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HandoutHandout 1: Supply & Shopping List
Handout 1: Supply & Shopping List
Okay so first thing — you do not need a giant art store haul for this class. I'm mildly against the huge 48-pan starter sets. Too many colors and beginners just freeze up. Get the short list below, ruin some cheap paper with me, and figure out what you actually like before you spend real money.
The Actual Kit (Budget Tier)
This is everything you need for week one. Total should land somewhere around $25-35.
- Paper — cheap, not "fancy." Look for a student-grade watercolor pad, cold press, 90lb or 140lb, doesn't matter for now. Do NOT buy the nice stuff yet. I spent forty bucks on artist-grade paper before I could paint anything worth putting on it. Learn that lesson through me instead of your wallet.
- One round brush, size 8 or so, synthetic bristle is fine.
- One flat brush, about 1/2 inch or 3/4 inch.
- A basic set of half-pan watercolors, 12-24 colors. The Michaels or Costco starter tins are genuinely fine. That's actually how I started, a whim buy at Michaels.
- Two water containers (an old yogurt container and a jar work great — one for rinsing, one for clean water).
- Paper towels or a rag. More than you think you need.
- A pencil and eraser, just for light sketching.
- Masking tape, painter's tape is fine, for taping your paper down.
Nice-to-Have Tier (if you catch the bug)
No pressure on any of this. This is stuff I've added over a year and a half, not stuff you need for class.
- A jar of coarse salt, for texture effects (fair warning, it's easy to overdo — I once dumped way too much on a sky and it looked like a snowstorm)
- A hake or larger flat brush for skies and washes
- A real block or better-weight paper (140lb, cold press) once you know what colors and effects you actually reach for
- A small travel palette if you want to paint outside
- A spray bottle, for keeping paint wet longer in our dry air
A Shopping Note
Michaels and the craft aisle at places like Macey's or Walmart will cover the budget list completely. Costco sometimes has decent starter sets too if you're already there for something else, worth a look. You do not need to drive anywhere special or order anything online for week one.
One honest thing about supplies here specifically: our air is dry. Really dry, especially up against the mountains. That means paint dries faster on the palette and washes set up quicker on the paper than in most online tutorials, which are usually filmed by someone in a humid place lying to you about timing without meaning to. Keep your water container topped off and don't be surprised if your palette paints feel tacky faster than a video tells you they should. We'll work with that in class, not against it.
Bring what you've got to session one, even if it's not exactly matching this list. We'll sort out gaps together. Nobody needs to show up with the perfect kit. Ruined paper and a cheap brush is basically the uniform around here anyway.
HandoutHandout 2: Cheat Sheet — Core Watercolor Techniques
Handout 2: Cheat Sheet — Core Watercolor Techniques
Keep this taped up by your water jar. You will not remember all this stuff in the moment, and that's fine, that's what the handout's for.
Water-to-Pigment Ratios
- Wet wash (light, glowy): wet brush, light pigment. Think weak tea.
- Medium wash: damp brush, more pigment. Think normal tea.
- Dry brush / detail: barely any water, mostly pigment. Think tea concentrate you'd never actually drink.
Personally I load way more water than beginners expect and it scares people at first. Your mileage may vary, but if your color looks too pale when it's wet, it's probably right. Watercolor lightens as it dries.
The Dry Air Thing
We're at about 4,600 feet in American Fork and the air out here is dry. Washes set up faster than in basically any tutorial you'll find online, because most of those are filmed somewhere humid.
Practical version: work in smaller sections, and blend your edges fast, within a few seconds of laying the paint down. If you wait to "get back to it," it's already dried into a hard line. That's not a mistake, that's just physics doing its thing here. Plan for it instead of fighting it.
Wet-on-Wet vs Wet-on-Dry
- Wet-on-wet: wet paper, wet brush. Colors bleed and bloom into each other on their own. This is the good stuff, the soft edges, the sky effects. It also does things you didn't ask for. Let it.
- Wet-on-dry: dry paper, wet brush. Crisp, controlled edges. Use this for anything you want to stay put — tree trunks, fence lines, that kind of thing.
Most paintings use both. Wet-on-wet for the loose background, wet-on-dry for anything that needs to hold its shape.
Brush Basics
- Round brush: your main tool. Does washes, lines, most everything.
- Flat brush: good for skies and big even areas.
- That's genuinely it for beginners. You do not need six specialty brushes. I'm mildly against the giant kits with forty pans and eleven brushes — too many choices makes people freeze up before they even get wet.
Paper Weight
- 140 lb (cold press): the standard, holds up to water fine.
- Cheap sketch pad paper: buckles, pills, does weird stuff. Use it anyway, especially at the start. Ruin the cheap stuff first. Don't spend real money on good paper until you've got some control, or you'll be too scared to make a mess on it. Ask me how I know. 💀
Salt Texture (if we get to it)
Toss coarse salt onto a wet wash, let it dry completely, then brush it off. Makes a speckled, frosty texture. Great for skies, gravel, distant foliage.
Go light. I once dumped an entire jar on a sky wash trying to get texture and it looked like a blizzard hit. Start with a pinch, not a handful.
Muddy Colors
If you mix too many colors together you get mud — a dull grayish brown. Everyone panics about this. I don't, really. Mud happens, and honestly it's the exact color of the foothills around here by August. Learn what combos make mud so you can use it on purpose instead of being scared of it.
When a Wash Goes Wrong
- Too much water pooling: dab (don't wipe) with a dry paper towel.
- Dried too fast, hard edge you didn't want: let it go. You can glaze over it later, or just leave it. Nobody's grading this.
- Whole thing looks like a disaster: set it aside, start a new one. You don't owe any painting a finish. That's a real rule in this class, not just something nice I'm saying.
WorksheetHandout 3: Wash & Mix Practice Sheet
Handout 3: Wash & Mix Practice Sheet
Fill this in as we go today, not after. I want your hand still wet when you write your notes, so to speak. This is for you, not for me to grade — nobody's checking it.
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Part 1: Wet-on-Wet vs. Wet-on-Dry
Do both, side by side, same color. Then write down what happened.
Wet-on-wet swatch: What did the edge look like? __________________________
Wet-on-dry swatch: What did the edge look like? __________________________
Which one dried faster? (Remember, our air out here dries everything fast. If you blinked and missed it, that's normal, not a you-problem.)
☐ Wet-on-wet ☐ Wet-on-dry ☐ Basically the same, I'm slow at noticing
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Part 2: Ratio Test
Mix pigment to water at three different strengths. Paint a small square of each.
Ratio What it looked like Your reaction Mostly water, tiny bit of pigment Even mix Mostly pigment, little water Circle the one you'll reach for first next time you start a sky wash.
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Part 3: Make Mud On Purpose
I said it in class and I'll say it again on paper: mud is fine. You just want to know how you got there so you can decide when you want it.
Mix two colors that are NOT next to each other on your color wheel. Write which two:
Color 1: __________ Color 2: __________
What color did you get? __________________________
Does it look like anything real? (Dead grass, dirt, a foothill in August — my kid basically invented this color for me once, long story.) ✨ or 💀, your call:
☐ ✨ Actually useful ☐ 💀 Just mud, no redemption
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Part 4: Brush Check
Circle the brush you used most today:
☐ Round ☐ Flat ☐ Both about equal
Which one gave you more control? Which one did you like more, regardless of control? (These are allowed to be different answers. Mine are.)
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Part 5: One Honest Sentence
No wrong answers here. Just be straight with yourself.
Today I learned that watercolor is more ______________ than I expected.
Today my biggest mistake was ______________, and I'm calling it ✨ / 💀 / 🥲 (pick one).
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Keep this sheet. Tape it in your kit or stick it on the fridge, whatever. Next class we build on the wash technique, and it helps to remember what your paper actually did today instead of what you think it did. Paper has a way of humbling you after the fact.
HandoutHandout 4: Troubleshooting Guide — What's Going Wrong and Why
Handout 4: Troubleshooting Guide — What's Going Wrong and Why
Every one of these has happened to me. Some of them happened this month. Here's what's probably going on and what to do about it.
My paper is warping into a potato chip. That's just water and cheap paper doing what they do. Tape your paper down on all four sides before you start, that helps a lot. It'll still cup a little sometimes, especially with a big wash. Mine still does. I've decided that's part of the paper's personality now and I'd suggest you do the same. If it really bugs you, a heavier paper (140lb) warps less than the thin stuff.
My colors turned to mud. Welcome to the club. Mud usually means you mixed too many colors together, or you went back into a wet area with a different color before the first one dried. Here's the thing though — mud is fine. Actually useful. The foothills around here in August are basically that gray-brown color exactly. Learn what combo makes mud so you can make it on purpose instead of by accident.
My wash dried too fast and left hard lines everywhere. This is a Utah County problem specifically. Our air is dry, elevation's doing something too, and a wash that'd stay wet for five minutes in a humid climate sets up in half that here. Most tutorials online are filmed by people living somewhere wet and they will straight up lie to you about your timing. Work smaller sections, move faster, and don't be shy about wetting the paper again if you need more time.
I loaded way too much water and my paper's basically swimming. Bless, we've all done this. Dab your brush on a paper towel before it touches the paper. You want the brush wet, not dripping.
My colors look washed out and pale, not like the tube. You probably need more pigment, less water, in your mix. Watercolor lightens a lot as it dries, more than you expect at first. Load your brush heavier than feels natural.
I tried to fix a mistake and now there's a weird blotchy patch. Going back into a dry wash to "fix" it usually makes a hard-edged blotch, sometimes called a bloom. Best fix is to let it dry completely and either leave it or lift color with a clean damp brush and a paper towel. Fighting it while it's half-dry just makes it worse.
Everything I paint looks tight and stiff. This one's about the brush, not the paint. Loosen your grip. Hold farther back on the handle. My four-year-old paints looser than I do because he's not gripping it like it owes him money. I've genuinely tried to paint more like him since.
My greens all look the same flat green. Straight-from-the-pan green is usually too uniform for anything real. Mix your own from blue and yellow, and vary the ratio as you go, more yellow in sunny spots, more blue in shadow. Way more interesting than pan green.
I can't get a shape to read as a mountain, it just looks like a blob. Honestly, mountains are hard, and I say that as someone who lives fifteen minutes from some really good ones. Simplify more than feels right. Fewer value changes, not more. And if it still looks like a blob, that's fine, half my early paintings look like blobs with confidence.
I hate how this one turned out and I don't want to finish it. Then don't. I mean that. You don't owe any painting a finish. The good stuff, for me anyway, is in the doing part, not the framed-on-a-wall part. Put it aside, start another one on cheap paper, no harm done.
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 1
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —okay wait, say that part again, about the catcher's mitt, because I don't think I've heard this one.
ELIZABETH: Oh, the hand thing. Yeah. So I tried to paint my own hand once, as like, a reference exercise, you're supposed to do that, paint your own hand, everybody says it.
JESS: Sure.
ELIZABETH: It came out looking like a catcher's mitt. Like genuinely. Fingers all fused together, weird brown blob where the thumb should be. I showed my husband and he just went "oh, is that a mitt" and I said no it's my hand and he said "oh."
JESS: That's devastating.
ELIZABETH: It was! It humbled me. I've decided landscapes don't have hands, so that's just going to be my whole genre now. Mountains, skies, no hands allowed.
JESS: Okay, so this is episode one, for anyone just tuning in, this is the podcast that goes with the Beginner Watercolor class at the community center, Tuesday nights, and Elizabeth's our instructor. Elizabeth, tell people who you are real quick.
ELIZABETH: I do a lot of hobbies badly and this one happens to be the one I've stuck with longest. Watercolor's not even my main thing, my main thing keeps changing, but this one snuck up on me about a year and a half ago and it hasn't left the way the others do.
JESS: How'd it start?
ELIZABETH: Camera stuff, honestly. I was shooting my daughter in this afternoon light we get through the west windows and I got kind of obsessed with how color bleeds when it's soft like that. I wanted to make that, not just photograph it. Grabbed a cheap set of half-pans at Michaels, figured it'd end up in the basement with everything else.
JESS: And it didn't.
ELIZABETH: It didn't. Fully. I still don't finish paintings, if we're being honest, but I keep coming back to the water part. The way it moves the pigment around without asking me.
JESS: You like that it's out of your control.
ELIZABETH: I really do. Most things I do are about dialing a setting until the machine does exactly what I want. This one just doesn't care what I want. That's the whole appeal for me.
JESS: Okay, give the listeners something they can actually use today. Something that doesn't require signing up for the class.
ELIZABETH: Sure. Buy cheap paper first. That's it, that's the tip.
JESS: That's it?
ELIZABETH: I mean I could go on. But that's the one people skip and shouldn't. Beginners go buy this nice heavy artist-grade paper because they think that's what serious people use, and then they're too scared to mess it up, so they don't paint on it, so they don't learn anything. I did this. Spent forty bucks on fancy paper before I could paint a single thing worth putting on it. Total waste.
JESS: So what should they get instead.
ELIZABETH: Anything cheap. Ruin a lot of it. Learn what water does, what happens when you load the brush too heavy, all of that, on paper you don't care about. Then go buy the good stuff once your hand knows something.
JESS: And out here specifically—
ELIZABETH: Right, the dry air thing. People forget most watercolor tutorials online are filmed by somebody in a humid climate and the timing they give you is just wrong for us. A wash sets up fast here. Faster than you think. So instead of fighting that, I teach people to work small and layer quick. It's a feature, not a problem, once you stop expecting Utah to behave like Florida.
JESS: Love that. Okay, what's session two.
ELIZABETH: Basic washes. Just water and one color, learning what a "wash" even means, how much water, how much pigment, how it dries different here than in the video you watched at midnight last night. First thing we do, I'm going to ruin a piece of paper on purpose in front of everybody.
JESS: On purpose.
ELIZABETH: On purpose. Nobody gets to be precious about their paper in my class, including me.
JESS: That's the show. Come find your seat, bring nothing, we've got supplies. See you Tuesday.
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 2
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —okay but that's actually the perfect segue because people DO ask that. Like every session, someone asks "why is my wash drying so fast, is something wrong with me."
ELIZABETH: Nothing's wrong with you. It's the elevation and the dry air. That's it. That's the whole mystery.
JESS: Say more, because I think people picture Utah and think desert, sure, but they don't connect it to their actual paper.
ELIZABETH: So most watercolor tutorials online, the person filming is somewhere humid. Florida, the UK, wherever. Their wash stays wet and workable for like two, three minutes. Here, at our elevation, with our air, you might get forty-five seconds before it's setting up. If you're following along with a video made somewhere humid, it lies to you. It's not lying on purpose. It just doesn't know where you live.
JESS: So what do you actually tell people to do about it.
ELIZABETH: Work smaller, and work fast. Don't try to do a big sweeping sky wash across a full sheet if you're new, because by the time you get to the other side it's already drying and you'll get these hard lines you didn't want. Little sections. Layer quick. And honestly, learn to like the hard lines too, because sometimes they happen anyway and fighting it just makes you mad at your paper.
JESS: That's the tip, right there, for anyone listening who isn't even taking the class. Work small, work fast, dry air's not your enemy.
ELIZABETH: Yeah. It's a feature. I used to fight it and now I just plan around it.
JESS: Okay so speaking of planning around things not going the way you want—tell the hand story. Or, no wait, I want the new one. Did you tell the Leonardo one yet, the side-by-side painting one?
ELIZABETH: I haven't told that one yet.
JESS: Do that one.
ELIZABETH: Okay so this was maybe two months ago. Leonardo wanted to paint with me, he's four, and I gave him what he calls the "big kid" brush, which is just a slightly bigger round brush, he's very proud of it. And we sat side by side at the table and just painted whatever.
JESS: What'd you paint.
ELIZABETH: I don't even remember what I was trying to do, honestly, something with trees. But he was just going for it. No hesitation, no "is this right," just big loose scribbly marks, loading way too much water, not caring at all if it went outside the lines because there were no lines. And I kept looking over at his paper being kind of jealous of it.
JESS: Jealous of a four-year-old's painting.
ELIZABETH: Genuinely. Because mine was fine, it was controlled, it looked like a tree. His didn't look like anything specific but it had this looseness I can't fake. I've actually tried to paint more like him since then. On purpose. Like, be a little more four.
JESS: I love that. Be more four.
ELIZABETH: It's harder than it sounds when you're forty and self-conscious about your brush strokes.
JESS: Okay, last thing, before we wrap—what's session three.
ELIZABETH: Session three we're doing skies and foothills. Basic wet-into-wet sky, and then I'll show you how to get that dry-grass color for the foothills without it turning into mud. Or, honestly, how to make mud on purpose when you want it, because a little mud is actually the right color for August out here.
JESS: Bring your own reference photo?
ELIZABETH: If you've got one of a sky or a hillside you like, bring it. If not I'll have some. Paint what's in front of you, not what's in your head, your brain lies about color more than you'd think.
JESS: Cheap paper still, or should people upgrade.
ELIZABETH: Still cheap paper. Please. You don't earn the good paper until you've ruined enough of the bad stuff.
JESS: Bless. Okay, that's the episode. See you all Thursday.
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 3
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —and you're telling me you just let it sit there with the sippy cup on it?
ELIZABETH: I mean, by the time I found it, the damage was done. Paisley set her cup right in the middle of a wet sky wash, walked off, didn't even look back.
JESS: No remorse.
ELIZABETH: Zero. And I peeled the cup off expecting to be mad, and there's this perfect soft ring where the water pushed the pigment out to the edge. Looked way better than what I'd painted underneath.
JESS: So what'd you do with it.
ELIZABETH: Kept it. It's actually the one that's on my fridge right now, held up with a pizza magnet. That's genuinely the highest honor a painting gets in my house. Nothing I've ever made has gone in a frame. Nothing's been in a show. That fridge is it, that's the top shelf.
JESS: I love that so much. Okay, but I want to back up, because week three, people are past the "am I going to ruin this" panic, right? They're making actual choices now.
ELIZABETH: They are, and that's exactly when the panic switches to a different thing. It's not "will I ruin it," it's "it's getting muddy, help."
JESS: The mud thing.
ELIZABETH: The mud thing. Every single beginner hits this around lesson three. You mix a second color into a wash that hasn't dried yet, and suddenly you've got this dull brownish-gray where you wanted clean color, and people look at me like they broke something.
JESS: And you say...
ELIZABETH: I say it's fine, actually. Mud is fine. I'm a little contrarian about this. Everybody treats mud like it's the enemy, but if you're painting foothills in August, that dull brownish-gray is the actual color. That's the color of the mountain from my back patio right now. So instead of panicking about it, I want people to learn what causes it, so they can make it on purpose later.
JESS: What does cause it, for someone listening who's never picked up a brush.
ELIZABETH: Two big things. Too many colors mixed together — three's usually fine, five is asking for mud. And loading too much pigment with not enough water, so the colors don't blend clean, they just kind of collide on the paper. My actual tip, and this works with zero class required: mix your color in the little wells on your palette first, get it where you want it, and only then bring the brush to the paper. Don't mix on the page. Beginners mix on the page because it looks pretty while it's happening, and then it's mud by the time it dries.
JESS: Palette first. I'm writing that down and I don't even own a paintbrush.
ELIZABETH: Heck yes, that's the whole tip, you don't need anything else.
JESS: Okay tell me the mountain story though, because you mentioned foothills.
ELIZABETH: Oh — so early on I tried to paint the actual mountains from my patio. Just, you know, the view everybody in American Fork has. And it came out as this flat green blob. No shape, no nothing.
JESS: A blob.
ELIZABETH: A blob. And my husband walks by, looks at it for a second, tilts his head, and goes "is that the point of the mountain?" And it was. That's what I'd been trying to paint. So somehow a guy identifying my blob correctly felt like a win, and I've counted it as one ever since.
JESS: Low bar, high reward.
ELIZABETH: That's basically my whole approach to this hobby, yeah.
JESS: Okay, for people who didn't come to class three, what did they actually work on tonight, roughly.
ELIZABETH: Wet-into-wet layering, mostly. Laying a wash, letting it go from shiny-wet to just damp, and then dropping a second color in while it's still damp so it blends soft instead of sitting on top hard-edged. Which, side note, happens fast here. Dry air, elevation, your wash is losing its shine in like half the time any tutorial filmed somewhere humid tells you it will. I keep saying this because it trips people up constantly. Work small, move quick, don't trust the video's timing.
JESS: So what's next session.
ELIZABETH: Next time we're doing skies and clouds with actual salt texture, which — I'll be honest, I have absolutely ruined a painting with salt before. Way too much, looked like a blizzard hit a landscape that had no business being snowy. But it's a good lesson in restraint, and it's genuinely fun to do even when it goes wrong.
JESS: Love a class where the teacher's already messed it up so nobody else has to feel bad about it.
ELIZABETH: That's the whole plan, honestly.
FlashcardsPrintable flashcards — Beginner Watercolor Painting
Print it, fold it, stick it on the fridge.
Beginner Watercolor Painting — Flashcard Set
Cut these out along the lines, or just fold the page in thirds and quiz whoever's sitting next to you. I number my decks in pencil on the back because I inevitably drop them.
FRONT BACK The whole kit Six colors, two brushes, water, paper. That's it. If a supply list is longer than that, someone's selling you something. Why 140lb paper matters It's the weight that can take a wet wash without turning into a potato chip. Anything thinner buckles and you'll blame yourself instead of the paper. Cheap paper first Practice your washes on the bad stuff. You're not precious with a pad that cost nothing, and that's the whole point right now. Taping down a page Keeps the buckle manageable, not gone. Wet paper moves. Tape just tells it politely where to move. Ruin a page on purpose Do it early. Make the ugliest thing you can. Once you've already ruined one, the fear's used up and you can actually paint. Flat wash One value, one color, corner to corner, no going back to "fix" a spot. Evenness is the entire assignment. Graded wash Same stroke logic as a flat wash, but you thin the paint with more water as you go — dark at the top, fading by the bottom, in one pass. Wet-on-wet Paint dropped into paint that's still wet on the page. Out here it sets up fast — you've got less time than any tutorial filmed somewhere humid will tell you. Reading your brush's wetness Touch it to a paper towel before it touches the page. If it leaves a fat dark blot, it's too loaded. You're aiming for "damp," not "dripping." Warm vs. cool of a color Every color leans one way or the other — a warm red and a cool red aren't the same red. Know which side your six colors sit on before you start mixing. Greens that aren't highlighter Don't grab green out of the pan and call it grass. Mix it from blue and yellow yourself, and it'll read as a real plant instead of a traffic sign. What makes mud Too many colors stacked wet-on-wet with no plan. Mud isn't a mystery — it's just you not deciding what's dominant. The gray-brown of August foothills Not brown. It's a mix — usually a burnt color plus a blue — that leans warm in the light and cool in the shadow. Look at the actual hill before you guess. Layer, dry, layer, dry The rhythm that saves you from mud. Let the first wash fully dry before the second touches it. Patience is the technique. Glazing A thin, transparent layer over a dry one, to deepen a color without re-mixing it. It's how you get depth without touching your palette again. Soft edges vs. hard edges Soft edge = paint meets wet paper. Hard edge = paint meets dry paper. Same brushstroke, totally different result — it's all timing, not skill. Salt and lifting Salt in a wet wash pulls pigment into little starbursts as it dries. Lifting is just going back in with a damp, clean brush to pull color back out. Cheap, and it works. A plain sky wash Reference photo, one flat or graded wash, done. Skies are where beginners practice control because there's nothing else competing for attention. Clouds by lifting Don't paint white clouds — you can't, the paper's already white. Lay the sky wash, then lift color out with a dry or damp brush while it's still workable. Making mountains sit far away Cooler color, lighter value, softer edge. Distance in a landscape is a color decision, not a drawing decision. Where to put stuff Sky, then mountains, then foreground — in that order, because each layer needs the one under it dry. Past that, I mostly work by feel. A loose sketch from a photo Pencil, light pressure, just enough shapes to know where the wash goes. It's a map, not a finished drawing — don't fall in love with the lines. Knowing when to stop If it's saying what you want it to say, put the brush down. A lot of my "unfinished" paintings are actually just finished and I haven't told them that yet. One aside, since it always comes up: nobody in this room has to finish a single painting to get something out of it. I've got a stack of half-done washes on my drying rack right now. The rack doesn't judge. Neither do I.
Memory helpsMnemonics & memory helps
Print it, fold it, stick it on the fridge.
Mnemonics & Memory Helps
A note before you use these: I make these up while driving my kids to school, so they're a little goofy. Doesn't matter. The dumb ones stick better than the smart ones. Use whatever works, ditch the rest.
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1. "Six, Two, One" — the whole kit Six colors, two brushes, one water jar. That's it. That's the kit.
If you're standing in the aisle at the craft store spiraling about what else you need — nothing else. Say it like a phone number: six, two, one. When you can say it without checking your bag, you've got the kit memorized, which means one less thing to think about when you sit down to paint.
2. "Cheap to Cry On" — paper order of operations Cheap paper is where you learn. Good paper (140lb) is where you perform. Don't reverse the order.
I say it as: cheap to cry on, good to try on. The cheap stuff buckles, pills, does weird things when it's wet — that's fine, that's not you failing, that's the paper being thin. 140lb weight is thick enough to take a wash without turning into a taco. You're not ready to be disappointed by good paper yet. Get disappointed by the dollar stuff first.
3. "Tape Lies" — the buckle truth Taping your paper down does not stop buckling. It just controls where the buckle happens, and hides some of it once the paper dries flat again.
Repeat: tape lies, water always wins. This one's mostly to stop you from panicking mid-wash when your paper starts doming up like a trampoline. It's supposed to do that. It calms back down. Nobody tells you that part in the tutorials.
4. "Kill One on Purpose" — the ugly page ritual Before every session, ruin one page. On purpose. Fast, no plan, doesn't matter what.
I call it kill one on purpose, then get to work. It's a permission slip. Once one page is already ugly, your good page doesn't have to be perfect — it just has to be better than the trash one. Cheapest therapy in this whole hobby.
5. "Wet, Wetter, Wait" — flat wash rhythm Flat wash = same color value, all the way across, no fading. The trick is loading your brush wet, wetter, wait — wet the paper, load the brush wetter than feels right, and wait for gravity to pull the puddle down the page instead of chasing it with your hand.
Chasing is the mistake. Chasing makes streaks. Let it sit there being wet and dumb for a second.
6. "Dark Starts, Light Leaves" — graded wash One stroke, dark at the top, fading to nothing at the bottom. The whole move in five words: dark starts, light leaves.
You load pigment once at the top and then you're just adding water to the same brush stroke by stroke, not adding new color. If you keep dipping into fresh pigment you'll get bands instead of a fade, and bands are the tell that you didn't trust the water to do the work.
7. "Ten Seconds in Utah" — wet-on-wet timing This is the one that's actually local, not borrowed off some YouTuber painting next to a humidifier in Seattle. In our dry air, a wash sets up in roughly ten seconds, not the "minute or two" the tutorials promise.
Say it like a warning label: ten seconds in Utah, then it's done deciding. If you want two colors to bleed into each other wet-on-wet, you've got about the time it takes to say that sentence once. After that you're painting on dry paper whether you meant to or not.
8. "Shine, Sheen, Dry" — reading your brush Three wetness states, in order: shine (too wet, will pool and run), sheen (right — a soft glow, not a puddle), dry (a scratchy drybrush texture, good for grass and scrub, bad for washes).
Before you touch paper, glance at the brush tip. Shine, sheen, dry — say it, decide which one you're looking at, then commit. Most muddy accidents are a shine-brush doing a sheen-brush's job.
9. "Warm Hugs, Cool Runs" — temperature of your colors Every color you own leans warm or cool. Warm colors (your reds-with-orange-in-them, your yellows) come toward you in a painting. Cool colors (blues, blue-greens, purples) recede.
Warm hugs, cool runs — warm colors hug the front of the painting, close to you; cool colors run off toward the back. This is the whole trick behind making mountains look far away, so it's worth knowing cold.
10. "Two Blues and a Sorry" — mud control Mud happens for one boring reason: too many colors mixed on the paper, especially opposite-temperature ones (a warm and a cool blue together is a classic mud recipe — hence "two blues and a sorry").
The rule: two colors max, on purpose, or apologize later. If you're reaching for a third color mid-wash to "fix" something, stop — that third color is the mud, not the fix.
11. "Foothill Formula" — that gray-brown August color For the specific washed-out gray-brown of foothills in late summer, I remember it as burnt something, blue a little. Any earthy warm (burnt sienna, burnt umber) knocked back with a whisper of blue. Not green, not gray straight from the tube — a warm color quieted down by its cool opposite.
If it looks too clean or too pretty, it's not August yet. Add more blue than feels right.
12. "Paint It, Leave It, Come Back" — the layering rhythm Layer one. Walk away. It has to be bone dry, not "dry-ish," before layer two goes on, or you'll drag up the first layer and get streaks.
Rhythm: paint it, leave it, come back. Go make coffee. Fold laundry. The waiting is the technique — this is the least exciting mnemonic in the packet and also the one people ignore most, right before they email me asking why their painting looks muddy.
13. "Glaze Doesn't Mix, It Sits" — deepening color without mud Glazing is a thin, transparent layer of one color over a dry layer, to deepen it — not mixing two colors together wet. Glaze doesn't mix, it sits. It sits on top, dry, see-through, adding depth like a piece of colored glass over a photo.
If your glaze is opaque enough to hide what's underneath, it's not a glaze anymore, it's just more paint.
14. "Wet Meets Soft, Dry Meets Sharp" — edge control Paint into wet paper, your edge goes soft and blurry (clouds, distance, anything hazy). Paint onto dry paper, your edge stays crisp (a fence post, a window, anything that needs to look solid).
Wet meets soft, dry meets sharp. Decide before you touch the brush down which one you want — you can't take back an edge once the water's already there.
15. "Salt Before It's Sad" — texture tricks timing Salt, in the wash, on the wash — has to happen while the paper's still properly wet, not once it's started drying, or you just get salt sitting on top doing nothing.
Salt before it's sad — sad meaning half-dry, patchy, too late. Same idea for lifting texture out with a dry brush or a tissue: catch it wet, or don't bother.
16. "Sky Is the Biggest Shape" — starting a sky wash When you're staring at a reference photo trying to figure out where to start: the sky is almost always the biggest, simplest shape in the whole painting. Sky is the biggest shape, so it goes first, wide open, don't overthink it.
This one's less a trick than a permission to stop staring at the photo and just start.
17. "Lift, Don't Paint" — clouds Clouds are not a shape you paint in. They're a shape you take away. Lay the sky wash, then while it's still damp, lift color back out with a dry or barely-damp brush where you want cloud to be.
Lift, don't paint — the cloud is the paper showing back through, not paint sitting on top of paint.
18. "Far Is Fuzzy, Far Is Faint" — distant mountains To make mountains sit back in the distance instead of crowding up front: soften the edges (fuzzy) and lighten the value, usually cooler and grayer (faint).
Far is fuzzy, far is faint. If your background mountain has a crisp dark edge, it will always look like it's standing right next to your foreground, no matter how small you paint it.
19. "Big, Middle, Little" — composition, since I work by feel I don't plan compositions with grids or rules of thirds, honestly — I just try to get one big shape, one middle shape, and some little stuff, so the eye's got somewhere to land, somewhere to travel, and somewhere to rest.
Big, middle, little. That's the whole system. It's not sophisticated. It works.
20. "Five Lines, Not a Drawing" — the loose sketch Your pencil sketch from the reference photo should take under a minute and use about five lines — horizon, a couple mountain shapes, maybe a tree line. If you're erasing, you're doing too much.
Five lines, not a drawing. The paint is going to do the real work. The sketch is just a map so you don't get lost.
21. "Back to Front, Like Life" — painting order Sky, then mountains, then foreground. Same order the light actually arrives in — far away stuff first, close-up stuff last, painted on top.
Back to front, like life — you're not going to paint a foreground tree and then try to fit a sky in around it. Everything close covers everything far, same as it does when you look out a window.
22. "A Few Marks, Not a Lawn" — foreground texture Dry grass and scrub at the bottom of a painting doesn't need every blade accounted for. A handful of dry-brush marks, some short flicks of the brush, reads as "field" to the eye way faster than you'd think.
A few marks, not a lawn. Three flicks of dry brush will out-perform forty careful ones, every time, because the eye fills in the rest.
23. "Stop When It's Good, Not When It's Finished" — knowing when to stop This is the big one, and it's the one I actually believe the most. There is no finish line in watercolor. There's just a point where it's saying what you wanted it to say, and everything after that is you fussing at it out of nerves.
Stop when it's good, not when it's finished. Half my paintings aren't finished. I stopped anyway. They're fine. They're better than fine, some of them — they've got air in them that a "finished" painting doesn't.
---
Print this, tape it inside your kit box, whatever. You don't need to remember all twenty-three. Pick the three that are giving you the most trouble this week and let the rest go — that's basically the whole philosophy of the class anyway.
Cheat sheetOne-page note card — Beginner Watercolor Painting
Print it, fold it, stick it on the fridge.
Beginner Watercolor — Fridge Card Keep this by the water cup. — Elizabeth
Basics The Facts Kit Six colors, two brushes, water. That's it. Don't let anyone sell you more yet. Paper 140lb or you'll hate yourself. Cheap stuff for practice, but buckling teaches you nothing useful. Taping down Tape a border, wet the whole sheet first if you're going big. It still might buckle. That's paper being paper, not you failing. The ruined page Pick one sheet, wreck it on purpose. Dump water, drop pigment, walk away. You need one page you don't care about before you can loosen up on the ones you do. The Moves
- Flat wash — one color, one value, no drama. Load the brush wet, pull it sideways in even strips, don't go back into it.
- Graded wash — dark to light in one pass. More water each stroke, never more pigment.
- Wet-on-wet — gorgeous, and it sets up fast here. Dry air, no mercy. Work quicker than the tutorial lady in her humid basement.
- Glazing — let a layer dry completely, lay a new one over it to deepen color without muddying it. This is the actual rhythm: first layer, dry, second layer, dry. Patience is the technique.
Reading Your Brush Too wet: puddles and blooms you didn't ask for. Too dry: scratchy, streaky, fighting you. Right: it glides and still leaves a bead of color behind. You'll feel it before you can explain it.
Color Sense
Concept What to Know Warm/cool Every color you own leans one way. Know which, before you mix. Mud Comes from too many colors fighting, or muddying wet layers before they're dry. Control it on purpose or it controls you. Greens Mix your own. Straight-from-the-pan green reads like a highlighter, not a hillside. Foothill gray-brown Warm + cool + a little of each neighbor's color. That August dust color is a mix, never a pan. Edges & Texture - Soft edges = paint into wet paper. Hard edges = paint onto dry. Timing is the whole decision. - Salt, lifting, dry-brush — cheap tricks, real texture. Salt while wet, lift with a damp brush or tissue, done.
Landscape Order (from a photo) 1. Loose pencil plan — just shapes, not a map. 2. Sky first, mountains second, foreground last. 3. Clouds: lift wet paint with a dry-ish brush, don't paint them in. 4. Far mountains: cooler, lighter, grayer — that's what "far" looks like in paint. 5. Dry grass and scrub: a few confident marks, not fifty timid ones. 6. Where exactly to put things — I work by feel, honestly. So will you, eventually.
Knowing When to Stop Stop when it's still interesting. Or don't finish at all — I mostly don't, and it hasn't stopped me yet.
--- You will not be good at this today. Come back next week anyway.
Around the web
Sites we keep coming back to. Some picked by your instructor, some shared in class.
- Watercolor Painting (Wikipedia) ↗
A solid overview of the history and techniques of watercolor, good background reading before our first class.
- Color Theory (Wikipedia) ↗
Understanding how colors relate to each other will save you a lot of mud in your mixes, worth a skim.
- Watercolor Paper (Wikipedia) ↗
Explains the different paper weights and textures, useful before you go buy supplies.
- Watercolor Misfit ↗
A friendly blog with practical tips and honest talk about learning watercolor without perfectionism getting in the way.
- Jackson's Art Blog ↗
A UK art supply company's blog with genuinely useful technique articles and material reviews written by working artists.
- Doodlewash ↗
A daily watercolor blog and community that's great for seeing what consistent practice looks like over time.
Videos worth your time
Hand-picked by your instructor, with notes on what to watch for.
- 9 Minute Watercolor Tutorial for Absolute Beginners - Start Painting Today!Matthew White - Watercolor Instruction
Watch how she keeps the whole lesson under ten minutes so you can follow along with basic strokes before starting your own painting.
- The Very FIRST Watercolor Lesson for Beginners | Watercolor Painting for Beginners - Lesson 1Allison Lyon Art
Pay attention to the very first lesson setup, since it covers paper, brushes, and paint basics before any actual painting begins.
- Master Watercolor Basics: 9 Fun Exercises for Absolute BeginnersEmily Olson Art
Notice how each of the nine exercises isolates one skill like washes or blending so you can practice them one at a time.
Practice corner
6 quizzes and 2 games. Playable by anyone, no account needed.
Open the practice corner →