Effortless Watercolor Workshop

Dates:
Oct. 5-6, 2024

Location:
Kiln Studios,
2650 W Belleview Ave Suite D-100, Littleton, CO 80123

Time:
 9am-5pm Saturday and Sunday

Class Discord:
https://discord.gg/FAJ34sGk

Welcome to the class! : )

I’m thrilled to have you join me for this two-day workshop, "Effortless Watercolor." Whether you're newer to watercolor or have some experience, this workshop is designed to help you unlock the beauty and spontaneity of watercolor painting with ease and confidence.

Watercolor is a unique medium that invites both precision and unpredictability, making it one of the most expressive and versatile forms of art. Throughout these two days, we’ll explore techniques that will allow you to work with the natural flow of watercolor, embracing its fluidity while learning to control and enhance your artistic expression.

Our goal is to make watercolor feel less intimidating and more intuitive, so you can create art that feels effortless and authentic. We’ll cover foundational skills, advanced techniques, and creative experiments that will help you develop a deeper connection with your artistic process.

By the end of this workshop, you’ll not only have a collection of beautiful artworks but also a set of tools and insights to continue exploring watercolor with confidence and joy.

Let’s dive in and make some magic with watercolor!

Supplies

Note: I would rather you be able to use materials you already own. There is nothing worse than having to buy a bunch of stuff for a workshop you might not use. If something is absolutely required, I will let you know! Otherwise, bring what you have and we can make do! That said, I do make recommendations with a lot of care. I have thought about each thing on this list in depth and have found it to work well.

Colors

One thing I try to stress in teaching is simplicity. For the colors I use I tried to keep it easy to understand and even easier to work with. One of the main things we will be discussing in my class is switching your idea of “color” to thinking more in terms of “warm vs. cool”. With that idea I have built the palette below. Each primary color has a warm and a cool version which opens up literally every color we could ever want to mix and keeps it organized. I also have a primary set of 3 earth tones too. This helps the main palette become easier to work with.

Why not use just 3 primary paints? I would love to just suggest 3 primaries and be done with it, but that isn’t the whole story there. Using 3 primaries does work, but it is difficult to control much of the time and you spend a lot of time mixing. So by using warm and cool primaires, it becomes so much easier to control color and tone.

(Note: click on any color to purchase. I recommend danial smith here, but I use others too such as Schminke and Qor from Golden)

Brand Any brand is fine as long as it’s in the “pro” category. Windsor Newton, M. Graham, Daniel Smith, Schminke, Holbein, Golden QOR, etc. all work great. I hope you don’t have to buy too much for this workshop, so hopefully you already have most of those colors.

Paper

After testing a lot of different papers, the one I highly recommend is 300lb. kilaminjaro bright white cold press paper from cheapjoes.com.

This 5 sheet pack is only $69. I know that might seem like a lot at around $12 a sheet, but the quality matters big time with paper. These are full sheets at 22x30, but we can cut them down to 15x22 which will give you 10 sheets total. That makes it easier for traveling as well! : )

There are two reasons for the thicker paper, the first is that it doesn’t need stretching. In a recent workshop where students used 140lb paper, a lot of students had difficulty with the paper warping up and bending all over the place. We definitely don’t want to be fighting our materials! The other reason I love the 300lb paper is that it holds a massive amount of water and keeps areas wet for a long time.

For anyone flying in, I can supply you the paper and you can just venmo me, etc. if that makes it easier for you.

Palette

I really like the Medeen Travel Palette found here: https://amzn.to/4704oWV.

Reasons I like this palette

  1. 33 compartments for paint - even though i recommend the 11 colors I mentioned before, I like having enough wells for both new paints, and for colors I use a lot. For example - burnt sienna. I use a lot of it and will fill two of the wells with it so I don’t run out. The same is true for my yellows. I keep 2 wells for mixing actual yellow colors, and I also have 2 I keep off to the side that are dedicated to mixing greens. The reason for this is I don’t want to contaminate the yellow pigment with a bunch of blue as I mix my greens

  2. The trays are big enough for lots of water. Many people don’t use nearly enough water, so this works well for that! It is also big enough to do 1/2 sheet paintings in the studio. So it’s just a really nice size for almost everything up to full sheets. We will be working on 1/4 size and 1/2 size in the workshop.

  3. It’s water tight. This is a small thing, but i like knowing that if i didn’t totally clean it, its not going to leak all over me as I put it in a backpack, etc.

BRUSHES

Just as I mentioned before, I hope you can bring things you already own. For the class I recommend only a few brushes and they can do almost anything we need:

The basic brush requirement:

Mop Brushes: 2 or 3 mop brushes that are basically a big and medium size (size 6 or 7, and size 2 or 3).

Round Brushes: 2 or 3 round brushes ranging from medium to small size

Flat Brushes: 2 or 3 Flat brushes in various sizes from medium to small. (size 6, 10, and 14)

Rigger Brush

Hake Brush 1 brush is all you need. 2 to 3 inch size will be fine.

Mop Brushes

Mop brushes are big and soft and hold a massive amount of water. I use these or laying in big areas of pigment. Regular round brushes do not hold enough water to do what we need them to do, especially for big areas.

I love this brush set from amazon that has 9 brushes for $39. That is a crazy deal and I use these brushes on every painting. https://amzn.to/47uv81X

Round Brushes:
Round brushes look similar to mop brushes but they have more spring and hold less water. We use these for painting smaller things and as a good all around general brush. I use a windsor newton series 7 brush for this and have owned it for 15 years. so the quality is very very good. But, it’s expensive! Here is a good basic starter kit if you don’t have many brushes. This set has a few flats, rounds, and rigger brush so all you need is a couple of mop brushes and you are good to go! https://amzn.to/4enT1L0

Flat Brush
Flat brushes are exactly as described - they are flat at the end. I use these brushes for crisp edges and also as a great tool for softening edges (a technique I will share with you). I just purchased these brushes and they work just great and are very cheap! https://amzn.to/3XIJzvY

Rigger Brush
A rigger brush is a long skinny brush used for making fine lines and some other details. they are generally cheap and you go through them pretty quick (they are useless if the hairs start fanning out)

Hake Brush
A hake Brush is a big flat brush that holds a ton of water. Its great for wetting huge areas of the paper and also softening big areas of skies, etc. It’s a cheap brush too and will last forever. Here’s a cheap set that work well: https://amzn.to/4elKyb2

Other supplies to bring:

Please use what you already have if possible. I will share what I use for these things, but they aren’t required by any means.

Please email me at l.white@leewhiteillustration.com if you have any questions at all! I am so looking forward to meeting you all! : )