Watercolour & Sketching Course: Beginners

What you'll learn

Learn to paint landscapes with our watercolour and sketching course for beginners, as part of our painting short courses in Sydney.

Embark on a journey into the captivating realm of watercolour through this engaging and enjoyable sketching and watercolour course. Students will lightly outline their basic sketch using a pencil, ensuring the papers texture remains intact. Moving on to essential aspects of watercolour painting—Transparency, Lightfastness, and Staining—your tutor will explain how understanding these properties is crucial for achieving desired effects and preserving the integrity of your artwork.

Following the sketch, we'll guide students step-by-step through painting a landscape, emphasising layering, colours, and shading techniques. Techniques like wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry will be introduced to bring the sky, sea, and various landscape elements to life. We'll also delve into the importance of lights and shadows, demonstrating how to maintain the brightness of the paper and add volume through well-placed shadows. Students will further learn to depict water reflections and texture, enriching their watercolour compositions with depth and detail.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this sketching & watercolour course, you should have:

An understanding of sketching onto watercolour paper without damaging the texture of the page
Experience with watercolours and how to transition from one colour to another
Experimented with wet-on-wet, wet-on-dry, and dry-brushing methods
Introduction to how to paint a simple landscape scene and create water reflections and texture

Course content

What will be covered in this watercolour painting workshop?

Wet-on-wet: Wet the paper with clean water and then apply watercolour paint to create soft, blended effects mostly used for backgrounds.
Wet-on-dry: Apply paint to dry paper, for more precise details in the second phase.
Dry Brushing: Use a mostly dry brush with minimal water to create texture.
Gradients: Create smooth transitions from one colour to another, how to use slope to make the transition smoother.
How to emphasise volume by adding shadows
Introduction to lights and shadows, how to maintain lights by keeping the white of watercolour paper

Intended audience

Who is this painting course for?

This class is perfect for beginners who want to try something new or add to their creative repertoire.

Course venue

Rozelle Campus

2A Gordon Street, Rozelle NSW 2039 (corner of Gordon St & Victoria Rd on the grounds of St. Joseph's Church)

Course materials

What to bring to class

Option 1 - Bring along your own materials (click here for the material list)
Option 2 - Purchase a kit at the checkout. * purchased kits can be collected from the front office before class.

Additional information

Please note the following:

Closed-in shoes required
Please wear old clothes
Long hair must be tied back

Course testimonials

Pip said: Saba is a wonderful tutor. I learnt a lot and she gave helpful, encouraging feedback to everyone on the course. I think we were all keen to practice at home each week. I would love to be able to do another course with Saba as the tutor.
Barry said: Saba Ghorbanimanesh is an excellent teacher and I will have no hesitation in enrolling in another of her classes. She explains things clearly using good analogies. She is warm and approachable. She is very happy to field questions and share her knowledge. If I was to offer any constructive feedback, it would be that sometimes when she is explaining something she takes your brush and does the entire thing. It might be better if she did a couple of strokes, then passed the brush back for you to continue. I find this is a better way of learning. I would note that as I became somewhat more competent as the classes progressed, she did this less.
Rhonda said: Overall the course was a very positive experience.Saba was an excellent teacher and very encouraging to the participants.

Course tutors

This course has no current classes. Please join our waitlist and we will notify you when we have places available. Join waitlist for Watercolour & Sketching Course: Beginners