How to Paint a Watercolor Cupcake – Step-by-Step with Video & Free Coloring Page

There’s something so joyful about painting sweet little treats in watercolor — especially when it’s a charming cupcake topped with frosting swirls! In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through exactly how I painted this watercolor cupcake from start to finish using a reference photo from Pexels.

From sketching details, and color mixing to the painting's finer details, I have covered it all for you and some progress photos to guide your painting journey.

Also, a free printable coloring page and a full video tutorial if you prefer to paint along in real time!

Prefer to watch instead of read?

Here’s the full real-time video tutorial where I show every step of the process, from sketch to final touches

Material used..

 (Feel free to swap these for your favorite brands!)

• Cold press watercolor paper (A5)

• Watercolor paints (main colors: Ultramarine, Sepia, Raw sienna, Gamboge hue, burnt sienna)

• Round brushes (sizes 0 and 6)

• Pencil & eraser

• Mixing palette

• Paper towel & clean water

  
  

Step-by-step painting process…

Sketching the cupcake…

Cake with cream can be tricky to sketch. But with experience, I have learned one thing, it's always better to simplify and sketch bigger shapes on paper. Watercolors are transparent so I feel, lesser the graphite lines of paper are good. Overall keep it loose as it is just a guide to paint.

The cream has folded, so I sketched only the larger cream twists, and the rest was up to me to modify and paint. I am not following the exact photo but painting details at that moment.

Want to skip the sketching part?

Download my free printable cupcake coloring page here:

👉 Click to download the coloring page

Color mixing…

This yellow cake has three colors, white, yellow, and brown. To paint white cream on the cake, I mixed ultramarine blue and sepia to make a bluish grey (the quantity of blue is more). Then for the yellow cream, I used gamboge hue raw sienna, and sepia to show melted chocolate and shadows.

Painting process…

I have used the wet-on-wet technique to paint this cupcake. Starting from the white cream, I used a very watery grey (mixture of ultramarine blue and sepia) to paint the folds of the cream. This part also has some reflected yellow and just hints at it by introducing a very small amount of raw sienna. The base of the white cream and inner folds are darker some grey and sepia are used.

For the yellow cream, I used raw sienna in the part which is shadow, and the gamboge hue which is a cool yellow to paint the cream which has maximum light. So the yellow color gradation is from dark ocherish yellow to bright yellow. I dab some burnt umber here to show some darker spots of the cream.

For the cake below this dollop of cream, I paint raw sienna on it by first lining it under the cream and then dragging the brush creating a texture. And then while the paper is still damp, I apply sepia below the cream. This gives a nice shadow as well as a melted chocolate look on the cake. Later just some pecks of sepia as chocolate.

The butter paper wrapping the cake shows a variety of colors like white, grey, ochre, yellow, and brown. Since I blended two colors on the paper, it needed the paper to remain wet for a longer time. So I applied a very generous amount of paint and started with watery grey at the top of the paper. For the bottom of the cake where the folds fuse with the cake, I apply raw sienna and then sepia. I pull the strokes upwards for the vertical folds and as the paper is still wet, it gives soft vertical lines.

Once the paper is dry and all the colors are settled, I start detailing the folds. To achieve this, I use dry-on-dry technique. I carefully first paint all the folds with grey. The movement is from top to bottom. Once that is dry, I use sepia to paint the bottom, darker part of the cake. Here I paint from the bottom to the top. The underpainting done using raw sienna blends the sepia very well giving a realistic look of chocolate cake sticking to the paper. 

For the last part, I paint shadows. Considering the light direction, I use the wet-on-wet method. Here, again, I paint sepia lining the darkest part of the cake, the bottom, and then bluish grey on top of it. Because of the water, I get some nice soft shadows, and that’s how the cupcake painting is done.

Want more tutorials like this?

If you enjoyed this project, you’ll love the exclusive real-time tutorials, downloadable sketches, and reference photos I share on my Patreon here. Every month, I upload new detailed painting guides you can follow at your own pace.

👉 Click here to explore my Patreon tiers

🎁 Bonus: Free Coloring Page

Don’t forget to grab your free cupcake coloring page to print, trace, or paint in your style:

🎨 Click to download the coloring page

If you try this painting, I’d love to see your version! Tag me on Instagram (sneha_coloursoft) or leave a comment below. Let’s paint something sweet together.

Happy Painting :)