is awesome. Try to go for a watercolor set of some basic colors like yellow, red, blue, and the green one. Colors with high quality will make the mixing easy.

• Round Watercolor Brush: An all-round brush of size 6 or 8 is excellent. The best round brush is made with fine tips, so it is easy for you to make small details and big washes in the painting.

• Water Container: Two water jars are needed, one for clean water to mix the paint and wet the paper and another one for cleaning your brush when it gets dirty.

• Paper Towel or Rag: It is compulsory for drying up your brush and also to handle the excessive water while picking up the extra color.

• Palette: For mixing your colors, you will need a plastic plate or a ceramic plate.

Please note that you will just need the brushes and paints, as the pre-sketched book has fine-quality paper.

Step 1: Preparing Your Paper and Paint (Getting the Right Water-to-Color Ratio)

Water is the secret for loose watercolor painting. You just need to make a great amount of colors that should be wet well.

Activate Your Paint

You have to put some drops of clean water on the colors in the palette or on the pans of watercolor that you are going to use. Wait for at least one minute so the color absorbs the water. As it will make the color thicker and easier to take.

Pre-Wet the Flower Area (Optional, but Recommended for Beginners)

In your pre-sketched book, keeping yourself in the boundary of the lines, with your clean brush and clean water, color the petals of one flower gently. Remember to use the water in an ideal amount, lightly, not heavily. As it has to look like a gentle sheen on the paper. The secret to the soft, blended, and beautiful edges in loose watercolor, is “wet-on-wet” technique.

Mix Your Color

In your colors that you have selected (it can be a lively pink), soak your brush. With a little more water, mix a small amount of this color on your palette. It should not be as thick as ice cream but as luminous as colored water. For the “loose” impression, this watery texture can be hard.

Step 2: Applying the First Wash - The Flowing Base Layer

The magic happens in this most enjoyable method. As we have to spread the color on the pre-sketched images directly, for us now the water will do the remaining work.

Touch and Let it Flow

Pick up the watery pink color with your brush. On the pre-wet area of the petal of step 1, calmly touch the tip of your brush. Now you will watch the color quickly bloom and flow all over the area that is wet. This magic is happening because of watercolor.

Guide the Color

Do not worry about painting each mark precisely. You just have to make the tip of your brush make the color go to the petal’s corners by making little spaces of white on the paper. “Leaving the white of the paper” (small gaps of white) is compulsory to add brightness and make the flower breezy, with the luminous character component of the loose flower watercolor style.

Repeat for Petals

For all the petals of the first flower, repeat this method. While the paper is still wet, remember to paint fast. The edges will be hard, not soft, if the paper is dry.

Step 3: Dropping in a Second Color - Adding Depth and Interest

An easy method to make your loose watercolor flowers more artistic. When the paint is still wet and the initial wash is complete, you can enhance it with more deepness.

Introduce a Second Shade

For the center, when the pink wash is wet and glassy, you have to clean your brush fast and dip it in a little darker or other colors like dark magenta or maybe a touch of orange-yellow. Remember to keep this color more watery.

Just Touch It In

Soaked in the new color, slightly near the bottom of the petal or center, touch the tip of your brush. Do not brush or scrub. The new color will automatically begin to spread in the wet pink color that you passed on already. You have not worked hard and just by making the soft mixing awesome, you have used the technique known as "dropping in color”.

Add Center Details

Make a small circle of brown or yellow in the center when you are making flowers of a simple rose or a poppy. 

Step 4: Adding Simple Stems and Leaves - A Quick Green Wash

You need simple leaves and loose stems to complete your easy watercolor flower painting.

Mix Your Green

Mix a simple green color in your palette. In your basic green color, try to mix a little touch of the flower’s color, pink, or a little blue that will make it more natural. To make it crystalline, add water to it.

Paint the Stem

Instead of using the tip, you should use the side of the brush along the stem outline to paint a simple little wavy line. Confidently make it quick. Loose stems are better than straight and stiff ones.

Paint the Leaves

You can use a two-stroke method for painting leaves. Pick up the color green with your brush. Now, where the leaf starts, touch the tip of the brush on paper and slowly move it down from the middle section, and then, to make a pointy end, lift the tip of the brush.

For the first leaf, use the watery green color, and for the quick element, you can use a little darker green color in the bottom while it is still wet. You should remember that the aim is to make watercolor leaves look simple and fresh. 

Step 5: Drying and Fine-Tuning (Knowing When to Stop)

The hard part of loose watercolor technique is knowing when to stop.

Let It Dry Completely

To let it dry completely by air, set your painting apart. You should not touch it when it is still wet because touching it will make a muddy or blemished mark.

Assess the Result

Watch your painting when it becomes dry. See the amazing blend of the colors of soft edges. This style is called “loose style.”

Final Touches (Optional)

Near the base of a leaf or center of the flower, if a spot needs a little more contrast of a darker color, you can redo it with a very little bit of color (a thicker texture with very little water).

Simplicity is essential. Just keeping it light and simple is the beauty of this beginner watercolor project. The breezy element of the paint will spoil if the paint is overworked.

Conclusion and Practice Tips

Congratulations! that you have painted your first loose watercolor flowers successfully. With the help and use of pre-sketched outlines, you skipped the effort of making the drawing yourself by engaging in the flowing nature of watercolor paint.