Today I’m excited to announce a new course: I focused a lot on big, loose floral paintings during this spring and summer, an activity with lots of flowing paint and big brush strokes, and I thought this would be a nice addition to my existing botanical sketching course that’s focused a bit more on the drawing aspect.
After going through the original botanical sketching course with a group of lovely students this spring, I wanted to explore the technique I call “loose but precise” a bit further. The result is this new course.
The course is out now on Gumroad (this supports me directly) and on Skillshare (subscription).
For Skillshare students: I’m currently running a giveaway contest for one year of free membership, check out this discussion to learn more.
Here’s the introductory video with a bit of preview:
In this course I demonstrate how you can sketch flowers with a combination of detailed line work and textures, and flowing vivid watercolor washes. This “loose but precise“ approach I’ll show adds depth and freshness to floral sketches – it’s playful and expressive, and aims to prevent overworked sketches.
In the course you’ll learn:
- a basic approach to botanical and floral sketching
- new ways to combine linework with watercolor – the loose but precise concept
- how to capture the essence of your flower without drawing for hours
- ways to add expressive watercolor washes to your drawing
- how to achieve vibrancy and freshness in your watercolor sketches
- when to stop and avoid overworking to keep your sketches playful
I’ll publish a demo lesson in the next few days, so you can see how I approach painting these loose floral sketches. As always, there’s plenty of material to practice and paint along with, from warm up lessons to several full-length demonstrations. The course is great for beginner and intermediate artists – if you feel you want some basic practice first, then Introduction to Botanical Sketching will be a great starting point.
Both courses are available for self-study right now, I’ll announce when I will run a live version with feedback.
In any case, I really hope you’ll enjoy this new course as much as I enjoyed putting it together!
Links
Loose but Precise: Expressive and Simple Floral Paintings in Watercolor (Gumroad)
Loose but Precise: Expressive and Simple Floral Paintings in Watercolor (Skillshare)
Hi Julia,
I really would love to do this course. Can one take it self-directed and as a live version or is this not recommended? I did so enjoy your live course Drawing for beginners in the spring, and got so much out of it. Gill
Hi Gill,
that’s no problem. You can always start self-directed and then decide if you want to deepen your skills with the assignments I give out during the live version. I will create some new material for the live version anyway, since the existing lessons don’t really follow a weekly schedule. Hope that helps!
Hi Julia,
I really am interested in this floral class. I am currently spending more time participating on watercolor, colored pencil and ink social media again. I set it down for two years. I am going on a sketchbook retreat in a few weeks, I’ll visit Ghost Ranch New Mexico. That should be fun! Working as an engineer and painting stressed me a bit so I stopped the art even though I probably shouldn’t have. I wouldn’t say I’m back-just trying. There where many nuggets in this post that have inspired me-I’m going over them (mixing neutrals for one. I saved all your posts over those years anticipating available time to review them. Thank you.