Drawing and painting are essential skills for anyone working as an artist or graphic designer. If you want to learn how to create genuine, eye-catching, and valuable art through watercolor paintings, this article is for you. In it, we’ve compiled everything you need to know to get started with your own easy watercolor projects.
5 Skills That Easy Watercolor Projects Can Help You Practice
To create first-rate watercolor projects, you must master a series of technical skills and concepts to combine colors, shapes, and ideas on a canvas. Listed below are some of the most important skills you’ll practice through watercolor projects.
- Composition. Composition refers to the organization of elements in a work of art. A well-balanced composition will allow all of the elements in a painting to come together harmoniously and highlight the central element or concept. Learning more about composition will help you create more effective pieces.
- Value Study. A value study is an initial draft that helps you decide the shapes that will make up the composition and, more importantly, assign a value to each shape, from one to five. Learning how to do a value study will help you work with light and shadows to create pieces with greater depth.
- Color Design. Harmony is the basis of visual attraction in all artistic work. Learning to combine colors is crucial, as different combinations will have different psychological effects, which is key in marketing and graphic design.
- Working With Water. Knowing how to work with water is a fundamental aspect of watercolor art. Different effects can be created by correctly regulating the amount of water that you pour on the paper. Different techniques will also help you create a variety of results according to your design needs.
- Mixing. Mixing refers to combining colors to obtain new shades. If you want to become a technical artist, you must know how to combine shades according to the effects you want for your project. Watercolor paint dries quickly, so knowing the proper techniques to work in this medium is essential.
Best Easy Watercolor Project Ideas for Beginners
Below is a detailed list of the best easy watercolor painting ideas for beginners. Each of these projects will help you improve your watercolor technique and create great pieces to add to your professional portfolio.
Shooting Stars
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Color Design, Composition, Mixing
This watercolor project consists of a combination of light and dark blue tones that create visual harmony. This is a great, easy watercolor project to practice the basics of composition. By practicing how to paint a night sky, you’ll learn how to create rich textures where depth is created by layering different shades of color.
Power Lines
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Color Design, Mixing
This power lines design combines two colors in one transition. The color gradient from pink to yellow with orange touches helps you create the visual effect of a sunset. This is a creative, easy watercolor project to help you practice color design and mixing to create a calm atmosphere in your works.
Outer Space
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Value Study, Composition
The outer space theme in a watercolor project is an excellent idea to creatively combine different elements on your canvas. This is also a great chance to practice your value study skills to determine which areas are darker and which ones are lighter in order to create a balanced composition.
Birds
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Working With Water
Painting birds is a great way to learn more about textures and effects using different amounts of water and different application techniques. Many artists begin their professional careers with these types of sketches. You can use this type of art in your portfolio to demonstrate your handle of different watercolor techniques.
Mountains
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Composition
Landscapes and other natural elements can be an inspiration for a watercolor project and can help you hone your composition skills. If you want to make an entry-level portfolio, mountains are a great subject. They teach you about perspective, color design, and how to engage with both macro and micro scales in your designs.
Best Intermediate Easy Watercolor Project Ideas
If you have mastered the basics of watercolor and are ready to move on to more sophisticated work, check out this list of intermediate watercolor project ideas. These will help you advance your skills and create stunning designs.
Floral Patterns
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Color Design, Mixing
Painting watercolor flowers or floral patterns is a great way to learn more about color design and mixing to create different textures and effects. For this type of watercolor artwork, you’ll be playing with greens, reds, pinks, and yellows to recreate natural subjects. You’ll also have to work on creating different types of lines and simple shapes.
Typography
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Composition
Art is also a personal brand. The goal of this project is to convert letters into custom shapes to create personalized typography and calligraphy styles. Creating a new typeface is a special challenge for intermediate-level artists. For these techniques, you must be confident in your skills working with water and practice consistency so you can obtain homogeneous results.
Wash Color Over a Black and White Photograph
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Color Design, Value Study
The combination of strong and citrus colors on black and white surfaces is a strategy that tests your coloring skills. You can use pictures of people or objects to cover the spaces to recolor the areas. The best thing about watercolor washes is that they don’t require complex drawing or shading to make a good watercolor background.
Turning a Photograph into a Piece of Art
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Value Study, Mixing
Converting an image into watercolor artwork is an ideal way to test your skills. Recreating a real photo in this type of project requires balance and precision. Use a pencil and draw the photograph on a white sheet. The next step is to fill each space in the drawing with colors. It is important to apply mixing techniques to achieve tones similar to those of the photograph.
Advanced Easy Watercolor Project Ideas
At this level, you will practice some of the most complex watercolor ideas and techniques within this field. Advanced watercolor projects can help you with admission into top-notch art schools and allow you to build an impressive professional portfolio.
Painting a Classic Portrait
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Color Design, Working With Water
Recreating classics can be a complex mission for artists. These kinds of projects require patience and technical skill to emulate the tones and strokes from the original work. A classic portrait includes specific elements that will test your ability to recreate the color design and your mastery of water application.
Cherry Blossom Sakura Tree
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Value Study
This advanced project will help you learn more about how to consistently apply dark and light tones to create effective shadows in your art. The technique uses concepts of depth and a visual sense of movement for the blades. A complex subject such as this will help you master shadows, textures, and value studies.
Textures Onto Wet Paint with a Knife
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Color Design, Mixing
This project will teach you a lesser-known watercolor technique. It involves creating bark-like textures for painting trees using a knife on the paint once it’s dry. This project will give you a great idea of how you can incorporate elements other than the traditional brushes and pens to create interesting and unique pieces.
Ultra-Dramatic Painting
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Color Design, Working With Water, Composition
For this watercolor project, you must use bright colors. Aside from working on your composition skills, this project will help you master light effects with the brightest colors to help you create dramatic pieces. You’ll also practice applying adequate amounts of water and paint to create consistent colors.
Landscape with Wax
- Watercolor Skills Practiced: Color Design, Mixing
This advanced technique involves using wax to create special textures and effects. This will teach you how to create color transitions with supporting materials to create unique pieces. Through this project, you’ll learn to use wax crayons and wax candles to complement your watercolor techniques.
Next Steps: Start Organizing Your Easy Watercolor Portfolio
To showcase your technical and artistic prowess, you must build a strong portfolio that demonstrates your style and ability to convey powerful messages through visual works. Below are some tips to help you build a solid portfolio that will impress recruiters and help you land your dream job.
Show your Technical Ability
An art portfolio is meant to showcase your technical abilities. Make sure you select a variety of pieces that show you can implement different techniques, styles, and concepts in your work. Pieces that include unusual techniques or mixed media are an excellent way to show your experimental and creative side, so make sure to include some as well.
Leave Out Your Basic Samples
As a beginner, you can work with simple sketches and concepts to help you practice your technical abilities. But if you want to create a professional portfolio, avoid cliche paintings, practice papers, and basic exercises that won’t help you stand out and will unnecessarily bulk up your portfolio. Instead, be selective and pick the most exceptional pieces, or ones that you are particularly proud of.
Organize Examples Effectively
Each piece in your portfolio should show not only your technical skills but also who you are as an artist. Make sure you curate your selected samples so you can tell a story through your work. Putting thought into how your pieces are organized shows recruiters that you take your work seriously and can focus on the bigger picture when working on a project.
Easy Watercolor Projects FAQ
Wet-on-dry watercolor, dry-on-dry watercolor, dry-on-wet watercolor, and wet-on-wet watercolor are the four main watercolor techniques you should master.
Keep clean water on the brush for mixing paints, use the palette evenly to mix colors, and test out the color saturation on a separate piece of paper before applying it to your artwork. These basic rules will help you get started.
Watercolors come in different presentations, including tubes where the paint has a toothpaste-like consistency, pans with dry watercolor cakes that you can dissolve, and watercolor brushes where the paint comes in liquid forms.
Watercolor paints last two to three years, on average, but the lifespan depends on the type, formula, and how it’s stored.
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