🌼 One Simple Trick to Loosen Up Your Watercolor Style

DeElla Hoberg
Jul 23, 2025
2 min read

Say goodbye to stiff, overworked paintings—this fun technique will free your brush and your mind.

Ever feel like your watercolor paintings look tight or overworked? You're not alone! One of the most common struggles I hear from both beginners and seasoned creatives is this:

“I wish my paintings looked more loose and expressive.”

Here’s the good news: loosening up isn’t about changing your whole style—it’s about letting go of perfection and embracing a little play. This warm-up works for any medium!

🎨 My Go-To Trick: The “Messy Warm-Up”

Before I dive into a new painting, I take 5–10 minutes to paint something just for fun—something messy, abstract, and pressure-free.

Here’s how it works:

Play some fun music, stand up and move while you do this exercise.
Pick 2–3 colors you love (don’t overthink it).
Get your brush nice and wet—the wetter, the better.
Let the colors flow across the paper. Try big swooping strokes, flicks, splatters, or even blowing the paint around with a straw. Try pushing the paint around with different objects, other than a paintbrush. Try an old credit card to make lines, or even an ice cube to make mad puddles.
No outlines. No erasing. No goals. Just move the paint and see what happens.

Sometimes I add salt, ink, or scrap paper. Sometimes I use my non-dominant hand! The goal is to shake off the pressure to make “art” and just paint.

✨ Why It Works

It releases your inner critic before it can take over.
It gets you into the flow state—you’re painting, not thinking.
It warms up your hands and your creativity.

And the best part? Some of my “just for fun” warm-ups have turned into full paintings or even backgrounds for mixed-media work. Just an FYI, this is a great place to use paper scraps, that thoughtfully gifted paper that you just don't love. You can even experiment on different surfaces, not just watercolor paper. Try card stock, mixed media paper, old book pages, cardboard, etc.