How to use watercolor vectors to give new life to your graphics

January 11, 2018

The advancement of digital art can sometimes surprise you with what it has to offer, and what can be achieved. Computer generated textures that mimic real painting techniques are not a new phenomenon, but they sure are a practical one! When you search for “watercolor” on freepik you get over 500 pages of results. There are all sorts of watercolor graphics, digital ones and scanned real ones, backgrounds, patterns and illustrations. These can be used in all sorts of different ways!

Watercolor Basics

For the sake of clarity, let’s define exactly what watercolor are. Watercolors are water based paints that can either come in tubes or pastilles. They are aptly called watercolors because you use water to dilute the paint and apply it on paper in varying intensities. The more water you use, the lighter the color will be. A well-known characteristic of watercolor is the way it dries on paper, leaving strong lines of where the water stopped on the paper. That is how the infamous watercolor blobs are made.

Different watercolor designs can represent different feelings and sensations depending on the colors and intensities

Soft washes in pink and red colors transmit the idea of spring, cleanliness and femininity.
Strong blue and turquoise stains transmit the idea of the ocean and the seaside.
Black watercolor splashes can give a sense of strong and powerful ideas.
Red, orange and yellow splatters give a sense of sunsets and fall.
Watery light blue horizontal brush strokes can represent summer sky.

Watercolor Backgrounds, Blobs, Splashes, Swatches, Stains and Splatters

Watercolor backgrounds and shapes come in all different designs; blobs like I mentioned before, swashes, stains, swashes and more. These designs can be used for blog graphics, quotes on Instagram, headers, even product labels. You can use a background that has a shape or an edge to edge for a cleaner effect. Watercolor backgrounds can also be used in websites to give a feel of freshness. Circular or square blobs and splatters can be turned into Social Media Buttons.

Blobs are usually rounded with defined irregular edges.
Splashes are when the paint has fallen on the paper and made a splash, quite literal actually.
Swatches are like brush strokes, reminiscent of a shape with very irregular edges.
Stains are usually watery, just giving off a bit of color.
Splatters are just what they would seem, when paint splatters off a paintbrush creating a pretty mess.

Watercolor backgrounds can also be striped, spotted, have a pattern or some kind of repeating design. Depending on your branding style, you can choose what kind of watercolor background to use. Freepik has plenty to choose from.

Watercolor Textures inside Shapes

Another way of using the watercolor backgrounds is to put the texture inside shapes of your choosing. You can do this in Photoshop or illustrator and even canva using frames. You can create all sort of compositions this way; abstract scenes and even landscape scenes. Shapes with watercolor textures can be used as product labels, buttons on your website, social media header and even logos.

Apart from shapes, you can also make watercolor typography. Any kind of font can be textured with watercolor inside Photoshop. There are also some watercolor letters in Freepik that you can use to create quotes, headers and blog title graphics. The colors of the vectors downloaded from Freepik can be changed to match your brand style.

Watercolor Illustrations

Apart from backgrounds and patterns, watercolors are used for making all sorts of illustrations. Every niche can have watercolor illustrations, there is nothing that can’t be illustrated with watercolors. Have you ever tried using these kinds of visuals for your graphics? You can incorporate them in your guides, infographics, recipes and more.

A favorite of watercolor illustrations are food items, succulents and other plants, and also hand drawn cityscapes. The magic of watercolor vectors is that you can use them however you like, separate pieces from the rest and rearrange them any creative way. Get creative or stay simple, the possibilities of composition are quite varied. Here are some ideas;

Create a wreath with watercolor flowers
Design a border with office inspired watercolor illustrations
Create an education related printable with watercolor school tools
Design a recipe card or Pinterest graphic with watercolor food elements

Line drawings over watercolor swatches

One last style of watercolor graphic that we have been seeing a lot around lately is a watercolor blob or swatch as the color background for a line drawing. This kind of design works well with logos, illustrative buttons or even stickers.

It’s easy to create an illustration like this by choosing a line drawing with a transparent background and layering it over a watercolor blob, or two or three. Try using different colors for different effects or to change the kind of message you want to transmit. Logos look great with this combination of designs.

Over to You

Do you use watercolor graphics in your designs or your website? Tell us what you like about the watercolor style in the comments below.