A Complete Guide to Watercolor Bokeh Effects: Turning Your Brushes Into a Camera

Have you thought about turning your watercolor brushes into cameras for bokeh effects?  

Have you tried to create a bokeh background to emphasize the main subjects in your watercolor paintings? If the answers are yes, this class is perfect for you! 

Hi everyone! It’s Yu-Yin Lin, the artist behind @yincreativestudio on Instagram. I earned my BFA in Oil Painting so watercolor wasn’t my main focus in my art journey. However, I have used watercolor to create textile/ surface design in the past years. Around two years ago, I was picked as a brand ambassador of one famous watercolor company. Since then, I have devoted more time to watercolor and love it more and more daily. 

Watercolor is an interesting but challenging art medium. As my art style is between realistic and surrealistic in oil painting, I have applied my philosophy to watercolor as well. I keep figuring out how to create certain effects by watercolors, especially blurry, out-of-focus effects like bokeh in photography. After constantly improving myself and being asked by others, I have decided to share my tips of my painting process with you!

In this class, I will show you step by step how I create a photography-like painting with a dreamy, soft atmosphere by using watercolor, including:

• How to find inspiration by taking your own photos or searching online. 
• Art supplies that you will need for this class. 
• How to compose your painting by learning the basic principles of art. 
• The tips of masking fluid, including how to remove masking fluid and protect your brushes.
• Basic watercolor techniques that we will use in this class, including washes, wet-on-wet and lifting out colors.
• Bokeh Effect- Monochrome: How to create bokeh effects by using black and white or in varying tones of only one color.
• Bokeh Effect- Multicolored: How to create bokeh effects by using multiple colors.
• How to paint the main subject (cosmo flowers) in a realistic way. 
• Bonus tip of how to fix the mistakes of bokeh effects background.

This class is for everyone who not only likes realistic style painting but also wants to learn how to create dreamy backgrounds for their watercolor painting! At the end of this class, you will be able to apply the skills from this class to all of your watercolor paintings.

Let’s grab your art supplies and join me for this exciting class!  

Additional Resources:

• Follow me for my latest paintings on Instagram

• Check out my website

Get 15% Off when you use my discount code (yincreativestudio15%) to purchase the paints that I use in this class

• Introduction
• Class Project
• Inspiration
• Art Supplies
• Composition
• Masking Fluid
• Bokeh Effects Monochrome
• Bokeh Effects Multicolored
• The Main Subject - Petals
• The Main Subject - Pollen & Stems
• Main Subject - Final Details
• Bonus Tips
• Final Thoughts