How to Paint: Watercolor Baskets

Paint these easy watercolor baskets with me! Every now and then I get a surge of inspiration for a particular motif. As I was sketching, painting, and designing my 2025 calendar (pre-order on October 1!), I felt like creating a whole bunch of baskets!

Supplies:

Paint: Ho lbein Artists’ Watercolor
Brush(es): Creative Mark’s Mimik Synthetic, round size 6 and 3
Paper: Canson XL Watercolor Paper, 7″x10″
Colored Pencils: Caran d’Ache Pablo
Jars of water
Paper towel or cotton rag
All of my favorite supplies here

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INSPIRATION for WATERCOLOR BASKETS

Speaking of inspiration, check out my Pinterest board for all kinds of baskets in various shapes and colors and textures.

You might even find inspiration for basket at your local thrift store. I love thrifting every now and then for unique clothes, accessories, home decor, and more. The basket section is usually very well stocked. I’ve gotten at least a dozen baskets for all of my home needs from thrift stores!

STEP 1: Paint light wash to establish shape

Let’s get into the tutorial now. Start with a light wash and paint all of your basket shapes. Paint the same shape over and over again, or vary it. Up to you! I’m using a round size 6 brush here.

If you need a refresher on washes or other basic watercolor techniques, don’t forget to check out my series on Beginner Watercolor Exercises.

A light wash means that your paint + water mixture will have less paint and more water. That’s how you get that very transparent look.

It’s okay if parts of this layer look slightly darker than other parts. The details that we add in the next step will help cover some of that or even add a nice depth to the baskets.

Let your watercolor baskets completely dry before moving onto the next step.

Step 2: Add details

There are three ways that I added details to my baskets: just colored pencils, just watercolor, and colored pencils + watercolor. It’s up to you how you want to add details. I encourage you to experiment and see what feels good to you.

I’ve switched to a smaller round size 3 brush. When adding details, you want to make sure that your brush has less water because you don’t want to risk reactivating the previous layer. You also want to make sure that the paint that you’re using also has less water so that the darker colors will show up.

For the basket above, I’m using various values of different brown hues and dotting randomly to essentially create stripes.

The basket below is one where I used both colored pencils and watercolor. I used the colored pencil first to roughly draw diagonal lines. Then I used the round size 3 brush and a light wash of a brown color to add some shadow to the right side and accent some of the diagonal lines.

Check out some more of these watercolor baskets for ideas on adding texture to yours.

Step 3: Add any final details

Final details can be maybe a bow, drop shadow, or just adding some more texture details. Although I didn’t do that in my original painting, now I kind of wish I added a bow here and there!

Watercolor Baskets Tutorial

Imagine what you can do with these baskets! You can fill it with all sorts of things: household items like blankets or umbrellas, houseplants, flowers, fruit, and more! Watch the real-time video tutorial below of how I painted these watercolor baskets.