🩷 Quick & Simple Valentine Heart Projects | Round-Up
✅ Quick Overview
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Try 3 easy watercolor Valentine heart tutorials designed for beginners
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Build brush control, water confidence, and color awareness through simple practice
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Each project fits comfortably into a 30-minute painting session
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Customize colors, layouts, and small details to make each piece your own
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Save these tutorials for quick, rewarding skill-building warm-ups
🩷 Introduction
If you’ve been enjoying watercolor heart projects lately — including my recent cool blues heart tutorial — here are a few beginner-friendly Valentine videos I recommend.
The three watercolor painting tutorials featured here are perfect for practice — approachable, fun, and so versatile.
I’ve painted along with each video myself and share my notes on why they’re great for beginners, along with a few personal tips from my own experience. Each video tutorial covers practical watercolor techniques to help you build brush control, fluidity, and confidence — and each project ends with a charming painting perfect to gift or to keep!
Just to be clear, this post is a curated round-up of tutorials I’ve personally tested and recommend for beginners.
Let's get started!
📝 How I Review Watercolor Tutorials
This post is all about Quick & Simple Valentine Heart Tutorials. Here's the method I use to test and review each tutorial I share:
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✅ Watch the tutorial in full at least once
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🎨 Gather art supplies
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🖌️ Paint along with the video
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⏱️ Track brush sizes, paper, colors, and paint time
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👀 Let the piece dry and revisit it with fresh eyes
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📝 Check it against my review criteria:
◦ Video length is under 30 minutes (each video is under 1 minute)
◦ Beginner-appropriate
◦ Clearly presented and well-paced
◦ Materials listed or easily identifiable
◦ Effective camera angles
◦ Total paint time is under 30 minutes
◦ Enjoyable and useful -
✨ If it’s a yes — I write the review!
Featured Videos: 🎨 3 Quick & Simple Watercolor Heart Tutorials for Beginners
Loose watercolor hearts have been a favorite of mine since my beginner days. They're such an iconic shape, and so versatile (skinny and elongated, rounded and puffy, lopsided and off-center), with a skill-building combination of straight lines and curves — painting them can't help but be joyful as far as I'm concerned.
If you're like me, I think you'll really enjoy these 3 easy ways to paint watercolor hearts that truly stay quick and simple!
Mary Wu's Valentine Color-Swatch Heart Project
1. Mary Wu — Valentine Swatch Hearts
🕒 Duration: 1:00 | Watch on Instagram »
🖌️ Key Techniques & Processes Utilized:
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color-mixing and color harmony
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paint/water ratio
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brush control
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outline & fine details with ink
🎯 Why It’s Great for Beginners:
This simple tutorial by artist Mary Wu is ideal for beginners! Her practical demonstration of how to create a page of color-swatch hearts is clear and simple. I love the first step of creating color swatches — so easy and doable — and the way the second step's inked details immediately transforms the abstract swatches into beautiful Valentine hearts. And while you can mirror her rainbow pigment selection, the paint color choice is entirely up to you!
📝 My Take:
This is a new favorite project, and I have it bookmarked. Keep in mind, this project is easily adapted to accommodate other inked shapes (flowers, stars, ornaments, faces, pumpkins, the list goes on!).
I've done this tutorial in less than 30 minutes (I probably waited over-long to ensure the color swatches were completely dry before inking the heart shapes), and it turned out beautiful.
Another time, in one painting session I created two pages of color swatches — each page had similar swatches, but not identical and not in the same order — and later that week I inked one page with daisy-style flower shapes, and the other page I turned wrapped presents by adding simple ribbons & bows for a birthday card.
Anastasia Kozlova's Watercolor Valentine Heart Balloon Project
2. Anastasia Kozlova — Watercolor Heart Balloons
🕒 Duration: 1:00 | Watch on YouTube »
🖌️ Key Techniques & Processes Utilized:
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color-mixing and color harmony
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paint/water ratio
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brush control
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C-curve brushstrokes
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fine details
🎯 Why It’s Great for Beginners:
While Anastasia Kozlova's heart balloon bouquet is perfect for Valentine's Day, this project (like the other 2) is beautifully simple and easily adaptable to other colors, shapes, patterns, and size. For example, you could have balloons in the shape of numbers (for birthdays or anniversaries), flowers (for any occasion), stars and moons, really, so many possibilities — and the shading and detail-work instructions would still apply.
📝 My Take:
I only recently came across this tutorial by this artist. I love painting hearts and balloons, so putting them together is brilliant! Anastasia's informative commentary style and the flow of her instruction on this super short video was clear and illuminating.
You can clearly see how each brushstroke affects the paint, and it’s easy to follow along even if you’re brand new to watercolor. I found the project itself enjoyable, and the finished piece so charming.
Sarah Cray's Watercolor Hearts Project
3. 📖 Sarah Cray — Watercolor Hearts
🕒 Duration: 1:00 | Watch on Instagram »
🖌️ Key Techniques & Processes Utilized:
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color-mixing and color harmony
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paint/water control
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brush control
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fine details
🎯 Why It’s Great for Beginners:
This tutorial by Sarah Cray allows beginners of all levels the joy of creating a beautiful watercolor page of hearts as simple or elaborate as the artist chooses. Part of this project's fluid charm is the way the hearts run off the page — you may find that the looser you are in doing this project, the more you get out of it!
📝 My Take:
Full disclosure: I've been a fan and follower of Sarah Cray since 2020, and I'm pleased to share this beautifulloose heart tutorial. The imprecise rows of hearts are so relaxing and accessible, and the last-step fine details really emphasize the organic heart shapes and pull the whole page together into a pleasing finished artwork. And, if you're like me, you may start thinking of other versions you could paint based on this design (Easter eggs? fancy decorated cookies? seashells?).
⏩ Quick Access Links: Jump to a Tutorial
🎨 Artist's Note
Each of these tutorial videos are less than 1 minute in length!
My Method: Although the steps are simple, before I started painting each project, I would watch the entire video 2-3 times for a quick overview. I kept the tutorial accessible during the session so I could view and pause the video as necessary. I definitely had to re-watch the fine-detail sections.
💬 Final Thoughts
Congratulations for exploring other artists' perspectives! Did you know that observing others strengthens your own personal skill and creative joy?
Each of the watercolor heart tutorials in this post offer real value to watercolor beginners. The simple projects are accessible to all beginner levels, easily modifiable, and provide a relaxing and rewarding way to build your watercolor skills — even when you only have 30 minutes a week for painting.
And, if you haven't already, I recommend you bookmark or otherwise save to your library a pleasing variety of easy watercolor tutorials. Make sure they are projects you find appealing in ways that serve your creative journey.
✨ Remember, every brushstroke is progress — and heart shapes are a beautiful way to enjoy the process, build your skills, and connect with art.
🔗 Recommended for You
If you’d like to explore a bit further, these beginner-friendly guides pair well with today’s projects:
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