100+ Watercolor Textures and Illustrations For Graphic Designers

Watercolor texture is stereotypically considered to be a “girly” technique only viable for elementary schools and amateurs. But in fact, according to the CreativeMarket statistics, it is also the most popular design trend of 2020 (and the most profitable one for graphic designers). And what can be manlier than hunting down a mammoth (in other words, earning lots of money)?

So, I’ve decided to discard prejudice and have a closer look at the possibilities of this technique. Imagine my surprise when I learned that watercolor textures form a perfect fusion with my favorite vintage style adding a modern, extravagant vibe to it!

I’ve put together the best free, yet professional resources for graphic designers curious about this trend. I hope that this collection will help you take another look at watercolor design.

The gallery is divided into four parts:

Premium watercolor illustrations
Free watercolor textures
Miscellaneous freebies
Freebies by Freepik
Compatible fonts

Each part features professionally crafted freebies that can be instantly downloaded and added to your toolbox. The last part is dedicated to fonts: we have picked the ones that will look perfect in combination with watercolor textures.

Enjoy!

20 Beautiful Watercolor Texture Illustrations for Artsy Websites

Illustrations are a great tool for supplying your textual content with visuals so it’s both easier to understand and is more wholesome. Some may use them for purely aesthetic purposes but there’s no arguing about the fact that visual content is simpler to digest. A well-implemented illustration both complements your website’s design and serves as a visual background for your content.

So, today we have prepared 20 of the newest, best-looking watercolor illustrations to help you spice up your design a little bit. All of them have been hand-painted by professional designers, so you are sure to find some gorgeous eye candy in there.

Magnificent Bouqets

Magnificent Bouquets Watercolor PNG Illustration

This is a package containing a humongous count of beautiful imagery of alstroemeria flowers. A total of 74 files, to be exact, including 15 .PNGs and 59 .JPGs. You’ll find frames, borders, patterns as well as isolated elements to brighten up your backgrounds and textures with amazing hand-drawn elements that you can fully customize.

Ginkgo Biloba

Ginkgo Biloba is a collection of 165 leafy images and patterns of floral foliage and is perfect for DIY, wedding invitations, greeting cards, creative blogs, posters and so much more. The package contains both raster and vector elements all of which you can scale up and down to suit your needs.

London

If your website is filled with all things Britain, this set of imagery is the perfect fit for you. Here you’ll find paintings of the famous red double deckers, the Tower Bridge, the British flags and much, much more. For example, if you’re running a British lifestyle blog or offer online English courses, this set of elements might come in very handy.

Ladybug

Ladybug is a cute set of, you guessed it, ladybug pictures done in .JPG and .PNG. They're perfect for, let’s say, online bouquet stores, feminine blogs or even as design elements on your hand-crafted products. In the package, you’ll find 71 files that are easily customizable and come with transparent backgrounds.

Animals: Tigers

A package containing a selection of beautiful watercolor wildlife imagery, more specifically tigers and even a few leopards. If you make your own designer clothes or other accessories, this package is perfect for you since it gives you plenty of options to create something truly trendy and attractive. And, of course, they would fit perfectly on any website revolving about those gorgeous felines.

Living Corals

This beautiful collection of hand-painted nautical imagery will be a stunning addition to your sailing blog or ocean-themed crafts. The set includes 41 .PNG files with countless frames, borders, patterns, and singular elements, all of which come on transparent backgrounds and are easily customizable in terms of size, color and other attributes.

Chains, Leather Belts

If you’re running a fashion blog or an online clothing store, this beautiful hand-painted clipart set might be the perfect extra bit of creativity your site needs. It also works perfectly for any type of DIY, cards, invitations and so on. As the name suggests, the package contains 59 .PNG files with patterns, frames and isolated elements consisting of various stylish belts and chains.

Blackberry

Blackberry will supply you with 49 hand-painted elements featuring beautiful floral and berry designs. You might find them useful if you’re running a lifestyle blog, organic food store or even a pastry-related site. Plenty of beautiful frames and patterns let you ornament your content and put an emphasis on your love for everything organic and natural.

African Daisy

African Daisy is a collection of exceptionally delicate and elegant watercolor floral paintings. They will look great on your blog, your t-shirt, and even your mug and will add a touch of beauty and tenderness they are applied to. All of the graphics are provided in the .PNG format, with transparent backgrounds and a respectable resolution of 3500x3500 pixels.

Ice Cream Fruit

This clipart set is perfect for all of your sweet teeth out there. Whether you run a pastry business, a sweet store or simply a blog about trying out various culinary goodies, Ice Cream Fruit will be a great addition to your content, serving as beautiful and, at the same time, appetizing frames and borders to your text and other imagery.

Flamingo

This pack contains 35 singular elements as well as patterns featuring those gorgeous birds either on their own or amongst greenery and can be used for various creative purposes. With it, you can build some truly outstanding and creative designs revolving around this magnificent animal and just the color pink in general.

Balloons

Balloons are a dreamer’s best friend and this clipart pack is full of them. They would be a perfect fit for a balloon festival website or for a simple personal travel blog. You could also use them for your DIY projects or make somebody a beautiful gift that they will surely appreciate.

Crystals

Crystals is a collection of various hand-painted gems and precious little stones that would give your online jewelry store that extra little bit of “wow”. Or, if you’re a freelance designer you could use this to show off your creativity and win over some hearts with your outstanding designs.

BAMBOO

Whether you’re an organic store owner, a freelance designer or an organic enthusiast, BAMBOO provides you with plenty of elements, frames, and patterns to create a truly fresh and natural-looking design. It contains 47 .PNG and .JPG files with transparent backgrounds and huge resolutions for you to implement on your site or other handmade designs like t-shirts, mugs, smartphone cases etc.

Watercolor World Map

It is exactly what it sounds like- a watercolor rendition of our globe’s map. If you’re keeping a traveling blog, this would be the perfect background for it. Its design is well-organized and you are able to scale it up or down to any size and otherwise edit it in Illustrator.

Red Rose Elegant

This article would be incomplete without at least one clipart set of roses. So, this is a pack of gorgeous hand-painted imagery of this beautiful flower perfect for any kind of artsy blog, DIY or even fashion website. You can even make some outstanding clothing items of your own using those lovely floral patterns.

Cherry Blossoms

Cherry blossoms are the quintessence of beauty, elegance, and tenderness and this pack provides you with 57 beautiful images to give your content that gentle feel. Whether you’re a florist, a blogger or a DIY craftsman/woman, Cherry Blossoms is a must-have simply because of its warm and pleasant appearance.

Green Olives

Fruit Splash includes 97 beautiful hand-painted elements, frames, borders and patterns consisting of bananas, pears, cherries, pineapples, lemons, strawberries as well as other fruits and berries. Liven up your design of your healthy lifestyle blog, organic foods store or simply create something cute and fresh, like trendy t-shirt or smartphone case.

Watercolor Cannabis

Since the legalization of medical and even recreational use of cannabis in some states and countries, the business for it has been booming. So, if you own a coffee shop, marijuana dispensary or simply sell attire and accessories with leafy elements on it, this clipart set will be a great addition to your website.

Free Watercolor Textures

Textures are among the most popular design resources (along with fonts). We are happy to introduce you to the best watercolor texture png packs from all over the web. Some of them are allowed for commercial usage, while others are for personal projects only, so keep an eye on the terms of use. Remember that these watercolor images can be used as backgrounds, or as overlay textures for text.

50 FREE Watercolor Splatter Brushes

Free Watercolor Texture Kit

This package includes 15 free watercolor textures in PNG and JPG formats, with a print-ready resolution (300 dpi). It is free for personal and commercial design works.

Watercolor Typography Tutorial (Plus 3 Free Textures)

Teela Cunningham has created this small set of high-resolution watercolor textures featuring three items specifically for her typography tutorial. It is free for personal use.

Free Watercolor Textures by Lost and Taken

Lostandtaken.com features thousands of free watercolor textures, which can be downloaded either individually, or as a large package. By clicking the link above, you will find 50+ free watercolor backgrounds for any taste

Watercolors Pack - 36 Free Images

This is the first set of textures by MediaMilitia featuring 36 free pictures…

Watercolors Pack v2 - 30 Free Images

…The second set includes 30 watercolor textures illustrator can easily handle in much brighter hues than the first one. Both volumes are free for personal and commercial use.

Ombre Free Watercolor Textures Backgrounds

Want to refresh your blog with trendy watercolor-styled buttons and headers? Then check out this texture pack by AngieMakes. It is free for personal projects, but you can use it for your blog or website.

Free Watercolor Texture Backgrounds and a Picmonkey Tutorial

These free watercolor textures have been created for the Picmonkey tutorial by Craftberry Bush.

25 Circles Free Watercolour Textures PNG & JPG

25 Free Watercolour Circle Textures in JPG & PNG

Chris Spooner has created this awesome set of circle hand painted watercolor textures to help you with adding some color to your design works. Available in PNG and JPG formats, they are free for personal and commercial projects.

10 Watercolor Circle Textures

Ten free circle watercolor texture kit come from Rafiullah Mohammed, the owner of GraphicsFuel. They feature cool color combinations and will become a great addition to your design toolbox.

Merry Free Christmas - Texture Pack

Here are Christmas-themed watercolor texture kit made with vibrant colors. The pack includes 15 PNG textures plus several decorative elements.

Free High-Res Texture Pack: Grungy Watercolor

This is another collection of free watercolor texture kit – 10 grungy splashes on a rough paper background.

Free Watercolor Resources (Miscellaneous)

The watercolor design is not only overlying textures. There are a plethora of design elements: objects, backgrounds, borders, stripes, and even logo templates, - and some of them are completely free. With this collection of miscellaneous freebies, you will be able to spice up your design experience at no extra cost.

Aquarelle Designers Kit Mini

This free watercolor kit comprises 16 Photoshop styles in ASL format and ten refined shapes in PNG format. Also, it includes some inspirational tips on how to use free watercolor texture illustrator correctly.

5 Watercolor Logo Templates

These free logos are unique because they combine two popular design trends – vintage and watercolor. Made entirely with vector shapes, they are easy to scale and edit. The pack also includes eight seamless patterns for Adobe Illustrator. This freebie can be used for both personal and commercial purposes, as it uses only free fonts.

The Watercolor Pack Free

Another great set of free watercolor elements comes from PixelBuddha. It features 17 detailed, natural looking objects: animals, leaves, arrows, ribbons, etc. They can be used for your handcrafted logos, invitation cards, posters, and much more.

Valentine's Watercolor Pack

This freebie is a large set of 41 hand drawn elements isolated on a transparent background. It boasts high resolution (300 dpi) and is ready to be printed right away. Save it for the next St. Valentine’s Day to impress your beloved one with a creative greeting card.

Free Photoshop Watercolor Styles

Fond of Photoshop? You might be interested in this collection of Photoshop watercolor styles. With their help, you can add a handmade touch to your artwork with one click. It is free for use with no restrictions.

Tombeo Watercolor Kit Collection

Tombeo is a free collection of design freebies which is available for free for personal use. The commercial version can be purchased for $35 on CreativeMarket. Tombeo comes with ten handmade fonts, a large set of vector elements, and some watercolor styles.

AquaWay Free Vector Pack

Aquaway is another example of the harmonious fusion between vintage and watercolor design trends. The pack provided by Oksana Golubets includes 30 hand drawn vector elements, two watercolor textures, two splashes and three neat and professional logo templates.

The Watercolor Kit

Designed by the team behind TheHungryJPEG this pack of hand-drawn objects is free for personal and commercial use. It can be used for logo design, or to decorate greeting cards and posters.

Watercolor Sketch Mock-Up

If you want to present your design works in a stylish environment, grab this free mockup scene designed specifically for admirers of watercolor design.

Watercolor Freebies by Freepik

Freepik offers a humongous gallery of vectors, stock images, logo templates, and other graphic design resources, which can be used for free with attribution. However, if you don’t want to attribute, you can purchase a premium subscription. Besides, some cool artwork is available only for premium users.

Anyway, even if you don’t want to go premium right now, there are plenty of free items for you – and we have handpicked 20 of them to get you started. This section contains the most multipurpose watercolor freebies from Freepik. Click a preview image to go to its download page.

Honey and Bee badges in watercolor style

Freepik is not the only centralized source of design freebies. Great watercolor resources can also be found on Pixabay and Deviant Art, so don’t forget to check them for updates from time to time.

Compatible Fonts

Typography largely determines the final look of your design piece. The most used types of fonts in watercolor design are bold brush and handmade sans. They are often supplied with swashes, extra symbols and other decorative elements that allow for more versatile and sophisticated lettering.

Text written with brush fonts such as Hensa can be overlaid with a texture to achieve a handcrafted look, while thin sans fonts are usually used as is.

We have collected for you a versatile collection of free typefaces to use with your watercolor designs. Below the infographic, there are links to the respective download pages.

20 Free Brush Fonts for Watercolor Design

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01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

Wrapping Up

We hope these freebies will introduce you to the beautiful world of watercolour design and supply you with everything required to become proficient with this technique.

Now it's your time to speak up! What design trend would you like to be covered by us next time? Leave your comment's below.

Watercolor Texture For Graphic Designers FAQ

How can I use watercolors texture in my design?

Besides watercolor illustrations that could be the basics of the design, you can also use watercolor fonts and textures.

Why should I use watercolors texture in my design?

It is the most popular and trendy design type in 2020 and it will stay popular for a few years from now.

How many does it cost to get some ready-made watercolor texture items?

The ones we listed above are completely free, so you won’t have to pay for anything.

Where can I find some additional watercolor illustrations if I haven’t found the ones that I like in the article?

Check out the page Illustrations by TemplateMonster or the Illustration page by MasterBundle and choose from the huge set of different kinds of illustrations. Here you can find a lot of watercolor illustrations.

Are there any other sources where I can find more watercolor textures for my work?

Sure, you can find a lot of additional textures on the Patterns and Textures page by MasterBundle.

Where can I find some more watercolor freebies fonts for working with them?

If you haven’t found watercolor fonts in the article which you like, check out the Fonts and Font Packs page by TemplateMonster or the Fonts page by MasterBundles. Here you can find some extra watercolor and other fonts.

Is it better to use premium products than freebies watercolor ones? Why?

Actually, it wholly depends on your budget and needs. If you can afford a premium product, use this opportunity because they look the way cooler and personal. If you are at the beginning of your designing way and are on a budget, use free fonts, textures, and illustrations.

In what way should I download fonts, textures, illustrations, etc.: should I buy them separately or purchase in bundles? What is really better?

Frankly speaking, it completely depends on your needs and aims. If you want to experiment with for example a lot of fonts, download a whole bundle of them. In this way, you can see which font fits better for your ad, project, poster, etc. If you need only one font for a definite purpose, you can buy and use only one separate font.