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Geometric Watercolor Thank You Card Tutorial
Rich colors and an engaging pattern make this thank you card fun to create and pleasing to the eye! Don’t be intimidated if you aren’t comfortable using watercolors; this is a perfect watercolor beginner project.
If you’re new to watercolor, this vivid thank you card is the perfect project to teach you about blending! To make it, you’ll start by drawing a series of simple shapes in pencil, fill them in with watercolor, and end with some calligraphy on the bottom. Keep reading for more detailed instructions!
1. Get a Blank Watercolor Card
You’ll want to start with a blank card made out of watercolor paper. You can DIY one by folding a piece of watercolor paper in half, or you can purchase premade cards.
I always keep a stack of premade blank watercolor cards around! The cards are sturdy, and you can apply a variety of mediums to them (not just watercolor). 2. Draw Horizontal Guidelines
Use a ruler and a pencil to draw light horizontal guidelines about 5/6 of the way down the card. Make your guidelines in groups of two (a top line and a bottom line), and separate each guideline pair by about 1/8″ (3 mm). My guidelines pairs are, from the top down, 3/4″ apart, 1/2″ apart, 1″ apart, 3/4″ apart, 1/2″ apart, and 1″ apart. Don’t forget to leave space at the bottom of the card, as that’s where you’ll write the greeting!
A parallel glider makes easy work of drawing guidelines like these! 3. Draw Shapes
Fill in the first guideline pair with a series of shapes. The shapes can follow a consistent pattern — as mine do here — or you can draw them in a random order.
My pattern goes as follows: horizontal rectangle, two triangles, vertical rectangle, circle, square, two triangles, and so on, and so forth. Feel free to switch your pattern up, or try out some different shapes! Continue to draw shapes until you have filled in all of the guideline pairs.
Be sure to draw faint pencil shapes; you don’t want them showing through the watercolor in the finished project. I made my shapes a bit darker than I should so they show up well in photos! 4. Add Watercolor
You are going to use a very simple blending technique to add vivid bursts of color to this thank you card. To start, moisten two shades of green (a light and a dark), a light and a dark shade of blue, and a light and a dark shade of brown.
This is an early edition 24-color palette from Greenleaf & Blueberry. I moistened Perylene Green, Serpentine Green, Mayan Dark Blue, Antwerp Blue, Sepia, and Bloodstone. Moisten a size 2 or 3 paintbrush, and use your dark green value to fill in the left side of the shape in the upper left of the card.
Moist paintbrushes have their size engraved on the handle. If you don’t see a size, just know that you’ll be fine using a small/medium brush! While the paint is still wet, fill in the rest of the shape with light green. The two colors should meld together perfectly!
Make sure the dark green color is still wet when you apply the light green! If you want to read up on blending before you attempt this tutorial, give Painting with Watercolors for Beginners a look. Repeat the blending process to fill in the next two shapes with the blue values and the brown values, respectively.
The blending process is the same for the blues and the browns: start with the darker value, then blend the lighter value into it to fill out the shape. Continue to fill in the shapes. As you fill them in, try to stay loyal to the color repetition order: green, blue, brown, green, blue, brown, etc.
Halfway there! 
When you finish this step, your thank you card should look something like this. 5. Add Paintbrush Calligraphy
The thing that makes this card a thank you card versus any other kind of card is, of course, its greeting. You can use the blank space at the bottom of the card to write “thanks” (or any other message) in pencil.
After you worked so hard to fill in the shapes with watercolor, you don’t want to ruin this thank you card with a botched greeting! That’s why I encourage you to make a pencil draft first. 🙂 Load your paintbrush with watercolor in the same color repetition order that you used for the shapes. Use those colors to go over your pencil draft calligraphy. Make sure you apply a little more pressure on downstrokes so you can achieve some stroke variation!
If you’re new to paintbrush lettering, try reading this article. If you’d prefer to write using a dip pen and watercolor calligraphy, that’s an absolutely acceptable alternative! Once you finish writing, wait for your watercolor to dry. With watercolor, that doesn’t take long — just a couple of minutes! When the watercolor is dry, use an eraser to get rid of all your pencil guidelines.
The whimsical Kaitlin Style calligraphy at the bottom of this card offers a pleasing contrast to the geometric theme!
I love this thank you card because of its deep, rich colors and interesting pattern! The geometric pattern concept, of course, could be applied to several other projects as well. Try making a sketchbook page of shapes, incorporate them into a bullet journal or mail art, or use them to make artwork for your home! Feel free to switch up the shape types and colors to fit your project and preferences.
I hope that you enjoyed this simple thank you card project, and that you have a fantastic and creative weekend! I’ll be spending the weekend working on the TPK Modern Calligraphy eCourse (you can read more about it here), which I’m very excited to release on March 16th. Thanks so much for reading TPK, and let me know if you have any questions about this tutorial!
Warmly,
