Your video field guide to watercolor
Watercolor is often taught as a slow, tedious, and precise process. In the last ten+ years of painting outside, I got to know this awesome medium as something else - it is fun, playful, and accessible!
I developed a different way of painting that embraces the natural - and magical - properties of watercolor instead of trying to control every brush stroke.
This course is a beginners and intro to watercolor series designed to to help you understand WHY and HOW watercolor works on the page. It took me years to figure all of this stuff out, and I am so excited to help demystify this medium and share with you the tools for painting a wide variety of landscapes.
Whether you are brand new to watercolor or have painting experience and want to dive into the fundamentals, I'm designing the course to be a resource for many skill levels. I am excited to dive into this wonderful medium together with joy, fun, and a spirit of exploration.
Currently this course is a self-paced painting adventure! Earlier in the year I ran a supported version with live zoom office hours, and I plan to offer this option again in February 2026.
There is more info about the course structure and what I'll cover below! Scroll down for schedule and registration info.
Class Structure
The heart of this course is short (15-30 minute) pre-recorded lessons that explore the key aspects of watercolor techniques, skills, and processes I wish I'd known when I got started.
In June 2025 these classes were supported by once-per-week live sessions held on zoom (5:30pm pacific time) where students asked questions, saw additional demos, and connected with the student group (think of it like like office hours with art friends). I recorded these sessions and they are part of the course library.
All of the core lessons are released!! There are 36 main videos. If you are new to watercolor I recommend that you follow the class progression. Otherwise, I designed each topic to be a standalone video lesson or two and you can skip around and view the topics that interest you the most!
In addition, if you are someone who thrives on a daily practice/ painting challenge, the course lends itself really well to completing a lesson each day.
Part 1 - How Watercolor Works
The first week is all about getting to know watercolor and understanding why it does beautiful (and frustrating) things on the page! Topics include:
- Materials
- Color mixing
- Water control
- Hard and soft edges
- Light and darkness (value)
- Intro & mindset video, too!
Part 2 - Landscape Elements
In the second week we develop skills for landscapes (with a Northwest Focus) - think of it like packing your backpack with the essential tools to create a painting.
- Water (simple rivers and lakes)
- Mountains & ridgelines
- Trees (evergreen and deciduous)
- Sky gradients and clouds
- and more!
Part 3 - Putting it all Together
After a few extra landscape elements lessons, we pack up our imaginary backpack of skills and follow the path of a painting, learning how to develop a cohesive, simplified, and story-based scene.
- Simplification
- Arrangement/ composition
- Value Map
- Explore/ Experiment/ Do the thing!
How This Course is Different
This new beginners course fills a missing link in my online classes and Adventure Art Academy offerings. With this series all of the basic skills and techniques for understanding watercolor will be explored in one place, with a focus on starting from zero experience at the trailhead and building skills along the way.
This course is built around short class segments - these are easier to fit into a busy schedule, and much less overwhelming for new painters.
Unlike the longer live courses I've done, this series is designed to make it easy to choose your pacing and speed. By focusing on pre-recorded lessons as the course heart, you can rewind, hit pause, or practice something again!
Each lesson within the course also focuses on smaller paintings instead of my usual bigger ones! This allows us to paint a lot of little scenes, reduces stress, and helps us let go of perfectionism. We will also use practice paper to get comfortable with new brush strokes and techniques.
Schedule
The course is now self-paced, as the live supported version wrapped up in early July. I plan to run the group supported version again in late February 2026.
Registration
There are two ways to join the Exploring Watercolor Course.
- FREE As part of the Adventure Art Academy ($29/month): This option is the most affordable, and also gives you access to the entire Adventure Art Academy library (includes the Alpenglow Course and 55+ landscape lessons). Once you sign up for the Adventure Art Academy) You can cancel anytime, and the course is inside the library so you do not need to sign up separately.
- This Course Only: $130. You can purchase the standalone course here, and after registration you will be sent a welcome email with course access information.
Course Materials
For this Beginners course you do not need the exact materials I will teach and demo with. If you already have watercolor supplies I encourage you to start with those, and then as the course goes on you can add to your supplies as needed. Often, this is the most affordable option. In the list below I share exactly what I will use along with some cheaper alternatives if you are just getting started and not sure about investing in materials yet.
With that said, the materials we use, especially for watercolor, can make a big difference in how well the medium behaves and whether we can create certain effects. We'll talk more about materials in a course video, but for now here's the basic list.
Where to buy supplies:
- Blick Art Materials - this link will take you to a list of all the options for this course- you do NOT need to buy everything - this list contains duplicates of some items when I wanted to share various options. This is the cheapest place to buy tubes of paint!!!
- Amazon - cheaper for some things, much more expensive for others like paint tubes. Click the text to to to to a spreadsheet with the links
- Note- if you use the links above to purchase supplies, both companies give me a percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you
To learn more about the paints I recommend and possible alternates, one of our community members, Logan Hughes, wrote this awesome in-depth blog post about the colors!! You can read it here.
- Pencil- anything will work, I use a mechanical pencil with soft lead (this Pentel 0.7 size is my favorite).
- Eraser- white plastic erasers work the best, as they leave no residue or dye behind
- Brush- my primary brush will be a #10 round synthetic brush with a fine point (like this one, the Grumbacher Goldenedge). I may once in a while use a bigger round brush to fill in big areas, but this is optional. If you know you want to get a #10 and a larger round, a great option are the Black Gold Dynasty brushes from The Brush Guys (items DYN12200 and DYN12029 if you buy from their site, which is a little cheaper, and both are included in the Blick link above)
- Practice Paper - some kind of cheaper paper for practicing marks and techniques. My go-to is the Canson XL watercolor pads.
- Cotton paper- aside from paint, this is the priciest thing on the list. I really recommend that you get at least a little bit of 100% cotton paper to use! It is cheapest if you buy a full sized sheet of paper and cut or tear it down to size, but you can also buy pads of paper and cut those down. Working smaller for this course means the paper will last longer.
- Paper towel or rag - to clean brushes etc. If you want reusable ones, rags are great, or you can get a roll of durable blue shop towels.
- Cup for water- I don't use huge glasses of water, so anything will do!
- Waterproof pen- some of the lessons will use waterproof pen, and it is nice to take notes with on pages where water is involved. An example is an 05 sized micron pen.
- Watercolor Paint- I list more detail below, but here's the basics - you'll want a simple range of colors including a pink, red, light and darker yellow, a few blues (one that leans more greenish, and one that leans more neutral or purple), and a dark grey or black.
Paint- more details
- If you are brand new to watercolor and don't want to invest in pricier stuff to start, this simple set from Windsor and Newton (Cotman label) will work. The colors aren't an exact match of what I use, and they will be less saturated, but it is a good place to start.
- Note - the Cotman sets have a few paints labeled "cadmium HUE" - while these have cadmium in the name, the term hue means that they are a replica of the traditional cadmium paint and do not in fact contain heavy metals. For all paints it is always best practice to keep them out of reach of kids and pets and avoid eating, licking, or breathing paint dust.
- To read more, here is a good summary (talking about all kinds of paint, not just watercolor) from Jackson's Art Supply.
- If you want to invest in a bit pricier materials that will last a long time, I use Daniel Smith watercolor paint - this is the most widely accessible and cheapest "pro/artist" grade paint I could find. You can get 5 or 15 ml tubes- the bigger tubes are more expensive but you get a lot more paint for the money. I buy these exclusively from Blick because it has the best price- the Blick link above makes the colors easy to find
- Here's the exact color names I will use in the course:
- Hansa Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Gold OR New Gamboge, Perylene Red, Quinacridone Rose, Cobalt Blue, Phthalo Blue Green Shade, Indanthrone Blue, and Neutral Tint Grey
