Have you ever taken an art class online? A quick search online reveals that there is a large market hungry for art tutorials. Artists who are willing to take the time and effort to produce courses and market them correctly can potentially reap the benefits for years after putting in the initial work to create them (did someone say passive income?)
This is especially true of watercolors, which have a reputation among artists of being the hardest medium to master. If you’re a watercolor artist, the relative difficulty of the medium makes it an excellent option for creating online tutorials to uncover the “secrets” of how to paint with watercolor… and add an extra stream of revenue to help support your goal of living a creative life on your own terms.
We’ve put together a list of the top 5 online watercolor classes. Check them out for some inspiration — and if you’re looking to learn watercolors, here is a great place to start!
Rebecca Rhodes
Cost $29-$215, depending on size of course
Subject(s) Realistic watercolor animal paintings and pet portraits
Structure/method Rebecca uses the Teachable platform to offer a couple of free courses as well as monthly and annual subscription access to her library of paid courses. She also offers one-on-one tutoring.
Anna Mason
Cost eur 12.42 – eur 18.99 per month
Subjects(s) Realistic watercolor paintings of objects and botanicals.
Structure/method Anna offers her tutorials on a subscription basis as streaming videos. The online school includes a community aspect for other students to provide feedback. Her school also includes a Knowledge Base library of basic techniques, as well as sketchbook exercises.
Angela Fehr
Cost $99
Subjects An expressive and impressionist style of watercolor painting. She emphasizes a loose, fluid, intuitive style.
Structure/method Angela’s courses include warm ups and exercises, a student gallery, and lifetime access to the course. She also offers a yearly subscription to her live lesson library, and offers 16 of her courses bundled together for a massively discounted price.
Jerry’s Artarama
Cost Free
Subjects Both realistic and impressionist styles of watercolor painting, different instructors.
Structure/method A little different from the other entries on this list, Jerry’s Artarama is an art supply store with a vast collection of free online mini-courses in a wide variety of artistic mediums. The watercolor section is crammed with short, free video tutorials on everything from stretching and prepping canvas to how to paint a realistic nose.
Nitin Singh
Cost Free
Subjects Impressionist watercolor painting, including methods like plein air.
Structure/method Nitin Singh offers his tutorials for free through his website and on YouTube to an audience of 33k subscribers. In addition to monetizing his videos on YouTube, he directs viewers to support him on Patreon.
Want more?
If you’d like to learn more about how to teach art online, check out our interviews with artists selling online courses:
Also check out our piece on How to Make Money Teaching Art Online and our compilation of the Top Multimedia Online Art Classes.
Did we leave out an awesome watercolor course, or do you teach watercolors online? Let us know in the comments!
I’m surprised you’ve left out Billy Showell – one of the most accomplished botanical watercolorists in the world, Showell has been offering excellent online tutorials and demos (at reasonable prices) for a number of years.
https://www.billyshowell.com/
LETSMAKEART with Sarah Cray
Jacqualine Gnott on-line classes are great too, with many to choose from and quite reasonably priced. I’ve attended 3 of the instructors – Mason, Gnott, and Stowell. Attending these gave me a huge boost in my painting skills.
My little sister told me she wants to try painting. Your information about online watercolor classes would be really helpful for her. I don’t think she considered online courses.
Louise de Masi from Australia does watercolour tutorials on Skillshare, Patreon, YouTube and more. Louise is a qualified teacher, with many years experience teaching acrylics also. Louise teaches both botanical and wildlife watercolour art. Each class includes downloadable line art, original photos and progress images. Presented in clear steps and high quality film work, from which you can actually produce great results for yourself, puts her on the top of my recommendations list.
It’s fascinating that if you are a watercolor artist, you can set up an online course to help gain extra income. That makes a lot of sense because my husband and I have been trying to figure out watercolor painting since we started quarantine. We haven’t gotten very far because we didn’t know the basics of painting to begin with, but it’s still frustrating. I would definitely sign up for an online course.
That’s so interesting . I’m a watercolour artist and teacher and I’m doing some research on creating an online course .
I just discovered Jean Lurssen. She has classes on Teachable. Her style is very loose and free! I am enjoying her classes!
Take a look at Jill Poyerd https://www.jillpoyerd.com/ She’s an award winning watercolorist who has a unique style of painting and teaching, from basic to advanced techniques. She offers on-line courses at Udemy.
After teaching watercolour for nearly ten years I’ve just launched my own online watercolour school as a way to keep teaching through lockdown but it’s really hard to get found on the web. I’ve joined Instagram as a way to promote classes but any other ideas would be great.
Hi Tracey I found your name in the SAA Paint magazine and would like to know how your online course works and how much you charge.
Hi Claire, I’ve just seen your message! This page is sadly not a message board directly for me – it’s just a blog post which I have commented on so sadly you enquiry hasn’t filtered through to me.
If you’re still interested in watercolour and would like to find out more there’s lots of information on my website http://www.traceybengeyfieldart.com but in short it is a subscription service. You can choose to sign up for a monthly rolling fee at £13 a month or you can enrol for 6 months (£65) or a year (£110). Once you have chosen your subscription you get access to all my painting projects which have real time videos, an outline drawing, photo resource and a step-by-step worksheet which gives you extra hints and tips. If you check out my website, there is a free taster project for you to try before you buy!
Hope this helps – if you have any further queries please get in touch direct at tracey@traceybengeyfieldart.com or through my website contact form.
I’d be interested in free watercolor classes
would love to see demos of watercolor artists