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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.
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