How to Start Watercolor Painting for Beginners in 2025

Watercolor painting for beginners can seem intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be! Once you get the knack, it's one of the most relaxing and rewarding creative mediums. Watercolor is loved by many due to its relatively low barrier to entry, it's relatively inexpensive to get started and quick to learn. If you put your mind to it, you can be a watercolor artist in no time at all.

Making art doesn't just offer a fun way to express yourself. According to Psychology Today, it also promotes neuroplasticity, meaning that your brain is encouraged to adapt and form new connections. This can have massive benefits in terms of mental well-being but also in regard to longevity. So consider taking on watercolor painting for beginners as an investment in your health, too!

If you dream of crafting beautiful and whimsical watercolor works, but have no idea where to start, it’s time to change that! In this guide, we break down watercolor painting for beginners. We’ll share how to paint successfully with watercolors, leave you with a bunch of recommendations for the best watercolor supplies for beginners and set you up with easy watercolor painting ideas for beginners.

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• How to Paint With Watercolors
• Watercolor Supplies for Beginners 
• Best Watercolor Paints for Beginners
• Best Watercolor Brushes for Beginners
• Watercolor Techniques for Beginners
• Easy Watercolor Paintings for Beginners

How to Paint With Watercolors

Assuming you want to move past the most basic cave paintings, the simplest way to learn how to paint with watercolors is to take a painting class and learn directly from professional artists. These artists have spent years dedicating themselves to the craft and luckily for you, they're willing to share their expertise with you!

If you'd rather get started at home, learn all the basic painting techniques and secrets right from your living room with interactive online painting classes. Either way, you’ll learn all about how to get started with watercolor painting. 

Watercolor Supplies for Beginners 

To successfully tackle watercolor painting for beginners, you’ll need to start with the right watercolor painting supplies for beginners. While watercolor paints and brushes are the most obvious and essential supplies (we’ll break each of these down, don’t worry!), there are also some other things you’ll need before you can get started.

Watercolor Paper

Choosing a good watercolor paper is essential when starting out. It’s heavier than regular paper and won’t absorb the pigments. Your paints will sit atop the paper’s surface until they dry, rather than spreading out and bleeding, creating that buckled and wavy wash. The 300 series watercolor paper from Strathmore is a great and budget-friendly option for the beginner watercolor artist. 

Painting Palette

You’ll want a painting palette to mix your colors and make sure you have the right amount of water added for the color you want. The amount of water you mix with the pigment will determine the shade of your color. The palette is an essential tool for watercolor painting for beginners and pros alike.

Water and a Cloth

It might seem obvious, but watercolor painting for beginners can get a little messy if you aren't prepared. You’ll need clean water as well as a cloth or paper towels to dab and clean off your brushes. 

Tape

Masking or painter's tape is an optional supply, but it comes in handy if you want to create crisp, clean edges to frame your painting. It can also be used to paint some cool geometric patterns, which makes for some pretty fun watercolor painting for beginners.

Best Watercolor Paints for Beginners

Choosing Your Watercolor Paints

Watercolor paints come in tubes and pans, but it doesn’t matter which you choose, as long as you invest in high-quality paints. Low-quality brands won’t stay smooth and even, but will instead have a cracked and chalky look. Quality is key, even when it comes to watercolor painting for beginners, as lower-quality options are more prone to fading. There's nothing worse than watching an artwork you love slowly fade away.

There are three different watercolor grades available on the market: children’s, student and artist. Student grade paints strike a balance between affordability and quality that's perfect for starting watercolor painting for beginners. The Winsor & Newton set is a great student-grade set of 24 different colors, making it one of the best watercolor sets for beginners.

Best Watercolor Brushes for Beginners

Types of Brushes

Brushes are a very personal tool, so preference will vary from person to person, but there are a few different types of brushes you’ll want on hand when you start watercolor painting for beginners. With small, medium and large round brushes, a flat brush and a mop brush, you’ll be able to experiment with different kinds of brush strokes to create different effects.

A great brush to start with is a size-eight round brush (medium-sized), as it’s one of the most versatile and will let you create a wide range of different brushstrokes. Keep an eye out for specials on sets, such as the Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolor 7 Brush Set. 

Material

A great watercolor brush will hold a lot of water, so the best brushes are made from natural hair. However, these can be on the pricier side, so the best watercolor brushes for beginners are generally a mix of natural and synthetic bristles. Unless, of course, you want to invest right away in a professional-grade brush. Any artist will agree that good brushes will make watercolor painting for beginners a much easier and better experience!

Watercolor Techniques for Beginners

Wet on Dry

With this technique, you apply wet paint onto dry paper or onto an area of already-dry paint. This watercolor technique for beginners will give the painter the most control and precision because the paint will only go wherever your brushstrokes place it. In other words, the paint won’t run or bleed at all, like in the following wet-on-wet technique. This is one of the most useful skills when it comes to watercolor painting for beginners.

Wet on Wet

As the name implies, wet paint is applied to either wet paper or added to a wash of fresh, wet paint already on the paper. This will create a fluid effect and unpredictable spread of color, as the water flows from wet to less wet areas.

You don’t have a whole lot of control with this technique, but it’s fun and can result in unique patterns. This can be a tricky skill when you first start exploring watercolor painting for beginners, so don’t be afraid to make mistakes as you experiment with it.

Mixing Colors 

When it comes to mixing watercolors, the water-to-paint ratio is essential. The more water you add, the lighter the color. For a light color, wet the brush and just barely dab it with the pigment. Gradually increase the amount of pigment to darken the color. For a dark color, you will want to blot excess water off the brush until the brush is just barely moist. 

The amount of water will also determine how much the paint will spread. Large washes (think background) will require more water, while detail work will need less water. You can also mix two different pigments to create a new color. This is where a palette comes in handy, so you can moisten and mix the pigments.  A great tip is to check your colors on a piece of scrap paper to make sure you like how they mix, as it makes watercolor painting for beginners a lot more manageable. 

Dry Time

Since wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry painting will produce different effects, dry time can also affect watercolor painting for beginners. Depending on how much you want the colors to blend and bleed, or not, will require different dry times. The drier the bottom layer, the less the colors will mix, giving your top layer more defined edges. Experimenting with different dry times and their effects is a great way to learn a bit more about watercolor painting for beginners.

Creating Gradients

A very useful technique to help with watercolor painting for beginners is creating gradients, in which the painter gradually switches from one color to the next. After selecting two colors that are close on the color wheel (you want them to blend well and avoid clashing), mix each color separately. Start by painting a strip of color with a single stroke of just one color. Clean your brush. Then, pick up just a little bit of the other color paint and mix it into the first color on your palette.

With this slightly mixed color, you can then pick up where you left off with your last brush stroke, building the gradient. You’ll then clean the brush and repeat the process over and over again until you eventually arrive at the second color. This is a tricky technique to master, but gradual mixing on the palette is great practice when watercolor painting for beginners.

Ink and Wash Technique

One way watercolor painting for beginners can be made somewhat easier is to use the ink and wash technique. Sketch out your drawing in pencil, then trace over it with a waterproof ink pen. Then, you can add the watercolors to fill in between the lines. It’s a great technique to add a bit of structure and boost confidence when it comes to watercolor painting for beginners. Look to the many Andrew Wyeth paintings for inspiration on how to incorporate muted watercolors into your scenes.

Easy Watercolor Paintings for Beginners

Fruit and Vegetables

A fun yet simple watercolor painting idea for beginners is fruit and vegetables. They have a simple shape and even in real life, they don’t look perfect….so, nobody will know if you accidentally mess up a bit. You meant to do that, right? 

Watercolor House Painting

When you feel ready to tackle something with a bit of symmetry, a watercolor house painting is another great watercolor painting idea for beginners. Houses are all very different, which means you can stick to a simple architectural design or make it more challenging with a more intricate house. Outlining the house beforehand (consider using the ink and wash technique) will make watercolor painting for beginners even easier!

Simple Landscapes

Focusing on the basics is a good idea when it comes to simple watercolor paintings for beginners, and simple landscapes are pretty easy watercolor paintings. With just a few wavy lines and some basic shapes, you can create some mountain scenery and a bit of greenery. If you prefer waves to mountains, you can swirl up some ocean watercolor painting scenes or maybe a beach watercolor painting instead.

Flowers

Flowers are beautiful, colorful and often free-flowing in shape, which makes them a great subject for watercolor painting for beginners. Again, there’s no perfection in nature, so any stray brush strokes are nothing to worry about. Flowers in a vase are another fun option for beginners to explore. 

See? Once you know a bit about the supplies, techniques and process, watercolor painting for beginners becomes a whole lot less complicated! Hopefully, you feel a bit more prepared to start painting after you stock up on those important supplies, like watercolor paper and some high-quality watercolor paints, of course.

So, now that you know some basic watercolor techniques, it’s time to put them into action. With a little bit of practice, you’ll be creating beautiful beach watercolor paintings and mesmerizing ocean watercolor paintings in no time. Or, maybe you’ll find inspiration elsewhere, such as the flowers outside in your garden or the fruit on your kitchen table. You could even get crafty and make watercolor Easter eggs.

Let your creativity shine and start exploring some watercolor painting for beginners today!

For even more fun painting ideas, check out other experiences happening on Classpop!