How to paint watercolour pussy willows

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Pussy willows are the surest signs that spring is here where I live in Canada. Snow might still be on the ground, but it’s melting and the little soft tufts start showing up on willow branches out in the countryside. Watercolour pussy willows are a great way to preserve this first sign of spring year-round.

They are also a beautiful and very simple subject to paint in watercolours. If you’re a beginner, they help you practice reserving your whites, while still being flexible enough that if you accidentally obliterate a bit too much white, that they still look like a pussy willow.

Watch the video on how to paint pussy willows in watercolour on my YouTube channel.

Supplies to paint watercolour pussy willows

For this project, I used:

Watercolour paper

100% cotton will give you the best results. If you have student-grade watercolour paper, that will work okay but you might have more issues with blooms and uneven colour than you might expect with the cotton paper.

Brushes

I used a size 6 round and an oval wash or cat’s tongue brush. If you just have a round, that should be fine. It’ll just take longer to paint the sky. An oval wash is handy to be able to paint the nooks and crannies around the willows while still having plenty of surface area to apply paint on the open sky. A flat wash is also fine but can be a bit tricky to get into the little corners.

Watercolour paints

I used professional artist quality, but student grade will be fine as well. The colours below are suggestions. There are many other colours that would work great for this painting, so feel free to experiment.