I think that granulation, the texture you can see above where the colour separates leaving textured instead of flat colour – is one of the most delightful elements of watercolour paintings. For the second Mindfultober 2025 prompt, Flowing, we’re going to take advantage of granulation to create beautiful and captivating effects while painting mindfully.

What You’ll Need

• Granulating watercolour paints – if you have paints that are marked as granulating, great! If not, Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber are granulating colours that are included as standard in most beginners paint sets (it’s the usually blue-blue and the deep brown colours). You can then create granulating colour mixes by adding one of those colours in with others
• Watercolour paper (hot pressed paper works surprisingly well for this)
• A medium size brush (not a big wash brush!) – this helps you slow down and enjoy the process.
• A jar of water.
• A mixing palette.

Step-by-Step Mindful Watercolour Granulation Tutorial:

Step 1: Prepare your paper

If you want you can tape your watercolour paper down so get a nice, crisp white border once you’re finished and you remove the tape.

Step 2: Choose and activate your colours

Decide on a granulating colour that speaks to you today; this can be a single colour or a mixture that you make. For pans, place a few drops of clean water into each paint pan to activate the pigment and let them sit for a minute or two. For tubes, squeeze out a small amount and mix with water to get a very wet / milky consistency.

Step 3: Paint your first layer

Coat the entire surface of your paper with a thin layer of your paint.

Because the paint is granulating, it will not coat the paper evenly and that’s okay! It’ll create a gently textured base layer.

Step 4: Dry your first layer

Either use a heat tool to dry your paint, or go enjoy a cuppa while the paper dries out.

Step 5: Wet your paper

Thoroughly wet your paper.

You want the paper to be quite wet – you should be able to see the shine of the water if you tilt your paper to catch the light. This is really important for the next flowing step to work.

Step 6: Paint and flow

Create a thicker mix of paint, perhaps making more than one colour mixture. This time you’re looking for a thicker, creamy consistency.

Take your time and add dots or lines of this thick colour onto your paper wherever you feel like it.

Pay attention to the way the paint spreads and take the time to appreciate watching the colour move and separate.

Add paint, observing the effects until you feel like you’ve added enough colour.

Step 7: Tilt your paper

Encourage your paint to move around the page by picking up your paper and tilting it this way and that. Enjoy watching the colour rush or seep across the page.

Step 8: Let it dry

Either use a heat tool to dry your paint, or make another painting while the paper dries out.

Once it’s dry, remove your tape and enjoy your finished piece!

See a Real Time Example

You can watch my real-time example of this approach here – it’s about 17 minutes long:

Taking It Further

Watercolour has huge potential as a medium for mindful art, and I have a whole class full of different mindful art activities if you’d like to take this further:

A Mindful Approach to Practicing Watercolor: Values, Palettes & Brush Control

Final Thoughts

I think creating mindful watercolour granulating paintings like these are a great way to slow down, relax, and embrace the joy of painting without pressure. Remember this is about process not outcome. It’s about the delight of watching the colours spread and change, the soothing feeling of brush on paper, and giving yourself a few moments of calm.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with this. If you do try it out, let me know what you think of it in the comments below!

Happy painting – and happy Mindfultober!