Learning How to Watercolor with The Mint Gardener

This was a four hour workshop hosted by Ciderpress Lane and taught by Sarah Simon, The Mint Gardener. The workshop consisted of three parts; 1. Floral Design, 2. Learning how to watercolor, and 3. Connecting with other workshop attendees while enjoying appetizers, drinks, dessert & coffee. It was a gorgeous fall afternoon to enjoy the workshop in the Ciderpress Lane orchard. This post will focus on the second element of learning how to watercolor.

Each attendee was given a watercolor workbook that includes 25 beginner-friendly projects on premium watercolor paper (written and designed by Sarah Simon, The Mint Gardener), Stoneground Paint Co. watercolor palette that has 24 different colors, and two brushes (Round 1 and Round 4). We also had beautiful homemade sugar cookies at our place setting and the Ikebana style floral arrangements we made in the floral design portion.

Sarah introduced us to the brushes – Round 1 for small boundaries and finer detailed work and Round 4 for larger boundaries and to use in bigger areas. We were given advice on our water and to keep it clean with room temperature water and to refresh it regularly. We also learned how to start a paint palette and that a ceramic palette works best and to use a lot more water with the paint than you’d think (her rule of thumb is 80% water and 20% paint).

Now for the fun part – starting to watercolor! We learned the wet-in-wet technique which is the process of adding wet paint into wet paint to create shadows, movement, and areas of high color contrast in your painting. Next up – how to create a defined boundary by completing the wash of one area (or petal in our case) and then allowing it to dry before moving to another. This style is meant to give your painting a sharp and crisp look.

The workbook is made with a premium watercolor paper so it was easy and fun to try out the techniques as we were learning them. We all started with the same project, an anemone, also known as windflowers. It was neat to see how different each painting was even though we all had the same supplies and sketch!

Learning how to watercolor was very relaxing and stress free – I was okay with making mistakes and learning by trial and error as I worked on my initial project. My daughter loves to paint so I picked up an extra workbook for her which Sarah signed. We’ve enjoyed painting together on Sunday afternoons for the past several weeks!

If you want to learn more about Ciderpress Lane or the many workshops and offerings of The Mint Gardener click on the name to visit their websites.

I’ve really enjoyed learning a lot of new things in 2024 – up next is a King Arthur Baking School course with four close friends in October. Stay tuned for more posts featuring my learning adventures!