Happy Valentine's Day!  So when I first noticed watercolor, it was because of the blending.  Those color shifts from dark to light and the textures, they sucked me in.  You're probably feel the same way and want to learn how to do this yourself so let me walk you through a bit.

A fun exercise to do is to actually paint with the water first in the shape that you want to create.  Here I painted hearts with just water.  Making sure the entire heart shapes were still wet (and touching), start to drop paint into the water puddles.  The really fun part is mixing colors together.  Just adding a touch of  yellow to red will make a different color, adding more water will make that color lighter.  So just play with the color combos but quickly, because the heart water shape needs to stay wet.  

Then when you get to the area where the hearts are touching, push it a little so the color moves over into the new heart.  Then just keep dropping in colors.  Think about it like you are dividing the hearts into quarters, then drop in a different color of paint in each quarter.  Changing from lighter to darker, back and forth. 

Then when you are done, finish it off with a sprinkle of table salt for some texture.  It is so important to LET YOUR PAINT BE.  Just drop paint in, let it mix naturally and move on to painting another area.  You don't want the colors to over mix and fully blend if you want to see transitions and different colors in your painting.

I hope this helped and I hope you try it.  So so much fun.

Let me know if you tried it below and also what you would like to see next. 

I have the perfect beginner's painting set up listed right here too.  Happy painting!