Hi everyone! This is Ali from @according.to.ali! I’m so excited to share my very first attempt at watercolor painting with you! We’re going to tackle a pretty spring floral pattern in the simplest way. I haven’t painted in years and I have never used watercolors. When Archer & Olive announced they were going to release watercolor palettes I took it as a sign to try something new!

This is a beginner level project and I’m sure everyone can do it! Let’s get started!

Floral Watercolor Painting Supplies

Here’s what you’ll need to make your pretty flower painting:

• Archer & Olive Watercolor Notepad
• Archer & Olive Watercolor Palettes I’m using Warm and Jewel
• A round brush and a fine detail brush
• A fine tip pen
• Water and paper towel

Project Steps

The basic paint strokes involved in this tutorial are lines and blobs. Sounds easy enough, right? Try to imagine the most basic shape a flower takes: petals, stem, center, and leaves. We’re going to show each part as some abstract color on the paper and then add details with the pen later.

I chose to use lavender, daisies, and anemones for inspiration. Lavender has a long thin stem with clusters of small petals going up the stem. Daisies are the easiest, I just painted the yellow pollen and a stem, saving the petals for the pen. Finally, my anemone is a more circulate shape with shades of pink.

Pay attention to how opaque or transparent you’d like the paint to look. The more water you use, the more transparent.

After your paint dries you’re going to take your fine tip pen and draw the details. I like the imperfect look so I draw quickly, forgetting about tracing the paint and lifting my pen throughout the strokes. As you build the pen on top of the flower you can see your flower form!

Once you’ve practiced the basic shapes and lines of your flowers, then you can create your pattern. I chose to make a bouquet style cluster but you can make a more linear pattern like a garland if you’d like!

This project is so fun and versatile. Just varying the flower, color, and season and you’ll have a completely different look!

How do you like the final product?

Paint along with me here!

I hope you try your own watercolor floral pattern! It’s ok if it’s still intimidating. I included a printable of the lined flowers so you can just fill them in with paint, markers, or color pencils! Thanks so much for following along! Be sure to find me on Instagram @according.to.ali and use AALI10 on all your Archer & Olive orders!