Description
Dive Into Watercolor! with Instructor Lee Surette
Thursdays, June 26-July 31, 2025 (6 weeks)
1:00pm – 4:00pm
Members $160 / Non-Members $190
A watercolor class for novices, beginners and experienced students. This fun and engaging class will introduce the materials, skills and techniques used by classical watercolor and Impressionist painters. Concepts of color and light as it applies to the watercolor medium, basic color theory, brush techniques, as well as perspective and composition will be introduced. Students will paint from either still life or photographs in every class.
The goals of the course:
Learn and practice basic skills and techniques of the medium of watercolor
CLASS 1. Getting started
Materials, setting up, concepts of color and light, wet and dry brush
- Basic supplies & expanded supply list [HANDOUT]
- Set up your palette • Introductions
Paints, brushes, paper, easel
- Paint is pigment in a water medium
Why is paper important
Brushes - Wet brush and dry brush techniques
- Mixing colors Primary colors: red, Yellow, Blue
Whites and blacks
Painting darks and lights: planning for the light spaces - PRACTICE – Still life
CLASS 2. Planning your painting
Primary colors, choosing your subject, making a plan for your painting
• Composition – make your plan
Sketch your plan
Point of focus
Where are the darks and lights?
• PRACTICE • CRITIQUE
CLASS 3. Planning your painting 2
• Perspective • PRACTICE
• CRITIQUE
CLASS 4. More color mixing
• Problems, questions • PRACTICE
• CRITIQUE
CLASS 5. Composition
• painting complex shapes • PRACTICE
• CRITIQUE
CLASS 6. Painting a landscape from a photo
• PRACTICE
• CRITIQUE
• Reflections on your experience & what’s next?
Instructor: Lee Surette is from a family of artists and spent many years as a commercial artist, illustrator and advertising Creative Director. Since his 20’s he has been devoted to exploring the light and form of the New England landscape through the mediums of watercolor and oils. Lee graduated from Vesper George School of Art and was an instructor there in commercial art and illustration. He studied oil painting at the Cape School of Art in Provincetown under Henry Hensche, the renowned genius of the Cape Cod Style of American Impressionism. His continued study at the Cape School under watercolorist Lee Boynton further developed his watercolor style.
“Through Henry [Hensche] and the Cape School of Art I learned the secrets of painting color in the style and legacy of Charles Hawthorne and the French Impressionists. The unique and changing light of the natural landscape of Cape Cod is my continuing inspiration.” –Lee Surette
Dive Into Watercolor!
CLASS SUPPLIES
It is always best to start with the best materials you can afford. Start with the basic list. Use the expanded list as a guide for the future as you develop.
