Watercolour painting

Being out in the nature and using your compact watercolour set or being at home and using a reference image to draw your favourite scene… is it something you imagined you could do, but achieving this task seemed beyond your reach?

Watercolour medium has many advantages: it’s easy to carry around with you and you can even draw and paint on a small A5 watercolour pad and create little miracles anywhere you go, anywhere you can be undisturbed for a few minutes.

You can use watercolour to create hyperrealistic effects as well as more atmospheric and mysterious effects.

There are many techniques that you can explore when you are using this medium; knowing these techniques will give you a rich vocabulary of expressing your ideas and representing what you see in the world.

Practise watercolour painting with Arina

You can practise watercolour painting with me. This is what we will do together:

1. We will draw the design first. We need to get the drawing right before we start painting. We will use drawing paper for it. Once the drawing is done, we will transfer it to watercolour paper.
2. We will start painting mainly using the principle from light to dark: we will work out light tones first and then gradually will be layering darker tones.
3. Techniques that you will be learning:
   • how to use the brush to load the pigment
   • how to choose the right pigment and combinations of pigments
   • how to work out what pigment – water ratio to choose
   • wet-on-wet, wet-on-dry, glazing
   • how to use your brush to lift the pigment off the page

For our lessons, you will need

• Drawing paper, pencil, soft rubber
• Watercolour paper
• Watercolour set
• Squirrel, sable or high-quality synthetic watercolour brushes with a conical shape

Face-to-face lessons in Cambridge, UK

Watercolour painting lessons are help at my office in Cambridge, close to the Jesus Green Park  

Online classes

You can practise watercolour online with me. I will be using two cameras to demonstrate watercolour techniques. You can show me your drawing for feedback.

Start your watercolour journey!

Book an initial chat with me to talk about what you want to achieve. During this consultation, you can show me your art works and your favourite reference images.

First consultation is free

Examples of what we may paint together

Depending on your previous drawing and painting experience a painting like this one may take between 3 – 5 hours to complete.