Art with Flo: Coloured Pencil and Mixed Media for Every Beginner

Art with Flo, created by Dutch artist Floortje van Doorn, is one of YouTube's most popular beginner-friendly art channels, with over 2,000,000 subscribers and a library of more than 500 tutorials covering coloured pencil, watercolour, and mixed media techniques. Van Doorn has built her channel on the conviction that drawing and painting are skills that anyone can learn with the right guidance, and her step-by-step tutorials deliver on this conviction with a clarity and patience that has made her channel one of the most trusted resources for beginners who are just starting their artistic journey.

The channel's focus on coloured pencil is one of its most distinctive characteristics. While coloured pencil is one of the most accessible drawing media for beginners, it is also one of the most underserved in terms of high-quality online instruction. Van Doorn's coloured pencil tutorials fill this gap with thorough, clearly demonstrated instruction that covers everything from basic layering and blending through advanced techniques for rendering realistic textures and forms.

The Coloured Pencil Tutorials

The coloured pencil content is the heart of the Art with Flo channel and the area where van Doorn's expertise is most clearly demonstrated. The tutorials cover a wide range of subjects including animals, portraits, flowers, and other popular subjects, with each tutorial demonstrating the complete process from initial sketch through finished drawing.

Layering and blending are the fundamental techniques of coloured pencil drawing, and van Doorn's instruction on these techniques is thorough and clearly demonstrated. She covers the specific approaches to building up colour through multiple layers, the management of pressure to control the intensity of each layer, and the specific blending techniques that produce smooth tonal transitions and rich, saturated colour.

Texture rendering is one of the most impressive aspects of the coloured pencil tutorials, with van Doorn demonstrating how to represent different textures including fur, feathers, skin, and fabric convincingly in coloured pencil. The texture instruction covers the specific mark-making strategies that produce different textures, the management of colour and value within textured areas, and the finishing techniques that bring textures to life.

Animal drawing is the most popular subject category on the channel, reflecting the particular appeal of animal subjects for beginners and the specific challenges that animal drawing presents. Van Doorn's animal tutorials cover a wide range of species including dogs, cats, horses, birds, and wild animals, with each tutorial addressing the specific challenges of the particular animal's coat, feathers, or skin.

Watercolour and Mixed Media

Beyond coloured pencil, the channel covers watercolour and mixed media techniques, providing a broader range of content for artists who want to explore different media. The watercolour tutorials follow the same step-by-step, beginner-friendly approach as the coloured pencil content, covering fundamental techniques including wet-on-wet, wet-on-dry, and the specific approaches to different watercolour subjects.

The mixed media tutorials are particularly popular, combining coloured pencil with watercolour, ink, or other media to create effects that neither medium can achieve alone. These tutorials are valuable both for the specific techniques they demonstrate and for the broader lesson they teach about the creative possibilities of combining different media.

The Beginner Focus

The beginner focus of the channel is one of its most important characteristics. Van Doorn consistently communicates that artistic skills are learnable by anyone, and her tutorials are designed to be accessible to people who have never drawn or painted before. The step-by-step format, the patient pace, and the encouraging tone all reflect a genuine commitment to making art accessible rather than intimidating.

This beginner focus does not mean that the content lacks depth. The tutorials cover techniques in sufficient detail to be genuinely useful for developing real skills, and artists who follow the tutorials consistently report significant improvement in their abilities. The accessibility of the content is achieved through clear explanation and patient demonstration rather than through simplification that sacrifices genuine skill development.

The Patreon and Online Courses

Van Doorn's Patreon provides additional content and printable reference materials for supporters who want to go deeper than the free YouTube content allows. The printable references are particularly popular, providing high-quality reference images that Patreon members can use for their own drawings.

The online courses available through the Art with Flo website provide more structured and in-depth instruction than the free YouTube content, covering specific subjects in the depth that a full course allows. The courses reflect the same beginner-friendly approach as the YouTube content while providing the additional structure and depth that a paid course format allows.

The Bottom Line

Art with Flo is one of the most beginner-friendly and practically useful art channels on YouTube, offering step-by-step instruction in coloured pencil, watercolour, and mixed media techniques with a clarity, patience, and encouragement that makes the content genuinely accessible to artists at every level. For beginners who want to develop coloured pencil skills with the guidance of a knowledgeable and encouraging instructor, Art with Flo is one of the most valuable and reliable resources available.