Watercolor is a great technique for landscape painting, both plein air and in studio, it’s clean, quick to set up, and to carry around. As one of my students remarked, painting in watercolor is also great way to practice and improve your color mixing, planning a painting and improve your skills in evaluating your subject’s colors, all skills that can be transferred to the practice of other painting techniques.

In this 6 session online course, we will practice painting quick, fresh, small landscapes as well as  more finished and detailed ones. We will learn how to prepare small compositional sketches and color studies before approaching the final work. We will also discuss and practice intuitive perspective and start a sketchbook where we can take quick “visual notes” both for fun or to complement photographic references when creating a more finished landscape painting in studio.

Materials list:

• A sketchpad with decent quality drawing paper that can also withstand a light watercolor wash, you can wait to purchase this item as we will be discussing it during the first session.
• Watercolor paper pad, Arches, Fabriano, Winsor & Newton or similar, Cold Press, size 10 by 14 or similar. You can save money if you buy a pack of 5 sheets of cold press paper, size 22” by 30”, 140 lbs, same brands as above, and cut each sheet in 4 smaller sheets.
• Watercolor paint (tube or pan): cadmium red, alizarine crimson, cadmium yellow medium and cadmium yellow lemon or pale, yellow ochre, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, ultramarine violet, cobalt violet, sap green, Hooker’s green, Raw Sienna, raw umber, Venetian red, burnt sienna, sepia, Black. You can start the course with the colors you have and we can discuss if what you already have can substitute some of the colors in this list. We will discuss more colors in class
• Brushes: the classic watercolor brush is a #8, round, Kolinsky sable brush, but this brush can be very expensive. Winsor and Newton series 7 Kolinsky sable in size 8 can cost $200. Cheaper brands yet very good quality Kolinsky sable brushes are Raphael and Eskoda. You can also use a round, synthetic watercolor brush in size 10 or 12 for a fraction of the price and be perfectly happy. You will also need a #2 round, kolinsky sable or synthetic and a 3/8” flat, synthetic watercolor brush.
• Pencils in gradation HB and 2B, kneaded eraser, pencil sharpener.
• A couple of old ceramic plates or plastic palette for color mixing and a couple of water containers.
• Paper towels