Course Overview

Color your world with watercolors! Join expert Kateri Ewing in this comprehensive beginner’s class as she guides you through all the basics you need to start painting with watercolors. Explore a wide range of tools and supplies, learn essential techniques, and follow hands-on demonstrations to develop foundational skills. Step by step, you’ll gain the confidence and knowledge to create stunning watercolor art.

Video Lesson List

1. What You Need: Watercolor Paints

Meet Kateri Ewing and explore the fundamentals of watercolor paint, including staining and granulating effects, lightfastness ratings, pigment numbers, and more.

Duration: 18 min

2. What You Need: Brushes

Learn about different types of watercolor brushes, their unique qualities, which are best for beginners, and how to properly care for and store them.

Duration: 7 min

3. What You Need: Paper

Understand the various types and formats of watercolor paper. Get expert advice on choosing the right paper for your project and how to stretch it to prevent warping and bubbling.

Duration: 13 min

4. What You Need: Palettes & Extras

Review the remaining essential tools and extras, including palettes, erasers, masking fluid, easels, and additional supporting materials.

Duration: 14 min

5. Methods: Basic Brushstrokes

Explore key mark-making techniques using flat and round brushes. Practice lifting pigment, creating sharp edges, and making a variety of distinctive lines.

Duration: 20 min

6. Methods: Washes

Master the art of the watercolor wash! Learn to control water and pigment, prevent unwanted blooms, fade edges, and achieve beautiful, even washes.

Duration: 40 min

7. Methods: Paint Application

Discover the two main watercolor methods—wet-in-wet and wet-on-dry. Learn to drop in and lift out color, use masking fluid or salt for special effects, and apply dry-brush for different types of edges.

Duration: 37 min

8. Methods: Color Mixing

Unlock your colors! Learn to predict and mix the shades you want by creating a color wheel, color chart, and value scale for reference.

Duration: 22 min

9. Methods: Color Harmony

Achieve stunning color harmony with just six tubes of paint. Explore pigment interaction, mixing luminous colors, using triads, and working with a limited palette for cleaner results.

Duration: 32 min

10. Projects: Basic Landscape

Follow a step-by-step demo to paint a simple landscape—planning colors, breaking down the subject, and layering details in the foreground, middle ground, and background.

Duration: 29 min

11. Projects: Basic Seascape

Take your skills further and paint a seascape. Learn new textures and shapes for rippling water, apply masking fluid, and use lifting techniques for waves and final touches.

Duration: 21 min

12. Projects: Expressive Mixed Media

Experiment with an expressive, gestural watercolor style. Use water glaze, drop in color, lift and refine shapes, and add colored pencils and pens for expressive details.

Duration: 23 min

13. Projects: Botanical-Style Flower

Use your wet-on-dry skills for a botanical-style flower. Plan your approach, use water-glazing, drop in color, add depth and contour, and complete with dry-brushing and detail.

Duration: 44 min

14. Projects: Detailed Bird

Create a detailed watercolor bird portrait! Begin with the eye, then build up form, texture, contrast, and finish with glazing and final details for a stunning result.

Duration: 41 min