Chase the Light Across the Sky

There’s something truly magical about painting skies — no two are ever the same, and the wet-on-wet technique makes every wash a beautiful surprise. You’ll learn how to create soft, billowing clouds that drift across your paper, paint luminous gradient skies that glow with warmth, and master the artist’s secret of lifting light from atmospheric scenes.

Choose a fiery sunset blazing with colour or brooding storm clouds gathering on the horizon — either way, you’ll capture the ever-changing drama of the sky with a confidence that feels wonderfully freeing. Get ready to look up at the clouds differently on the drive home!

Step Inside Your Own Painted World

Ever wondered how artists make a flat sheet of paper feel like a window into another place? This is the week you find out! You’ll unlock the secrets of layering background, midground, and foreground to create landscapes that draw the viewer right into the scene. You’ll also master the interplay of soft and sharp edges to conjure atmospheric perspective — that beautiful sense of haze and distance.

Your project is a serene coastal scene where sandy shores meet gently lapping waves beneath an endless sky. It’s peaceful, it’s gorgeous, and it’s the kind of painting your friends will ask you to frame. Your landscapes will never look the same again!

Your Creative Playground Awaits

This is the week where rules take a back seat and pure creative fun takes the wheel! You’ll experiment with a treasure chest of exciting techniques that add spectacular visual interest to your work — from the crystalline patterns salt leaves behind on wet paint, to the spontaneous energy of splatter, the raw drama of dry brush strokes, and the brilliance of lifted highlights.

Paint rugged coastal rocks with real grit and texture, explore weathered tree bark, or let your imagination run completely wild with an abstract texture piece. Whatever you choose, you’ll walk away with a whole new toolkit of show-stopping effects to weave into future paintings.

Celebrate the Beauty of Our Native Blooms

Slow down, breathe deep, and lose yourself in the meditative beauty of painting Australian native flora. In this calming, focused session you’ll learn to create flowing watercolour washes that capture the vibrant pinks and lush greens of iconic blooms like proteas, waratahs, and bottlebrush. You’ll explore the elegant art of negative space — letting what you don’t paint speak just as loudly as what you do.

Layer by gentle layer, you’ll build depth and dimension into graceful petals, delicate leaves, and the natural character of a simple branch. This peaceful approach to watercolour is as soothing as it is rewarding — the perfect mid-term reset for your creative spirit.

Paint the Space Between and Watch Creatures Appear

Get ready for one of the most satisfying “aha!” moments in watercolour! This week you’ll discover how painting what’s around a subject — rather than the subject itself — can bring animals to life with incredible energy and personality. You’ll use tone and value to sculpt form, suggest texture, and capture movement without ever overpainting.

Choose shimmering fish gliding through dappled water, colourful birds perched among branches, or a simple animal portrait that radiates character. Less truly is more as you learn to say everything with confident, expressive brushwork and beautifully considered white space.

Let Light Shine Through Every Layer

This is the session where watercolour reveals its most breathtaking quality — luminous, translucent layers that seem to glow from within. You’ll learn to paint with delicate glazes that let light pass through each wash, building an almost dreamlike quality that gives your work real sophistication and emotional depth.

Whether you choose sun-drenched poppies with petals so translucent you can almost see the sky through them, rain-soaked streets, or shimmering glass, you’ll harness the transparent nature of the medium to create paintings that float on the page with ethereal grace. Prepare to fall in love with watercolour all over again.

Your Moment to Shine

This is it — the grand finale! Over the past nine weeks you’ve built an incredible toolkit of techniques, and now it’s time to bring them all together in one show-stopping piece. You’ll paint with intention, confidence, and the kind of creative freedom that only comes from truly understanding your medium.

Choose atmospheric figures walking through rain-kissed streets, revisit a favourite subject with fresh eyes, or create something entirely new that showcases your unique artistic voice. This session is a celebration of how far you’ve come — and a launchpad for everything you’ll paint next. Less is truly more when you paint with heart and skill!

Master Rocky Cliffs and Sparkling Ocean

We begin the term with a classic coastal subject. We’re painting weathered limestone cliffs dropping dramatically into turquoise water, with a burst of green foliage clinging hopefully to the top.

This week you'll learn how to paint rocks that genuinely feel three-dimensional, using layered washes, dry-brush texture, and well-judged shadow work. You'll also tackle that gorgeous gradient from deep ocean blue to shimmering turquoise shallows.
It's the perfect warm-up for the term ahead, covering the real foundations of wash control, texture-building, and colour mixing all in one stunning finished painting.

A Magical Winter Scene with Snow and Shimmer

This week is pure atmosphere. You'll paint a steam train emerging through snow-dusted woods using the classic salt technique to create those twinkling, crystalline snowflakes. Then add real gold leaf to bring the warm glow of the train's headlight gloriously to life.

The effect is absolutely breathtaking, and far easier than it looks. Expect audible gasps around the studio as the salt lifts away and you see the magic appearing on your paper. A truly special painting to take home.

Soft Feathers and Sparkling Texture

We go deeper into the salt technique this week with a soulful owl portrait set against a dreamy teal and ochre background. You'll discover exactly how salt grains react with wet paint to create those beautiful crystalline patterns — perfect for feathers, foliage, misty atmosphere, and countless other textural effects.

You'll also practise loose, confident brushwork to capture the owl's expressive face without ever overworking it. An evocative, moody piece that will genuinely draw people in whenever they walk past.

Flowing Blooms in a Glass Bottle

Wet-on-wet is the technique that truly makes watercolour feel alive — paint flowing into paint, blending itself magically right there on the paper as you watch. This week you'll use it to paint loose pink blooms spilling gracefully from a blue glass bottle. We’ll let the pigments mingle to form soft petals and glowing leaves all on their own.

You'll also learn how to capture the transparency, shadow, and reflections of glass using nothing but water and colour. It's controlled chaos at its most beautiful, and it becomes absolutely addictive once you get the feel for it.

One Colour, Infinite Possibilities

Strip everything right back this week and paint using just a single colour to create a hauntingly beautiful underwater scene. We’ll paint a school of fish gliding through in silhouette.

When you remove colour from the equation, you're forced to focus on value (how light or dark something is), which is genuinely the single biggest skill in all of watercolour. Master this one thing, and every painting you ever do afterwards will feel so much easier. A deceptively simple exercise with enormous long-term payoff.

Bring a Cockatoo to Life with Splashes of Colour

This week you'll paint a cheeky sulphur-crested cockatoo and surround it with joyful splatters of orange, yellow, green, and red watercolour. You'll learn how to control splatter using different brushes and flicking techniques.

Plus, we’ll cover how to mask off the areas you want to keep pristine, and how to use well-placed splattering to suggest energy, movement, and organic texture. It's messy. It's playful. It's tremendously fun. And the results are always absolutely full of life.

Capture a Golden Sunset Over the Marsh

This week is all about light — how to paint it, how to suggest it, how to make a painting quietly glow from within. You'll create a luminous sunset over still water.

We’ll add silhouetted reeds in the foreground and birds taking flight against the warm, golden sky. It's a proper masterclass in understanding tonal values and learning how to let the bright white of the paper work brilliantly for you rather than against you. A painting that feels just like a quiet exhale at the end of a long, busy day.

A Tender Seal Portrait with Soft Reflections

Watercolour really sings when you learn when to use hard, defined edges and when to let things melt gently away into nothing. This week you'll paint a beautiful seal resting in calm water.

We’ll cover the classic "lost and found edges" technique to give the animal firm form exactly where it matters. And we’ll let the rest fade softly into the surrounding water. You'll also tackle the gorgeous, rewarding challenge of painting a believable reflection. A tender, emotionally rich piece that showcases watercolour at its most expressive.

A Graceful Swan and Cygnet in Pure Whites

Negative space is the secret weapon of the accomplished watercolour painter. Instead of painting the subject itself, you cleverly paint around it, letting the white of the paper become the swan.

This week's tender painting of a mother swan nuzzling her little cygnet is the absolutely perfect subject for practising this powerful technique. You'll learn restraint, careful planning, and the almost zen-like patience of knowing when NOT to paint.

A breathtaking, minimalist piece that will challenge and deeply reward you in equal measure.

A Bold, Loose Pelican in Just a Few Strokes

We end the term with the ultimate watercolour skill, saying more with less. This week you'll paint a beautifully loose Aussie pelican using just a handful of bold, confident strokes.

We’ll add a whisper of soft grey and pink for the head, rich indigo shadows for the wings, and plenty of untouched white paper doing the real heavy lifting. It's the natural, satisfying culmination of everything you've learned this term. Loose, expressive, and wonderfully free. A perfect ending to the course, and the style you'll want to keep painting in forever.