I love to draw doodles when I’m listening either at a meeting on the phone or wherever there is pen and paper in front of me. I also found that when I don’t know what to watercolor, I just start painting random shapes and images. Stick around with me as I show you how to turn your doodles into watercolor art!
Let’s talk about it!
Materials Needed To Create Your Doodles
To get started on making your watercolor doodles, let’s make sure you have all the necessary tools to be successful.
- Watercolor paper – cold-pressed is best for this project
- Watercolor paint – I used pan paints, but tube watercolor paints will be just fine as well
- Paintbrushes – I suggest a #2 round and a #8 round
- Painter’s Tape – to tape your edges if you choose to do so
- Micro or Micron Pen – for outlining – the finer the better
- Pencil and eraser if needed for sketching
- Rinse water cups
The list is not very long, and you probably already have your supplies in hand. Make sure you are working in a comfortable and well-lit space. Also, make sure your surface areas are protected if you have furniture you don’t want to paint to accidentally spill or splatter onto.
For more information on setting up your watercolor workspace, I wrote an entire post about it! Let’s get started.
Embrace Your Doodling Style
What type of doodles do you like to draw? Are you a shapes doodler? How about funky animals or flowers? No matter what you like to doodle you can use that for your art inspiration.
When you sit down with your paints and paper and don’t know what to watercolor, just start making random shapes, washes, colors, etc. When your paper is dry, just start creating doodles all over it! Or do the flip side, start doodling on your watercolor paper and paint over top of your doodles.
Watercolor doesn’t have to be perfect and there is no right or wrong way. If it makes you happy, that is all that matters. Embrace your doodles and your watercolors.
Selecting Your Doodles
You may have a specialty of doodles you like to draw or sketch out. Think about how you may want to incorporate them into your watercolors.
For me, I love to make asterisks, straight lines, dots, circles, random flower-like drawings, etc. So if I am going to add them to my paintings, I will want to plan them out ahead of time and figure out which doodles would match what I had in mind to paint. I keep a stack of my doodles from when I am on the phone, or at a meeting and I doodle to concentrate if that even makes any sense.
I then refer to those doodles if I want to use them in my watercolor and look at which doodles go together, what type of background I may want to use etc.
Another great type of doodle is geometric shapes. Either painting them or drawing them or doing both in the same painting would do nicely. One of our tutorials below has you making shapes and then making another shape over the top of it with your doodle pen. Such fun!
So think about and doodle your favorite doodles and we will get started on some sample watercolor paintings I created just for you!
Circles and Lines
You can choose to tape your watercolor paper down or leave it as is. I always tape mine with painter’s tape to have borders if I need them. Plus, my paper will buckle if it gets too wet. The tape helps keep it from buckling too much.
Grab some paint using wet-on-dry and start making circles varying in height and size. A good thing to remember when drawing or painting is to always vary your heights and sizes. Putting them all in a straight line with no variation will make it a bit boring. It’s like little soldiers all in a row, unless you want all of your soldiers in a row, you do you.
Once you have all of your circles, grab another watercolor hue and make lines straight down. They may resemble trees or flowers, but the choice is yours. Honestly, you could have painted squares or triangles or just blobs and that would have been ok. It’s your painting, you are the artist.
Allow it to dry completely before you move on to the next step. When using a micro pen, if the paint is wet, it might smudge. Or if you are like me, will put your arm or hand right on the wet paint and have what we call a “happy accident”, although those accidents don’t always make me happy.
Now add your doodles with your micro pen! I am very free and easy when I do this, so I don’t always have straight lines or perfect items. I am not going for perfection, I am going for fun, out-of-the-box creating!
Side note: if my father were doing this his zig zags would have been perfect, his circles would have been completely round, etc. He was an engineer and when it came to things like this, he was very to the point about it. Good grief, it would take him hours to hang my moms pictures on walls, because everything was measured out to a T, but I digress. Let’s move on.
I just let it go however my pen or brush wants to go. If you are a perfectionist, that’s ok! Make those lines straight and the circles completely round. As I said earlier, there is no right or wrong. You do you, you be you.
Let’s look at another version of circles and blobs. I had so much fun doing this as I didn’t have to think, I just put them in random places and random sizes, but I did have a color palette in mind of blues and greens.
In this one, I made all sorts of objects, from leaves and flowers to asterisks, to little circles, lines and dots, etc. Is there any rhyme or reason to it? Heck no! That is what I love about watercolor doodles! You can do ANYTHING!
Remember, you do not need to strive for perfection. All of this will help even the beginner learn how their paints react together, trying different techniques, etc. I have been writing a series for homeschool parents on pre-k to 3rd grade watercolor lessons, and this is one of the first things I like to incorporate to the little ones when learning to paint.
I start with painting shapes and playing with colors and also to learn how to hold the brush, learn colors and shapes, etc. My series is called Young Artists. It is quite fun to write and come up with fun lesson plans.
Time to move on to some pre-doodling before laying down any paint.
Doodle Flowers
With this doodle, you will draw your doodles first and paint last. I decided to make these random flowers (I like the word random in case you haven’t noticed). Again, different heights and sizes.
Doodle your best flowers, add some stems and leaves and you are ready to paint. First, put a wash over the background. You can do wet-on-wet, or wet-on-dry it’s up to you.
Allow that to completely dry before the next step of painting the flowers and leaves. I purposely stayed in line with the flowers to emphasize them. Another variation you could try is to make long curly vines and add some leaves. Use your imagination.
No matter what you choose to do, this is just one idea. Take this and run with it! You could turn this into a greeting card, or make a larger version, frame and hang for some pretty snazzy wall art!
There are other doodles you can draw first and paint after and I encourage you to use your favorite doodles, sketch them on your watercolor paper, and let your imagination go wild with paint.
Square Pegs
Since we made circles earlier, let’s do squares. I wanted a Sherbert color palette, so yellow, orange, and pink it is. Once again I made random square shapes (or close enough to a square).
Once completely dried, I drew boxes around my squares with my micro pen. I didn’t want all of the squares to have the doodled square always center with the watercolor square. So once again, my favorite word – random.
Draw in some of your favorite doodles like flowers, leaves, etc. How fun is all of this!
Not every painting needs to be a landscape, or misty mountain, a sunset, a portrait, etc. Have fun with your art and dive into a whole different style. It relieves stress since you don’t need to think. If you are thinking too much, you aren’t doodling. Just be… say it with me… random.
What do you think I should do with my doodle watercolor art? I love the top left because it reminds me of spring and when all the trees and flowers begin to bloom. I may make copies and create some blank cards for get well or cheer you up cards. The five flowers in a row would make a nice addition to my floral watercolor gallery, and the bottom two would be fun to create a pattern within Canva.
I did make a tutorial on how you can use Canva to create other things with your watercolor doodles! Click the Watch Here! button for a very quick tutorial.
I sell digital planners and printables on my Etsy Shop and I can’t wait to use my patterns for my new and upcoming products!
If you have questions on any of the watercolor techniques used above, I wrote an article on watercolor techniques for you to check out.
Stay Colorful, Stay Creative, and HAVE FUN!
~Laurie
