Gorgeous Gold and Watercolor Flowers Tutorial

In today’s tutorial, we’ll work some magic to make watercolor flowers that shimmer and dance in the light! Put on a good podcast or some music, get out your watercolors, and get ready to relax.

1. Make a Pencil Draft

First, use a compass or trace around a circular object with a pencil. It’s best to do this on watercolor paper or a blank watercolor card, which is what I’m using for this tutorial.

Pencil Draft of Floral Illustration — Try to draw a faint circle here because you’ll eventually erase this line.

Next, use a pencil to draw some roses and stems. If you don’t know how to draw roses, that’s okay! Just try to mimic the illustrations in the photos below:

2. Add Watercolor

Now, get out a watercolor palette (I’m using a Winsor & Newton set of 12), and moisten a red hue, a deep blue hue, and two green hues. Use the red hue to fill in some of your flowers with a small-ish paintbrush.

Adding Watercolor to the Flowers Illustratio — I used a size 2 paintbrush and Rose Madder watercolor to fill in these two flowers.

Next, use a dark blue hue (like Prussian Blue) to fill in the rest of the flowers.

Once the paint has dried, go over some areas of the flowers again with more of the same color of paint. This will add some darker, dramatic areas to the flowers.

Now, use two different tones of green (a light tone and a dark tone) to fill in the leaves and stems.

Adding Watercolor to the Flowers Illustration — I used Viridian Hue and Sap Green for this step.

3. Go for the Gold

Once your watercolor paint has completely dried, moisten a pan of gold watercolor (I like Arabic Gold), and apply it to a Nikko G nib as shown in the Creating Gold Calligraphy: How to Use the Finetec Palette tutorial. Then, trace over your pencil lines with that fabulous gold!

Adding Gold to the Floral Illustration — I like to use a Nikko G nib for this step because it is capable of making consistent, thin lines.

Keep tracing over the pencil lines with your gold until you’ve covered everything. (Notice that I erased my circular pencil guideline in the middle of this step. You can do this at any time as long as your watercolor is dry!)

Next, use a small (size 0-ish) paintbrush to apply gold dots to the flowers and leaves. The pattern you use is up to you! We’re just trying to add some personality with this step.

Continue to “dot” the florals and leaves until you’re satisfied with the result, then you’re finished!

I used this motif to create a multipurpose watercolor flowers greeting card, but you can use the design for anything! It would be right at home in a sketchbook or a bullet journal, for example. Feel free to play with the colors and the pattern; this is a general concept that you can’t go wrong with!

Thanks very much for reading this short tutorial! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments. I’m wishing you a wonderfully creative weekend, one that hopefully includes a fun project or two!

Warmly,