3 watercolour floral art ideas to welcome Spring

October 17, 2020

Spring is in the air! Get inspired by the warm and bright mornings, watering your garden and spotting new flowers, and insects, birds and butterflies...

Aussie artist Tammy Klingner (@tambarambaa on Instagram) shares three Spring celebration art pieces to motivate you to create your own. Are you ready?

Idea number 1: Turquoise and green

Start by making your central flower on the left side of your mixed media paper using your turquoise watercolour brush pen on the petals. Then follow the shape of the flower and make organic lines of magenta and yellow.

Use the rest of the space to create flowers of different colours, but also, using a different shape as your main flower. This helps create contrast and make the main flower, pop!

Paint the backgound using the different shades of green that come in your watercolour brush pens set, and make watercolour effects using your water brush.

When you're happy with your watercolour base, use your black and white acrylic paint pens to make modulated lines. Let go of perfection and instead embrace the beauty of nature and use black and white lines to make your different floral elements come to life.

You can add different doodles too! Dots, stripes, circles - and even mix in extra colours, like Tammy did using her blue paint pen to add a dash of contrasting colour here and there.

Idea number 2: Graphic mandala flower

Start by lightly sketching your mandala flower idea into your mixed media paper, the mixed media cards are the perfect size to try this technique. For this piece, the main flower will sit in the middle, touching the edge of the sheet.

To make your mandala flower, think of a huge center and smaller, rounded petals. The center will have the mandala effect by layering concentric circles of lines and colour.

Just like we did on the previous project, think of differently shaped flowers and add leaves to make the background of your piece.

Don't be afraid to combine contrasting colours and flowers, in this case the leaves also help create a contrasting element.

Now that you coloured the flowers, move on to the background, using different tones of orange, yellow and a smidge of red.

When your watercolour base is dry, use your 3mm black paint pen to create the fantastic linework that will bring life to this Spring scene.

rCreate funky patterns with different thickness of lines, dots, squares, semi-circles and more!

Idea number 3: Purples and blues

This last idea, combines elements from the previous two! See if you can spot them!

Grab your mixed media card, and sketch the main purple flower on the edge of the paper. The center will also be decorated like a mandala, so think of stripes and different colours - in this case, in the same family of blues and purples.