Course · Tuesday mornings, Paddington
Watercolour Foundations
Next course starts demo date
Water, pigment, paper, negotiated from the first class. For complete beginners: no experience assumed, materials supplied for the term.
- Starts
- Tue 3 Nov 2026 demo
- When
- Tuesdays, 10am
- Length
- 6 weeks, 2 hours a class
- Class size
- Up to 10 seats
- Level
- Complete beginners
- Fee
- $220 incl. GST
What you’ll make
Six weeks, six pages you keep.
Nothing over twenty minutes: you watch one idea, paint one page, and the brush is wet before the hesitation arrives. Outline: demo Mara confirms the running order each term.
Water and paper
How much water is the whole lesson. You meet the paper, the brush and the wash, and let the medium do the rest.
You make: a first wash, flat and graded
Pigment
One round of pans, mixed and mapped: which pigment, and what happens when two meet.
You make: your own palette chart
Where the light lives
Deciding what stays white and when to stop. Less control, better pages.
You make: a one-colour study of light and shade
Skies
Wet into wet, the lesson the studio grew from.
You make: a sky in three washes
Paint from life
A still life set up fresh: fruit, pottery, whatever the light is doing that day.
You make: a still life, painted in the room
Pages, not paintings
A critique round and a plan for the sketchbook habit once the term ends.
You make: your best pages, marked up, and what to try next
Materials
Supplied for the term. Yours to keep.
Every course works from the same short list. Nobody is asked to buy anything on the first night.
- One round of pans
- Two brushes
- One pad of paper
- The full supply list, with where to get it locally, goes out when you book
The starter palette.
A tutor’s hands at the easel. Demo photo, not a portrait of Mara.
Your teacher
Mara Ellis teaches every class.
Nothing here is a video recorded once and replayed. If you are in the room, you are getting looked at, and the page in front of you gets a real answer.
Pages come back marked up in the room: what worked, what drowned, and the one thing to try next. Kind, specific, and never a template reply.
Before you enrol
The questions students ask first.
Everything here has come up more than once at the studio door.
No. Foundations assumes nothing. Landscapes moves faster and suits anyone who has done a term of Foundations, in this studio or elsewhere.
No. These are leisure courses, not a certificate or a recognised qualification. They exist to build a painting habit, nothing more official than that.
Tell Mara beforehand and the week’s exercise sheet is held for you to catch up at home.
For Foundations, yes: materials are supplied for the term and are yours to keep. The Sketchbook Habit is bring-your-own, with a starter list.
Street parking around the studio, and the Paddington bus routes stop close by.
Ask when you enrol. It is usually possible to split the term fee into two. The fee is settled before or at the first class.
Not quite this one?
Two other doors.
- Expressive LandscapesThu 5 Nov · 8 weeks · $295 demo date
- The Sketchbook HabitSat 7 Nov · 4 weeks · $150 demo date
Hold a seat in Watercolour Foundations.
Pay later: the fee is settled before or at the first class, and the studio address is emailed ahead.
Starts Tue 3 Nov · $220 · up to 10 seats demo date
Foundations · $220