It’s hard not to see watercolor textures everywhere these days! And it makes sense why – they’re beautiful and add such a personal, handmade touch to anything they’re on. That’s why in this week’s tutorial, I’m pairing them with my favorite thing – typography. The same rules apply if you’d like to add watercolor textures to hand lettering, too for an even greater handmade look. As a bonus, I’m including 3 free high res watercolor textures so you can play around with your own type or hand lettering. Let’s get started!

watercolor typography

How to Add Watercolor Textures to Typography

Here are those free bonus watercolor textures:

Download

The font used in the tutorial + preview images is Heartwell, which can be picked up here. I also just released my own brush script font, Tuesday Script, available here! Brushed script fonts work amazinglyย withย watercolor – check out this roundup if you’re looking for others! ๐Ÿ™‚

Pick up the paper texture pattern used in the tutorial here, called ‘concrete’.

Like the watercolor textures and want even more to play around with? Check out the full 40 piece watercolor texture kit here that includes 20 high res textures, 8 circle shapedย textures, 5 texture splatters andย 7ย smart object blobsย –ย also available on Creative Marketย here ๐Ÿ™‚ย Here’s a miniย preview of the full set (click on the image to see it all!)

watercolor texture kit preview

Looking for more watercolor goodness? Check out Watercolor Texture Kit Vol. 2ย and Watercolor Texture Kit Vol. 3!

 

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Freebie: Procreate

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Every Tuesday's content creator and founder. I help creatives build and improve their digital skills to open new opportunities.
Latest comments
    • Thank you so much, these are great ๐Ÿ˜€

  • I was wondering if I need to switch the colour mode from RGB to CMYK if I’m only printing on a consumer level printer?

  • Beautiful work. I just found you, I honestly don’t remember which rabbit trail I used to find you, but thankful I did. The tutorials are so simple to follow because of the way you communicate.

  • Teela I just found you and boy am I THRILLED that I did!!! Your site is AWESOME and Tutorials are TERRIFIC!! You are an EXCELLENT teacher! I even ran over and enrolled in you Slillshare class “Get Inked!” and I am looking for more. I have learned SO MUCH NEW stuff just today!! I am a newbie to graphic design and cant get enough of learning. It is SO FUN!! I just LOVE it! I i do have a question about this Watercolor tutorial. I am using Illustrator CC. When I was doing the first step I did not see the Pattern Overlay option in my Layers pop up box. Is this because CC does not offer that feature?
    Thanks so Much!

      • Hey Gretchen! In Photoshop CC, there’s a little icon at the bottom left of the layer styles window that says “fx.” If you don’t have a Pattern Overlay effect in your list currently, when you click that “fx” icon it will open a drop-down of different effects and you should see Pattern Overlay hiding in there!

        The next time you open a file, the Pattern Overlay option will probably be in your list by default, instead of being hidden in that “fx” menu. I think they’re trying to give you the option to clean up the menu if there are effects you would never use (you can delete them from the default menu with the little trash can in the bottom right. Then they’re hidden under “fx” again.)

        Not sure if this comment box will let me add a link or not, but here’s a screenshot of where to click: http://scene.agency/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Screen-Shot-2016-03-29.jpg

  • Hi Teela,

    Thank you so much for your tutorials. I started graphic design 10 years ago at university but I always felt so overwhelmed learning photoshop and illustrator. I’ve always been best teaching myself and I’ve recently found your Youtube videos and all your insights and quick-tips are so helpful and you are clear and concise. I look forward to following you more! Rach ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Thank you for sharing. ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Hi Teela! Thanks for sharing! Your blog is such a big help to starters like me. I love watercolors and I’m interested to learn graphic design as well ๐Ÿ™‚ I just have a question, I’m not sure if I’m doing it wrong but after placing the texture over the text, I’m supposed to click create clipping mask right? However, in my window, the create clipping mask option seems to be disabled, the text is in gray and you can’t click it. Is there any other way to do this? I’m using btw the free textures you provided for your surfboard vector tutorial as I can’t download the free textures included in this post ๐Ÿ™ The font that I used also is Daydreamer. Hope you can help me on this. Thank you so much! ๐Ÿ™‚

      • Hi Teela! I followed your instructions but it’s still the same ๐Ÿ™ I tried doing it on a single layer and was able to successfully mask the type. However, when I grouped two layers, it still doesn’t work. I wonder what I’m doing wrong…a friend of mine suggested that I convert it to smart objects? but I don’t know what it means. Thanks for the help! ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Hi, Teela!! Thank you so much for sharing your talent with us here on the internet, I just happened to find you today and I’m already following you on every social media haha!

    I downloaded you free bonus watercolor pack, and it seems to have a password… I’ve tried everything that came to my mind that could be the password but I’m not having any success on trying to open the zip file ):

    please, what would the password be?

    Thank you and Congratulations, again!

      • Hey, Teela, thanks for answering so fast! Maybe itโ€™s that, Iโ€™ll check on that now, thank you!
        See you soon again on your website/youtube/instagram! Haha! x

  • YOU ROCK. Thank you!! I just started a little stationery side project using my handmade watercolors and have been struggling trying to figure out how to maintain the quality of the paint once I digitize. Often my images get pixelated and lose some of the handmade quality. Any suggestions for me? Should I be working in Illustrator instead of Photoshop?

    Thank you!!

    Alysa

      • Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to write back. I’m going to save up for a good scanner! Do you think it’s smart to get a separate printer and scanner or would I be okay printing greeting cards and prints on a combined printer/scanner of that resolution? Just trying to be as economical as possible without compromising quality.

  • Hi! Great stuff! ๐Ÿ™‚ I was wondering what is the name of the other font you use to show the examples of the the wedding invitations in the watercolor kit? I love the font combo. ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Thank you sooooo much for this!! I got one problem though, i have already downloaded the zip file of the free watercolor textures, but when i tried to extract it, it says “the compressed zip folder is empty” ๐Ÿ™ i could use some help ๐Ÿ™‚

  • PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE add more freebies…. Is there any more? BTW amazing job Tessa!!!

    • opps spelled your name wrong teela!

  • Hello! can we change the colors of these watercolor textures? For example, can I change the colours from red/orange to purples? I tried hue/saturation but I am not getting different colours, I am only getting single color in a different shade..

  • Hi, may I know if there is any simple way to do this in illustrator? Thx!

  • thank you sooooo much ALL the way from India, for these fantastic freebies and all your tutorials.
    I am an artist and not very technically sound- so these have been/will be a great help with my projects and blog.
    Am going to be one busy bee trying out everything in yr tutorials.
    Wish you all the success!

  • Is it possible to change the color of the watercolor to match a specific color? I like to draw pen and ink illustrations and would like my watercolor text to match the colors in my pictures. I’m a traditional artist, but I am learning Photoshop and digital applications. Also, were there one or two free textures that I can fool around with first? You had mentioned this in your video, but I couldn’t find these. Thanks for your help!

  • Thank you Teela for your great tutorials… you’re a great teacher! All my best to your business and continued success.

  • I am so glad I found you, Teela. I really enjoy your posts and tutorials. That said, will you consider creating black watercolor textures (whether as a freebie or product)?

  • Hi Teela, can I ask whether it is possible to increase the intensity of the color (I want them to be darker) of your watercolor textures? I am still a beginner in photoshop and will be grateful for your help. Thank you!

  • Hi Teela!

    Love your site and all your tutorials — as a fellow Atlanta native, you have been the biggest lifesaver in launching my online dreams! I have a quick question when adding the vectorized watercolors — is there a way to add the watercolor texture to vectorized hand-lettering? Or is it not possible? I’ve been trying to create my own cards with custom watercolor and hand-lettered text but can’t figure out how to make the clipping mask (or if that’s what needs to happen) or if I’m saving my vectorized text / watercolor texture incorrectly?

    Here’s what I’ve been doing: adjust the levels of text in Photoshop, move over to Illustrator to vectorize using the image trace tool and going in with the pencil tool / smooth tool to fix any errors — hit expand, then I group the text together and in a new window cmd + C the text and place the jpg watercolor at the back and shift + select both — then make clipping mask. When I do this, the clipping mask works but the texture doesn’t appear behind it & it’s just a clear outline. I tried adjusting the fill options to see if that was messing with it — but I can’t for the life of me figure it out (if it’s even possible!)

    Any help with this would be SO appreciated as I’ve been raving over your work for weeks now! Thank you so much and happy designing! ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Thank you for your tutorials. They are so helpful to me, a novice at Photoshop and Illustrator!

  • Great work as always ๐Ÿ™‚ Youtube got me here ๐Ÿ™‚

  • I’ve just watched a couple of your videos and am enjoying them very much. I’m a professional photographer (although my background is in CS – I went to school with Tom Knoll who wrote Photoshop; I had the beta copy circa 1989). I wanted to mention that working color space should be the largest possible for editing then be converted to match the output color space. Many consumer printers (and some professional printers) print in RGB. For example, my professional printer is RGB but handles a large RGB space so I photograph in RAW then use ProPhoto RGB as my working, as well as my print, color space (I have an ICC profile defined for my paper). If a printer is printing in RGB and you convert the file to CMYK, the colors may shift since the color spaces no longer match: colors outside the target space will be redefined without the conversion software.

  • I can’t get the download to work for the 3 free textures. Has it been turned off?

    Thanks!

  • Ma’am.. With sincere regards.. you have done some extraordinary job here. Really helped me a lot. Thank you. ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Wonderful textures, thanks for sharing.

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