Lazy Watercolor Blue Doodles: Beginner Friendly Tutorial

Hi everyone this is Nia and today I had a bit of a flare up but I'm still scheduled to paint so I'm going to just doodle with the color indigo. I think one of you noticed that this is one of my most used colors. I do really like the tone of this blue and I have one last spread in this sketchbook so I decided to paint a double page spread. Since this is just a watercolor doodle I'm not going to do any sketches. I'm going to paint straight away and here are the colors. This is grey of grey by Holbein, cerulean blue by Holbein, cobalt blue by Holbein, indigo by Schmincke and I'm also going to use blue proof white by Dr. Ph. Martens. For the second doodle I'm going to add crimson lake by Holbein and for some accents I'm going to use this gold palette by Finetec and to give some outlines I'm going to use this Faber-Castell watercolor colored pencil. You can use any colored pencil you have and I'm just using the darkest blue I have. You can of course doodle straight on the white paper but I want to create a bit of a blue background so I'm starting by dampening the surface and I'm going to use a mix of grey of grey with a bit of cerulean blue and I'm going to play with the ratio of these colors to create an uneven background. I'm just painting with a really light consistency here on top of the damp surface because I want the background to be light enough so I can still paint on top of it without distracting the main subject matters. Of course if you want clean frames you can also mask the edges but for me I wanted this to be very simple I didn't really want to put too much effort and I quite like a loose frame but it's completely up to you how you want to approach this and I'm also going to do the same thing for the next spread. Once I'm done I'm going to make sure both of the backgrounds are completely dry so anything I paint on top will have clean sharp edges and nothing will bleed out. For the first spread I'm going to paint some sardines, same type of fish painted horizontally and I'm just going to do a simple composition by alternating where they are facing and while painting these sardines I'm going to play with the consistency meaning the value of the paint as well as use different tones of blues from the choice of colors that I have here. If you are uncomfortable painting these sardines freehand of course you can also draw them out first with pencil very lightly but to break it down I like to think of a very long eye shape with a small tail on one end. Now for the colors you have two choices you can dampen the silhouette first before applying different colored paint like what I'm doing here but personally I prefer to just continue painting and connecting the damp paint with different tones or you can even use both techniques together whatever you find is easier to do. It will also look cute if you feel like it's a bit too confusing to connect all the different colors together and just do full flat colors as silhouettes then you can add different doodles with different mediums on top like colored pencils, gouache, crayons, anything you can think of so you don't have to do this the exact same way. I in fact encourage you to experiment and paint according to your intuition and you'll find it more relaxing this way. Of course you also don't need to paint this all blue you can do this with any color combinations that you like but here I'm just going to continue painting the fishes until I fill the page. The last fish I painted here I feel like it's a bit too dark and I worry that the doodles won't show through unless I just use white so we decided to take off a little bit with tissue then spread the rest and once I'm done I'm going to dry everything off so I can doodle right on top of it freshly. Firstly I'm going to paint the eyes I'm going to use bleed proof white and I'm going to paint quite large circles for the base while I wait for the eyes to dry I'm going to use a thick consistency of indigo or any dark blue that you have and paint on some facial details. Here I decided to add fins for the top of the fishes and for the tails I decided to add some lines as well for the texture. I'm going to use a thick consistency of indigo for the lighter base as for the darker colored tails I'm going to use bleed proof white for these lines. Now it's time to doodle I'm just going to use either a thick consistency of indigo or cobalt blue and I'm just going to paint on some scales or some circles lines or anything you can basically think of. You can also use different mediums for this if you like like colored pencils for a slightly different texture but since I'm just keeping this simple I'm going to stick with my paint for now. I feel like I have enough for now but you can always add on more later on so next I'm going to paint on the eyes since indigo is quite a dark color if I use a really thick consistency it will almost look like it's black so that's the color that I used but you can also use a black marker or a black pen for the eyes. Now with more bleed proof white I'm going to add more details and doodles on the fishes as well. I feel like the background is a bit empty so I decided to draw on some bubbles this time I'm going to use my colored pencil because I find it a bit difficult to draw outlines of circles using my paintbrush it's much quicker and easier this way and I'm also going to add some finer line details using this pencil as well. Next I'm going to create bigger bubbles using my paintbrush. This is a light blue mix from gray of gray and a bit of indigo and cerulean blue. I'm just going to try to fill in the page and I'm going to pair this up with full circles as well with a full flat color. Okay the page is quite full and I'm pretty happy with it for now so I'm going to move on to the next doodle and for this one I'm going to paint it more intuitively. For both of these doodles I actually didn't have any reference at all. I wasn't even sure what I was going to paint before I filmed this and turned on my camera but I guess to pair with the sardines I'm going to paint some coral reefs. Now at the bottom I just painted on some blobs using different consistencies but mostly light because I'm going to build on the layer slowly. Like I mentioned I didn't really have anything planned so I just kind of made things up and I'm just going to somewhat follow the blobs and maybe create some other coral shapes and see how it goes from there. For this one since I just basically drawed an outline I'm going to try to darken one side to separate one side from the other. I was trying to create something else here but I felt like my paper was generally too wet for me to paint anything with a sharp edge so I decided to dry it off first then I'm going to somewhat sketch out other shapes. I didn't really know how I was going to approach this here so I just started adding some marks and doodles inside the spaces. I just thought if I don't like it I'll just add water and blur it into the background anyway so I kind of just followed the movement of my hands before thinking and just painted any markings I felt like making. Since I've painted in medium to light tones so far I'm going to use a thicker consistency for darker value. I really love painting trees and branches in general so I painted more of these branchy corals and I just wanted to paint lines in general so at the bottom I'm also going to add curvy line markings for the reef and I'm going to create some cross contour lines as well to give it some volume. I just love painting lines at least I really felt like painting lines mindlessly here and I love the feeling when the paint flows so well out of my brush but if you find it a little bit hard to control you can also use markers for these doodles. Here I started to feel like the doodle overall is quite muted so I decided to use a lighter blue again this time I mixed some cerulean blue for a brighter tone. At this point I just felt like filling up the page with more lines so this time I'm adding some vertical lines as you need. Then looking at this everything feels a bit bulky but I'm just going to keep adding more and more since I still feel like doodling. Here I've decided to switch to my colored pencils to add more delicate details with finer lines to hopefully lighten the composition. Another attempt here is by introducing a completely different color I thought that crimson lake would bring a nice contrast but the tone is still a bit muted like the blue so it's still cohesive altogether and I'm just going to spread it randomly to enhance some spaces and for some details I like to mix it with a bit of cobalt blue to create some purple hues as well. I quite like the addition of crimson lake that I've painted so far but I feel like the values are a bit too similar to each other now so I've decided to introduce darker values again to add layers and separate some of the shapes that I've painted. Here I thought I might as well fill every single space I have on this page so I decided to use some gray of gray mixed with cerulean blue to paint some water texture in the background. The page is pretty full now so I'm going to use bleed proof white to brighten the doodle further. I also decided to use my size zero brush this time so the white details are nice and delicate. This coral at the back has been bothering me somehow I feel like it's kind of making the background look a little bit crowded so I'm going to try to give it a bit more attention so it doesn't blend further into the background as I add more details to the other corals bringing them forward. But since there's a dark coral in front I don't want to distract the coral by also bringing up the value so instead I've outlined it with colored pencil and I'm just going to see how it goes from here. I still wasn't happy with this coral yet so I had another idea which is to paint only the tips with some crimson lake and then softening the blend so we only pay attention to the ends or the tips of this coral instead of the whole thing which will hopefully in turn trick our eyes and give it some relief so the shapes of these corals won't fight and clash into each other. Lastly I'm going to add some gold accents to bring the two doodles together and I also just like a bit of sparkle in general I just find it fun to look at so I'm just going to create some small doodles and outlines and I feel like this will be my last step. I'm just going to darken this part of the coral so the folds are a bit more distinct and that's basically it. I had a really relaxing time doodling these and I hope they'll be a good way for you to relax as well. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, ideas on what you would do differently and like usual the list of tools as well as my social media links will be in the description box. Thank you so much for watching till the end and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye!