Watercolor Tutorials for Beginners: Where to Start Learning to Paint

There are thousands of watercolor tutorials for beginners out there, from youtube videos to articles. This can make it tricky to know where to start and which tutorials are worth your time. Here I’ve gathered the best watercolor tutorials that have personally helped me improve my skills as a beginner both in color mixing, brush use, and technique. See the video tutorials below to find the ones that speak to you.

I have a guide for Watercolor Painting for Beginners if you’d like to learn about paint, brushes, paper, and the basics of getting started.

Basics

If you’re curious about watercolor, but feel overwhelmed and need someone to go over everything with hand-on steps, this is the first place to start. These videos are geared toward watercolor for beginners and have really useful information when it comes to watercolor tips, techniques, and need-to-know information.

Tips & Techniques

These watercolor tips and techniques video tutorials go over common brush strokes, shading, contouring, glazing, how to make a color chart, and ways to make details pop. I especially find this extremely useful if yu like to create realistic watercolor art and are drawn to animals and botanical illustrations.

Anna Bucciarelli has wonderful free watercolor tutorials on Youtube, as well as a book if you’d like to check her out. She is personally a favorite and makes watercolor accessible to anyone looking to try out this medium. I also find she discusses tips and tricks for watercolor painting, mixing color, and methods that are not mentioned in other watercolor for beginners formats.

Color & Color Mixing

Landscapes & Architecture

I have to admit, I’m not a landscape or architecture person when it comes to watercolor. I prefer to focus on animals and botanicals. But there are still wonderful way in which you can explore this technique. It’ll teach you how to layer color, how to do watercolor washes, the effectiveness of glazing, and how to choose a watercolor palette.

Painting landscapes tend to be looser and more free-formed, allowing the watercolor to mix on the page in wet-on-wet technique. This is a great place to start if you prefer more abstract paintings and don’t want to focus so much on the minute details, but still end up with a beautiful watercolor painting.

Plants & Flowers

Plants and flowers are one of the most popular watercolor beginner tutorials out there. This is because they are easy to create loosely without sketches simply by using different brushes or techniques, and allow you to layer to create realism if you desire. I encourage you to try out a variety of styles until you find one that fits you and you enjoy creating.

I recommend starting with the translucent video tutorial below by Emma Jane Lefebvre if you’re simply looking to try your hand at something that is easy and takes little time to achieve. It is also monochromatic and requires few materials. Another artist who has both a Youtube channel and book is Olga Koelsche shows this technique more in depth.

Fruits & Vegetables

Nianiani’s Youtube Channel has really great and easy tutorials for beginners. I personally love how she breaks things down into a step-by-step process that isn’t daunting. She also shows you how to do very basic sketches that you can easily replicate. This is essential for watercolor beginners because if you want to improve your watercolor skills, having an outline to follow can be very helpful. It has also helps you create more life-like pieces in just a few short steps. I’ve included other Youtube channels I like: Emily Olson Art who also offers more simple realism in watercolor, and Shayda Campbell who shows you how to do loose wet-on-wet watercolor painting, not pre-sketching required!

Insects & Animals

I recommend Alyson Lyon Art Youtube Channel when it comes to watercolor tutorials for beginners. She has wonderful watercolor tutorials that you can follow along with and often includes outlines that you can trace so you don’t have to sketch the subject ahead of time. They’re a wonderful way to improve your skills.

Portraits

I will start off by saying that unless you have previous drawing skills, watercolor portrait painting is not a jump-right-in skill. It is something that must be learned, but is achievable. That is why I’ve included some tips here in case this is where you find yourself drawn to. As someone who is a self-taught artist and does art studies regularly, it is very easy to learn to sketch and draw with consistency and tutorials. In a short 3 months, I was going from loose, abstract watercolor paintings to full realism. Color mixing for skin tones if perhaps the biggest technique to learn here and practice.

Below are great videos to break down techniques.

Food

If you’re looking for more cozy watercolor painting ideas, food where it’s at in my humble opinion!