Pattern Play: My Favorite Beginner Watercolor Practice
I’ve been experimenting with watercolor for a couple of months now, and honestly, it’s something I was a very intimidated by at first. Something that really helped me start using my supplies instead of just admiring them was a book I found at my local bookstore.
I had stopped in hoping to find some beginner watercolor inspiration, and one book immediately jumped out at me. It’s called Modern Watercolor Workshop: Learn to Paint Geometric Shapes, Floral Designs, and Other Repeat Patterns – A Calm & Creative Approach by Pooja Kenjale-Umrani. The cover alone was so beautiful that I picked it up, flipped through it for a few minutes, and decided to take it home. And I’m so glad I did!
What I’ve loved most about the book so far is that many of the projects focus on repeat patterns and simple shapes. They’re not complicated paintings you’re trying to perfect — they’re small exercises that encourage you to relax, experiment, and enjoy the process.
And that’s where I discovered something I’ve really been enjoying lately – pattern play!
Why Painting Patterns is Such a Great Beginner Watercolor Exercise
One thing that has helped me a lot with watercolor is working in a sketchbook. When you open a sketchbook, there’s automatically less pressure. You’re not trying to create a finished piece that needs to hang on the wall or turn into a product. It’s just a space to experiment.
Pattern exercises are perfect for this. Instead of worrying about painting a specific subject — like a flamingo or a sailboat or a perfect flower — you’re simply repeating shapes over and over again.
That repetition lets you focus on the fundamentals of watercolor:
How much water is on your brush
How much paint you're picking up
How the pigment spreads on the paper
How colors interact when they touch
You start to learn how watercolor behaves without feeling like you're “messing up” a painting.
Playful Bubbles - Circle Pattern Project
One of the first exercises in the book is incredibly simple: painting circles. Just circles!
At first it sounds almost too simple, but it turns out painting a clean circle with a watercolor brush is actually harder than you’d think.
I filled a page in my sketchbook just painting circles over and over again. As they started to overlap and touch, the colors blended together in these really beautiful ways, creating watercolor blooms (sometimes called “cauliflowers”) where the pigments spread into each other. Watching that happen is honestly half the fun.
It becomes this relaxing rhythm of painting one shape after another and just observing how the paint moves on the page. After a while you stop worrying about how it looks and start enjoying the process itself. It becomes meditative.
Enjoying Creative Moments With Family
At one point while I was doing this exercise, my daughter walked into the room and asked what I was painting, and she immediately wanted to join. So we grabbed her sketchbook and her little set of paints and she started painting circles too. And it was actually the perfect activity for a kid to jump into because there’s no pressure to make something recognizable. You're not trying to copy a specific image — you’re just exploring shapes and colors.
It turned into a really sweet little creative moment that we got to share together.
Line Pattern Project
Another pattern exercise I tried from the book involved painting parallel lines.
In the example from the book, the artist uses thin washi tape to create a grid on the paper. Once the tape is removed, it leaves behind these clean squares filled with watercolor lines.
I didn’t have any skinny washi tape on hand, so I decided to just improvise. Instead of making a perfect grid, I started painting curved, organic sections of parallel lines across my page. The result ended up looking really loose and almost tropical — like abstract foliage or leaves layered together in different shades of green.
And honestly, that’s another reason I love doing these exercises in a sketchbook. There’s freedom to adapt things and see where they go. Sometimes the unexpected version ends up being the most interesting.
Rediscovering the Joy of Making Art
One thing this practice has reminded me of is how important it is to create art just for the joy of it.
For a long time, most of the art I was making was connected to my shop — designing things that would eventually become stickers, prints, or other products. And while I love doing that, it can sometimes shift your mindset into production mode. Pattern play has been a way for me to reconnect with the simple act of painting.
No pressure. No expectations. Just paint, water, paper, and curiosity. And honestly, it’s been really refreshing.
Try Pattern Play Yourself!
If you're new to watercolor (or just feeling creatively stuck), pattern play is such a fun place to start. Grab a sketchbook and try filling a page with repeating shapes like:
circles
dots
leaves
lines
triangles
simple brush marks
Let the shapes overlap and allow the colors to blend into each other naturally. Focus less on how the page looks and more on how the paint behaves as you work.
You might be surprised how relaxing it is!
