In this workshop we will explore expressive approaches to painting land, sea and sky with a focus on achieving a sense of light, atmosphere and mood in your scene. Learning expressive watercolor allows for loose paintings that convey your unique vision as a painter, and helps you develop the freedom and spontaneity to produce atmospheric, vibrant paintings.

Through instructor demonstrations, practice and individual instruction students will learn how to move beyond the photo reference and to develop an ink and watercolor or monochrome watercolor study of your scene to work from. We will also focus on understanding the pigment to water ratio as you progress through your painting, and how this relates to the tonal values in your composition.

Students will learn how to drop pigment onto paper at different stages of drying and how to achieve atmospheric perspective and mood using different strengths of pigment. Practicing these techniques can help students to gain confidence in wet-into-wet, damp into wet, and damp into dry techniques using larger brushes.

Students may bring their own photographic references of land and seascapes, etc. or you may work from the demo images.