It is finally out! Playful Color Swatches: Getting to Know your Watercolors is a class about getting to know your watercolors paints better through swatching them. And swatching colors does not need to be tedious or boring. You can make little art pieces along the way!

I’ve been thinking, talking about it, and making small steps towards the creation of this class all over the past two years, if not three. I am beyond happy to finally share it!

What is Skillshare?

Let’s start with Skillshare. Skillshare is a streaming platform for learning… skills! There are a lot of classes about art, but also all sorts of things like video editing, social media strategy or even, cooking classes! Skillshare is like a “Netflix” for learning skills.

If you want to try Skillshare, use this link for a one-month trial of Skillshare.

I’ve been using the platform myself since 2018, as a student. I’ve learned quite a lot and followed many classes from fabulous teachers. Soon to come, I will share a list of favorite classes I’ve followed.

About the class: Playful Color Swatches

A good way to understand your watercolor paints is to swatch them, meaning making a little reference card with the color painted on it so you can really see its hue as a paint, not only what is printed on the tube or pan.

That is the simplest form of swatching: the paint chip. But things can get much more interesting.

Watercolor paint properties

Watercolor paints have many properties that differ from one color to the next, depending on the pigments used and what the paint is made of, for example:

• the range of the hue,
• transparency vs opacity, 
• staining properties, 
• the ability to layer the color,
• the possibility to lift the color,
• how it behaves in water.

I will teach you what these properties mean throughout this class. 

Why learn about paint properties and swatch my colors?

If you want to explore all of your paints’ potential, color swatches can be done in a way to document all these properties. 

But technical swatching of watercolors can become tedious. And I want to show you how to approach these swatches in a playful manner.

The color swatches we will paint together

In this class, we will try many example of color swatches so you can find your favorites:

1. The simple “paintchip” swatch
2. The technical swatch
3. The color chart
4. The palette mixing swatch
5. The chaotic and playful swatch
6. The wavy pattern

In this class, I will show you that there is some space for playing and creativity while learning about your colors. 

You will learn different ways to swatch your colors AND have fun AND create little pieces of art along the way.

The project

The project from this class will be a lovely reference page of swatches for a color palette of your choosing. Like in the example below.

These are a beautiful way to document color palette, play with them and find all the colors you can make while mixing your chosen colors.

Let me know if you have any questions!

UPDATE:

I’ve added the class on Gumroad as well, where you can buy it as a standalone class, to watch whenever you feel like it! It is available on a sliding scale in which you can pay what you want above a minimum.