With the nice season approaching, the days getting longer and the release of Persephone by the part of her bully uncle Hade, Nature is waking up and our eyes’ thirst for colors is finally going to be quenched.

Now is the moment to go out and take a walk in the woods, in a park, along a brook and enjoy the budding trees and plants: magnolias, forsythias, lilacs, and with them, also birds, chipmunks, daffodils, groundhogs. Well, may be, not groundhogs.
In this 6-session, online watercolor course, we will take virtual walks in the woods and continue to explore the forms of nature with watercolors, sketches, studies of the natural world, copying a variety of subjects from photographic references, you will also be encouraged to create a few watercolors copying a subject of your choice from life outside the class time.

The image I used to advertise this course is by my dear friend and mentor Franco Testa, with whom I took many such exploratory hikes and walks in the woods and along alpine paths and torrents.

Materials:

• Paint: cadmium red medium, alizarine crimson, cadmium yellow lemon, cadmium yellow medium, earth red, (Indian red, Venetian red or burnt Sienna) yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, ultramarine violet, black, burnt umber, sepia, cobalt blue, cobalt violet, sap green, Hooker’s green, and any other colors you might already have
• Paper: a pad of cold press paper 12” by 16” or so
• Brushes: #2 and #8 or 10, round. You can use synthetic or natural sables (Kolinsky or red sable), a flat, synthetic brush, about ¾ “will do.
• You can also get a small sketchpad for quick studies and sketches, to be done in studio together or for sketching outdoor during one of your nature excursions. Make sure that the paper of the sketchpad can withstand light watercolor washes.