How to Watercolor Paint for Beginners
Watercolor painting can be intimidating. It’s not an easy medium to work with as it’s unforgiving. Unlike working with Acrylic or Oil paints, you can’t simply go over a mistake with a new brush stroke of paint. However, watercolor painting can and should be fun!
I am in the middle of creating a new watercolor class that I am crazy excited about! It’s one that’s been in the making for a few months now, but has been on my mind for the last year.
I am an artist at heart. I studied art millions of years ago, but only really focused on growing my skills and exploring different paint mediums over the last 7 or so. I am primarily self taught but have taken online classes, far too many to count! I have also taken in-person art classes and practice art almost every day.
I paint in watercolor and acrylics. I also do calligraphy and lettering using everything from a dip pen to brush pen, to waterbrush pen. I design and illustrate. I pretty much live and breath art and creativity. So I have a lot of experience to draw from. I like to learn in bite size pieces so that I can apply what I learn and explore w and one thing I do with all of my classes is teach in a way that breaks down steps as you learn and find ways to make learning as simple as possible for those who may not have as much art experience.
Introduction to Modern Watercolors for Beginners is a class that I developed and teach in a way that helps you learn easily, through simple projects, how to become familiar with watercolor paints but practice, observation and fun!
Each section has key elements that I teach about mixing watercolor paints, controlling brush strokes and paint as you work on and complete a small art piece! I don’t know about you, but I get bored with classes that focus a lot of time on theory vs. ones that dive in and get you creating right away. Yes, theory is important and if your goal is to master watercolor painting and create grand works of art, then I recommend you enrol in an art degree program and work as hard as you can to learn and paint as much as you can. However, if your goal is to experience watercolor and try out the medium, add painting to your repertoire of skills and enjoy a hobby that is gratifying and relaxing, then I recommend you check out this new class that I am working on.
You can binge watch it over a long weekend, or take your time with it over 7 weeks, or 7 months. What you will do, is begin painting right away! Have you ever seen beautiful color palettes of paint, or color charts, or color wheels?! We start painting those right away!
We then move onto painting simple abstracts that you can frame, turn into a greeting card or just covet for yourself. As we start with these simple but fun projects, you will be growing your watercolor painting as you mix colors, observe what speaks to you and what doesn’t, control the wash of paint and movement of your brush. See, learning in my opinion, should be practical and rewarding!
Next we move onto painting impressions of leaves and stems until your watercolor paper is filled with movement and color before we move onto painting flowers. Yup! I jam packed everything I ever wanted to paint and spend hours exploring!
This list goes on. Check out more in-depth information about the class here.
If you’ve taken any of my lettering or calligraphy classes, and are looking to expand your calligraphy practice or even what you offer in your calligraphy business, watercolor painting is the next natural step. With the addition of watercolor painting, you can easily create greeting cards, wedding stationery and custom art for your existing clients. Set yourself apart from others and put your own spin on your services or products. It’s what I did and it’s what brought more color to my world! I still love black and white and will always be drawn to it, but with my watercolor practice, I truly found my color palette that I go back to again and again. It’s also very similar to calligraphy and lettering, once you get into your watercolor practice, watching how the paint moves on the paper as you push that paint puddle around, become mesmerizing. The best part about painting with watercolor, is observing all the great texture once dried.
I can go on about watercolor for days! I invite you to join me in this new class of mine. It’s the largest, most in depth and I believe, most inspiring class I’ve created so far!
If you have any questions about the class, please feel free to email me at nicki@lifeidesign.com.
Nicki x
Sign up before it launches on February 12th and save! {Price goes up on the 12th}
