CUTE & EASY! Painting Watercolor Trees [Perfect for Beginners Learning How to Paint!]

We're painting whimsical watercolor trees in today's mixed media tutorial! If you've never played with watercolor before, the loose watercolor painting technique featured in today's project, is perfect for beginners!

If you're new to watercolor, or have a new palette to swatch, make sure you grab my FREE Swatch Sheet so you can swatch your watercolors out before we get to the painting portion of today's project.  Simply click on the button below, and I'll send it straight to your email! ​

​Before we continue, super quick announcement: All product links are Affiliate. I may earn a small commission if you choose to order through these links, but by law, there is never any additional cost to the consumer for doing so. I thank you for your support!

Today's mixed media art book review is of Danielle Donaldson's Creative Girl: Mixed Media Techniques for an Artful Life. (If the book isn't available on Amazon, you can also find it here). I actually love this book so much I'm doing a painting project from it for my mixed media YouTube channel, and a drawing project for my drawing channel next week!!

I think seasoned artists will also love today's watercolor painting, especially if they're in the mood for a relaxing project that isn't gonna take all day! 

​Let's get started with the flip-through of Danielle's book...

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​What I love about Danielle Donaldson's watercolor art, is her light and airy touch. It's SO whimsical. She has a very dinstinct way of leaving white space throughout her paintings and illustrations, that I just love! You'll really begin to recognize that if you start to look for it. 

In this book, she opens with an overview on supplies, an adorable little project called "Stash Stations," and 3-4 pages of art challenges that you can use to break through creative block with a friend! Personally, I think these are just genius!​

Danielle fills her book with so many unique ideas to get your creativity rolling - from saving cutouts of words from books (so they're always ready to be turned into art journal quotes!), to cute new ways to illustrate watercolor girls with tutus and so much more. 

Throughout this book, Danielle also builds on projects from earlier chapters as the book progresses. I love how she helps us continue thinking about a project after we think it's "done," and turns it into a layer for a completely new project. 

Today I thought I'd try to do one of Danielle's projects from this book, in her style - allowing white of the paper to peak through my watercoloring!

​For me- this is WAY harder than it looks! LOL!  

I'm using hot pressed paper becuase it's nice and smooth for drawing.
To get us started, I'm taping my watercolor paper down to a clipboard, which is actually something Danielle taught me in one of her workshops!

Stick with me to the end of the video to see how beautiful the straight edged border looks around my painting after the blue tape is peeled away.

For the background, I'm trying to really do some loose watercolor painting in a "Danielle style" - keeping the shades I've selected very pastel.  

​The colors I'm using are by Daniel Smith and in a cute little travel watercolor palette I made from scratch! If you want to learn how to make one too - check out that fun tutorial. 

I hit the background for today's whimsical watercolor trees with my hair dryer to make sure it's fully dry, so I can starting drawing on top. I thought it might be fun to use my non-dominant hand (left!) to draw some cute little trees with wobbly lines. 

Next, I did a light wash of loose watercolor for each tree, and tried to leave those little white specks of the paper showing through, but it's hard! My instinct is to cover them up! ​

After the trees are painted and dry, I used my white sharpie paint pens to add outlines in a variety of thicknesses. I'm struggling to find one that works well or isn't dried out, so I decided to pull out this really cool gift my husband got me for Christmas from Copic. It's an opaque white and like a nail polish applicator. It does the trick perfectly and looks adorable. 

I totally felt the urge to do some pencil squiggles on top for a little more interest, followed by a few splatters of watercolor on top for a fun, artsy effect. Whenever you've got the urge to try something - you've gotta go with it! 

Make sure you WATCH today's video to see everything in action. I hope you learn something and have SO much FUN trying this at home!

If you'd like to learn a little more about drawing, I've got the PERFECT event coming up and would LOVE for you to attend! 

SIGN UP FOR MY ART RETRO RENDEZVOUS with this special link for just $15. Beginners welcome (even if you've NEVER drawn a thing before). It's 5 days, filled with 10 beginner drawing lessons for you to enjoy! Here's a sneak preview of the projects...

​I hope to see you there!!

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