Thrifty Valentine Vase Tutorial
Whether you turn this into a card for someone else or just do it for the love of painting and play - this tutorial is easy on time with a super cute result for Valentine’s or any other day. You don’t need to be a drawing expert to sketch out these simple shapes and all of the marks are quite loose and sketchy in feel - so no perfection here!
If you are new to watercolour and need help with choosing materials, I have a free guide here
Materials required for thrifty Valentines vase painting :
Watercolour paints - I’ve used my Schmincke Horadam Aquarell Paint Set
Pencil for sketching
A5 or A4 piece of mixed media or watercolor paper ( I used Canson 200gsm mixed media)
Paintbrushes - I used my KUM Memory Point Artist Brushes R2 (the finest brush you have will do if your smallest brush is 6-8 try working on an A4 paper instead of A5
Water - in a vessel for painting
Paint palette
🎨Step One: Picking your colour palette
Pick 4 -5 colours you’d like to use for your piece and mix them into your palette. These could be different shades of the same colour or different colours, it’s completely up to you! A cohesive palette with immediately bring more of an intentional theme to your piece.
🎨Step Two: Sketch out your thrifty vessels/vases
Sketch out your thrifty vessels/vases in some fun shapes & sizes you can use the above as references if you like or pull up references of your own.
🎨Step Three: Start sketching your flowers
Use the tip of your brush like a pencil and keep lines loose & sketchy. You can slightly add some pressure to the tip of your brush to make lines thicker. This is a playful piece so loose and sketchy is what we are going for! For rose-like flowers do loose circles that overlap one another to look like layers of petals.
🎨Step Four: Fill in colours and details for your vessels/vases
Working with your colour palette you can fill in the various vessels holding your flowers. Play with the contrast of leaving some outlined in colour only for a light-hearted, joyful feel. Lines and dots are great simple decorative strokes to makes vases interesting.
🎨Step Five & Six: Trim to the desired size and add a border
Trim to card size or whatever you desire and as a last touch add crosses and lines to make a cute valentine themed border. Again the wobbly-ness of lines gives it a playful handmade feel that is cute and compliments the sketchy florals so don’t worry if they aren’t perfectly straight!
I hope you enjoy this playful tutorial on thrifty valentine vases! I’d love to celebrate what you create so please tag me if you post on Instagram with @watercolour_heart_illustration or #withhearttutorial