Free Watercolour Lessons

~ Get started painting today! ~

Cactus

Welcome to our Free Watercolour Lessons!

Get started painting today – with simple, easy, step by step videos that cover all the foundation skills needed to paint beautiful watercolours in the comfort and convenience of your home – for free!!

Learn and paint at your own pace.

Learn about materials and tricks on transferring images. Use my line drawings – or use your own pictures. Learning watercolour skills allows you to become good at painting whatever you want to paint.

You’re never limited to… the skills apply to painting in a variety of ways.

Get started to day!


 
 

Line Drawings Download

Click to “download and save as”.

You can totally look for your own images on line or amongst your own pictures. These are to help if you’re stuck on an image and just want to move forward with the skill-learning.

 
 

 
 

These 2 videos are available on YouTube:

The following videos are for registered members.

I cover the 5 foundation skills in Watercolour:

 
 
Each skill set will be used to finish a piece of art that will take between an hour to 3 hours to complete.

The skills will build upon one another and each skill learned previously will be be used in the current video to quickly increase painting talents.

Subject matter has been chosen to aid in the suitability of the skill set being learned and the assumption that the student is a relative newcomer to watercolour.
 
 
 

Watercolour Materials

 

Click to open.

Click to open.

This is one of the videos published on YouTube that I wanted to include in the collection here.

You can also download your own copy of the watercolour materials list comparison.Click the image. Or here to download your own copy.

Watch the video for a long talky about the difference between Student and Artist Quality materials and what I recommend.

There’s no reason to spend a lot of money to get started painting.

When you get hankering for really good materials – ask for gift cards for birthdays and the holidays. Trust me – your loved ones will LOVE that you have a hobby.
 
 

 
 
 

Activating Watercolour

This is a video for the absolute beginner who’d like a better way of “activating” tube colour with enough water to get it ready for painting.

 

 
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1. Flat Wash

Here's the finished piece - click to get in on the full video.  
Flat wash is the basic “colouring in” of watercolour.

It is a simple flat, unvaried field of colour.

The application of pigment and water is kept uniform to allow the paint to dry in an unvaried pane of colour. That’s why the stained glass design was so perfect; it keeps the wet paint from co-mingling a pluming into each other.
 



 

Materials that I use a lot:


 
 


 

2. Glazing

GlazingBubbles 
Simple glazing is layering a flat wash over another flat wash that has already dried completely.

Glazing gets more complicated then that – but this is the simplest version.
 
 



 
 

Matt Forster – the King of Glazing

For further study or just simple enjoyment of a watercolour artist who’s really working the glazing skill – check out Matt Forster.
 
 


 

3. Graded Wash

Rainboots Colour

Graded wash is where we finally get into what feels like “painting”.

Instead of flat areas of colour we are creating volume and rendering shape with the addition of water to lighten the paint pigments.

Today let’s “make it rain” with a lesson on graded wash and add a cute pair of rain boots for a sweet little exercise in the most universally used skill in watercolour painting.
 
 



 

Materials that I use a lot:


 
 


 

4. Wet in Wet

CactusWet in wet is probably my favourite part of watercolour.

It challenges me to be patient and let go and trust that I can’t control it and that it’s going to turn out the way it will.

I can guide the paint, but I can’t bend the water to my will. It is stronger and more tenacious than I am and giving in gives me a sense of mystery about my painting.
 
 


 

Materials that I use a lot:


 
 


 

5. Dry Brush

Dry Brush
This exercise brings together all the skills we’ve learned so far and then adds the wonderful texturizing of dry brush to finish it off.

Nothing can replicate so many organic and natural textures as the dry brush effect – so it’s definitely earned a valued spot in our watercolour tool kit.

Practice dry brushing on a variety of surface papers to get a feel for how the paint will react and how dry the brush needs to be before everything blends together.
 
 


 
 

Part II


 

Materials that I use a lot:


 
 

Thanks for watching – hope you paint a tonne of wonderful watercolours!!

 
 
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