How I Reworked and Softened My Watercolor Painting

This week, I brought out a flower painting I made three years ago and reworked it. Or I would rather say: softened it.

Here you can see the original version. In it, I had practiced a technique I teach in my course Freely Grown, where you start with watercolors and finish with colored pencils.

At the end of 2023, soon after finishing this piece, I had a clear vision of the kind of watercolors I wanted to start creating.

Expressing Joy and Comfort

I don’t want to bring the grand, worldly feel of my oil paintings into watercolor paintings. Instead, I want my watercolors to tell small, comforting stories about flowers that keep going through windy times—bringing joy to each other and to the viewer.

The flowers in my oil paintings are like wild beasts, divas, or eccentric characters.

But the flowers in my watercolors are like fairytale creatures or sweet pets.

With watercolors, I’m not telling an intense story about the birth of the world, but sharing a short bedtime story that lets you fall asleep with a peaceful heart.

Softening the Mood

In this project, I wanted to soften the mood of the original painting, turn the main flower toward the viewer, and remove the colored pencil completely. I started by erasing the pencil marks with an eraser. Then, I soaked the paper in water so the colors would fade. High-quality cotton paper is very durable, so it wasn’t damaged by this process at all. My current favorite brand is Arches.

Then, little by little, I began to paint the flowers into view. I worked slowly, without a clear idea of the exact story yet.

Step by step, the idea grew to add blue and balance it with some smaller red shapes.

I often add small treats to my watercolor pieces, often strawberries.

But they can be other things as well. Here I added a decorative key.

This time, I turned the red spots into raspberries. The raspberries became the main theme of the whole painting: the flowers are serving and eating them, even though autumn has already darkened the sky. I named this watercolor Myöhään kypsyneet (Late ripened).

How to Get the Softened Watercolor Painting

When you want to tell a sweet story and share a soft feeling, bring the elements closer to each other so that they are also directed towards each other.

Make most of the angular shapes rounder. You may first feel that your painting is full of roundness, but that’s not usually true. You may have straight stems, angular or pointy petals, and lots of outlined sharpness that isn’t soft at all. Pick a thin brush and slowly add tiny corrections!

Also, reduce business by removing unnecessary elements. Put most contrast in the middle, not near the edges. See how the atmosphere changed when I softened my painting.

Not All Art Has to Be Soft, but Some Needs to Be

If I paint these sweet little pieces all the time, I get bored and start longing for bigger adventures. But if I don’t paint them at all, the world starts to feel cold, and the only remedy is to come back to my “pets.”

I find it truly lovely when people buy these as gifts. It feels meaningful to be part of that chain of goodness passed from one person to another.

Have you reworked your old watercolor pieces? Would softening work for them?