About This Class

Watercolour is one of the few mediums that rewards restraint. If you already draw, it gives your line work air and atmosphere; if you sew, print or letter, it becomes a fast way to test colour before you commit; and if you have only ever worked digitally, this is a gentle way back into a material that behaves on its own terms and cannot be undone with a keystroke.

Although the class is paced for absolute beginners, painters who already know their way around a palette will pick up several habits worth stealing. Over eleven short lessons you will learn:

• The Fundamentals: paper weights, brush shapes and the four pigments that will carry ninety per cent of your work, so a half-empty studio never blocks you.
• Sketching: how to reduce a leaf, a seed head or a stem to three simple shapes before a drop of water touches the page.
• Washes: flat, graded and wet-into-wet — including how to read the sheen on the paper and know precisely when to stop.
• Colour Mixing: building a warm and cool green from the same two tubes, plus the muted neutrals that make a bright accent land.
• Layering & Detail: glazing veins, shadows and edges without lifting the layer underneath or muddying your greens.
• Scanning & Cleanup: photographing or scanning a finished piece, correcting the paper cast, and preparing files for print or fabric.

Your class project is a single botanical study of a plant you can actually reach — a supermarket herb, a street tree clipping, a windowsill survivor. You will post the sketch first, then the finished painting, and I answer every project thread personally.

No previous painting experience is assumed. A pad of cold-press paper, one size 8 round brush and a small set of pans are enough to finish every lesson.