Have you ever wanted to paint beautiful flowers with realistic leaves, or geometric shapes and designs? These watercolor brush strokes exercises will set you on your way to creating that beautiful floral bouquet or landscape scenery.
Let’s talk about it!
Getting Your Watercolor Brush Strokes Supplies Ready
For these watercolor brush strokes exercises, you will need watercolor paper, #2 round brush and #6 or #8 round brush, watercolor paint (I will be using pan paints), 2 separate cups of clean water, paper towels/clean cloths, painter’s tape to hold down your paper. If you want more information on watercolor supplies you can also read what I wrote on 5 Must Have Watercolor Supplies For New Artists.
For more information on watercolor brushes, I wrote an article about Watercolor Brushes 101.
Holding Your Brush
The way you handle your brush will affect the outcome of the object you want to create. If you hold it too high, you may not have enough control. If you hold it too tight, you may apply too much paint.
Let’s look at the two main ways you should be handling your watercolor paintbrush.
vertical hold
A vertical hold is a watercolor brush strokes technique that will help you create thin crisp lines.
You will want to hold your paintbrush closer to the ferrule (the metal part of the brush that holds the bristles) of the brush.
A round brush is best for using this technique. This type of brush has a tip. No matter how fat the belly is, on a round brush, there is a tip. If you are making shapes or lines, you will want to use this type of watercolor brush stroke.
For thin lines, a smaller brush like my favorite, a #2 round. You can even use a rigger brush, that has long thin bristles, but I find that #2 round works just fine. It’s all about how light you make your brush stroke. If you put a little pressure on it, you can achieve a thicker line.
Remember that you will want to make sure you have enough paint in the belly of the brush, but not dripping off the tip. The paint in the belly will travel down to keep your watercolor paint flowing as you create your line.
The lighter the pressure, the more thin crisp lines you will have. The heavier the pressure will bend the tip to give you a thicker line.
Slanted Hold
This watercolor brush stroke, slanted hold, is for blending, making thicker lines or even to soften your painting.
Just like it states, you will hold your brush on a slant using the belly of the brush to paint. If you are creating a wet-on-wet technique of a sky, you would use the slanted hold to spread your water before adding your pigment.
Let’s put these two techniques into practice. We will start with the single-stroke thin line.
Single Stroke Thin Line
As stated above, to make thin lines, you need a light touch and a vertical hold. You barely want to touch the paper. This can be a difficult technique to master, and I encourage you to practice. I still have issues with it, and need to do it several times on a separate watercolor sheet, to get the feel of how light I need to be holding my brush.
Take your watercolor paintbrush and first dip in your clean water, give a few taps on the side of the glass, and place in your pigment. Give it a few swirls to fill that belly of your brush. Remember, you don’t want it dripping and if you feel like some drops are going to happen, give it a quick light dab on your paper towel.
Holding your paintbrush near the ferrule, just above it, in a vertical position – straight up and down, use a light touch and move your arm across your paper, barely touching it. This requires practice until you feel comfortable with the movement of your arm.
Your arm must move with your hand and wrist. A lot of people tend to keep their arms still and just move their hands/wrists. You want the movement to go freely and that can be accomplished using this technique.
You can also make cute whiskers using this watercolor brush stroke!
Laurie’s Watercolor Tip:
Depending on what types of straight lines you need, I sometimes use a very thin-tipped Micron Pen to create whiskers and other items where I may be using black.
Single Stroke Thick Line
In this technique, you will be using the slanted watercolor brush stroke. You want to use the belly of the brush as you glide across your paper.
This stroke is good for making flower stems, petals, leaves, shapes, etc.
Practice by following the exercise in the image below.
Petals and Leaves
Now for the fun part! Let’s create some petals and leaves. We will be using the single stroke and the slanted stroke for this exercise.
When you are finished, you will be able to create simple flowers to create a beautiful bouquet!
Leaves – You will use the slanted stroke, but, you will start with the tip and move your vertical to a slanted and then back up to a vertical. I know it sounds too much like physical exercise, but trust me, it won’t hurt a bit.
Creativity takes courage
Henri Matisse
Petals – there are different types of petals, so we are going to focus on two types, a double-pointed petal and a petal that starts pointed and ends round. These two techniques will involve both vertical and slanted.
My first lesson in watercolors was with Sarah Cray, and we painted the back of an old truck filled with flowers. I began to learn the technique of creating petals and leaves. I fell in love with watercolors at that very moment. I envisioned at that time, being a floral watercolor artist, but have since discovered I do prefer landscape watercolor, as well as line and wash.
Let’s get a little more creative and add some curly vines shooting out. This will be your thin line stroke in a curly-q sort of way. Or a cute little pigs tail, whatever, let’s practice!
Follow the exercises below.
Laurie’s Watercolor Tip:
When creating leaves and petals, add a drop of a darker version of your colors while still wet, to enhance the outcome of your painting.
Shapes
Basic shapes can start with a vertical hold creating the outline of the shape. Then you will use a slanted hold to fill in or you can keep using the vertical. This will depend on how you want your finished object to look.
It is important to practice this watercolor brush stroke as you will at some point need to create circles, squares, triangles, etc in your watercolor paintings. You will more than likely create circles in many instances, especially if doing flowers.
Once you practiced the basic shapes, you will try geometric shapes to create patterns.
The exercise below will explain it even more.
Grasses & Whiskers
If you want to create landscapes or florals, learning how to create grass will be an important watercolor brush strokes to master. This will also be pretty much the same way you will make whiskers on an animal.
Vertical hold, with little to no pressure, and move your arm!
The one difference here is that it will not be a straight line most of the time. You will end your stroke with a flick of your wrist. The best way is to start at the bottom, work upward, and flick away from yourself. Make sure you are going in different directions and lengths as that is what would be natural.
Now it’s your turn to practice by following the exercise below.
If you notice in the exercise above, some of my whiskers are a bit thick. I will tell you why. I put too much pressure on my paintbrush! You can see the top set of whiskers are just the way I wanted them to be. The bottom whiskers got a little wonky. Guess what? That’s ok! Unless you are doing a commissioned painting for a client, or a very detailed animal, it may matter just a bit.
This is why I say practice, practice, practice before you place it on your actual painting. Always keep a piece of scrap watercolor paper along side you while painting to do those practice strokes.
Laurie’s Watercolor Tip:
When creating grasses, use different shades of the colors you are painting with to create highlights, contrast, and shadows.
The more you practice these watercolor brush strokes techniques, the better you will become. Will you still make mistakes? Of course, you will.
Watercolor does not have to be stressful. Once you learn the basics, you can grow in your skills as a watercolor artist.
For me, it is a relaxing hobby. A way to escape the trials of the day and immerse myself in my paintings. If I need inspiration, I just scroll through my photos of scenery that I always take while on vacation and try to recreate those images and the way I felt when I was there.
I also love to listen to light jazz instrumental music as it is soothing and helps me to go with the flow of my art.
I encourage you to practice the above exercises and find out where your strengths are and where your opportunities may be. My opportunities are making those whiskers!
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Stay Colorful, Stay Creative and HAVE FUN!
~Laurie
