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How Do You Make a Watercolor Background in Photoshop?

Last updated on September 23, 2022 @ 8:53 pm

Watercolor is a beautiful medium with a long history. Many artists enjoy its ethereal look, and the way it can make a scene look dreamy and romantic. Photoshop has some great tools for creating watercolor effects, and in this tutorial, we’ll learn how to use them to create a stunning watercolor background.

We’ll start by creating a new Photoshop document. For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll make our canvas size 8×10 inches at 300 pixels/inch resolution. Once our new document is created, we’ll fill the background with white by going to Edit > Fill > White.

Next, we’ll create a new layer. To do this, click on the “Create a new layer” icon at the bottom of the Layers panel:

Now that we have a new layer, we’ll grab the Brush Tool from the Toolbox. We’ll choose a soft round brush with a diameter of about 100 pixels. Once our brush is selected, we’ll choose a light blue color from the Swatches panel:

With our brush selected and color chosen, we’re ready to start painting! We’ll begin by making light blue strokes across the canvas.

As we paint, we’ll vary the pressure we apply to the brush to create different shades of blue. Some areas will be very light, while others will be darker. This will give our painting some nice dimension and depth.

PRO TIP: This article contains step-by-step instructions on how to create a watercolor background in Photoshop. However, it is important to note that this technique may not be suitable for all images and can result in a distorted or unclear image.

Once we’re happy with our blue strokes, we’ll add another layer. Again, we’ll create this layer by clicking on the “Create a new layer” icon at the bottom of the Layers panel:

On this new layer, we’ll grab the Brush Tool once again. This time, however, we’ll use a different brush tip. Choose one that’s more pointed than our last brush – something like this:

With our new brush tip selected, let’s choose an orange color from the Swatches panel:

Now that we have our color picked out, it’s time to start painting! We’ll make orange strokes across our canvas, again varying the pressure to create different shades of orange.

As before, some areas will be very light while others will be darker. We want to keep our strokes somewhat random so they don’t look too uniform or perfect.

Once we’re happy with our orange strokes, go ahead and add one more layer by clicking on the “Create a new layer” icon at the bottom of

Dale Leydon

Dale Leydon

Sysadmin turned Javascript developer. Owner of 20+ apps graveyard, and a couple of successful ones.