09/03/2026 6:00 pm - 09/03/2026 8:00 pm
5-Week Teacher Guide
Class Length: 2 hours per week
Course Duration: 5 weeks-Sept 3rd
Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate
Featured Birds: Eastern Bluebird, Goldfinch, and Cardinal
Bonus Botanicals: Daisies, Lavender, and Loose Green Leaves
Class Description:
In this five-week watercolor course, students learn how to paint beautiful local birds through transparent layering, color mixing, and detail techniques. Each lesson introduces a different bird and a new set of watercolor skills, including soft feathers, expressive eyes, natural color transitions, branches, flowers, and simple backgrounds.
The course also includes beginner-friendly botanical lessons featuring daisies, lavender, and loose green leaves. These natural elements help students create balanced and complete bird compositions without making the paintings overly complicated.
Throughout the course, students will practice wet-on-wet painting, wet-on-dry techniques, brush control, color values, layering, lifting, soft edges, and simple background washes. The class is taught through clear teacher demonstrations, guided practice, and individual painting time. Printed bird outlines may be provided for beginners
The main goal of the course is not perfect realism. Students are encouraged to observe the bird’s character, enjoy the watercolor process, and develop their own personal painting style.
Course Learning Objectives
By the end of the five-week course, students will be able to:
- • Understand basic watercolor materials and brush control• Mix clean, natural colors for birds and botanicals
- • Paint light, medium, and dark watercolor values
- • Use wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques
- • Build bird colors using transparent layers
- • Paint simple feather textures without outlining every feather
- • Create expressive bird eyes and natural beaks
- • Paint branches, stems, daisies, lavender, and loose leaves
- • Add a soft background without distracting from the bird
- • Plan a balanced bird-and-flower composition
- • Complete a finished watercolor bird painting
Five-Week Course Overview
Week 1: Watercolor Basics and Botanical Practice Students learn water control, brush techniques, color values, simple background washes, daisies, lavender, and loose green leaves.
Week 2: Eastern Bluebird with Daisies -Students paint an Eastern Bluebird using blue and warm orange washes, then add daisies, green leaves, and a soft spring background.
Week 3: Goldfinch with Lavender-Students paint a bright yellow Goldfinch with dark wing markings, lavender stems, loose foliage, and a soft meadow background.
Week 4: Cardinal with Loose Green Leaves-Students build rich red layers, paint the Cardinal’s crest and dark face mask, and add green leaf clusters and a simple background.
Week 5: Final Bird and Wildflower Painting-Students choose one bird and create a complete composition using flowers, leaves, a branch, and a soft background.
Materials List:
Materials
- Watercolor paper, 140 lb. cold press 100% cotton
- Watercolor paint set
- Round brushes: sizes 2, 4, 6, ( or 2 ,3, 5)
- Scrub brush or old brush
- Small detail brush: size 0 or 1
- Pencil and eraser
- Waterproof black fine-liner (optional)
- Two water containers
- Paper towels
- Mixing palette
- Masking tape
- White gel pen or white gouache (optional)
- Printed bird reference photographs ( provided )
- Printed bird line drawings ( provided)
- Suggested Paint Colors
- Lemon Yellow
- Yellow Ochre
- Burnt Sienna
- Burnt Umber
- Raw Umber
- Ultramarine Blue
- Cerulean Blue
- Sap Green
- Olive Green
- Permanent Red
- Alizarin Crimson
- Payne’s Gray
- Buff Titanium
- Teal
- Magenta
Students do not need every color. Similar colors may be substituted.
