Meditative Watercolor Painting : 20 Bears

It’s been sooooo long since I painted an animal pattern ! I thought I’d share it directly with you instead of just posting on social media. I just spent two days painting and drawing because I needed it. Like pottery, painting a repetitive pattern is a meditative, calming ritual that I particularly enjoy. 

Wanna try it ? You don’t have to be a professional painter to enjoy this, you can even never show it to anyone, it’s just a little exercise for you. So here’s how I do it. 

On a sheet of paper, any paper you like, draw a grid. I like to start with margins, then I divide the space into squares or rectangles. If you have an object or animal in mind, you might want to pick a convenient shape but if not, divide up and let the shape guide you. 

Then I pick my animal, for bears fit nicely in squares. I sketch them with a pencil and try to get a feeling of the whole piece, correcting poses, adding size differences to create a rhythm to the piece. 

Then, that’s my thing, I add references of famous animals. For this painting of bears, there are 11 known bear figures. There are other things that are like a pattern throughout my whole work : there’s always an animal-icorn for example, one animal is always sparkling thanks to my handmade artisan watercolors… There’s also little additions like vegetation, insects, little props… You can go in any direction you’d like. 

When my penciled piece is ready, I ink it with waterproof ink and then I let it dry for a bit before erasing the pencil marks. After that it’s watercolor time and we’re done ! 

If you’d like to read more about Watercolor painting materials I use, feel free to read this article where I list all of what I use for painting.

I also wrote about several paintings I made like the raccoon drawing, the hedgehog illustration, or the custom made cat watercolor portraits. You can just click on the How To tag to the right and you’ll see everything.

All my paintings are available as quality art prints on Inprnt.