Online Class: Watercolor Washes for Skies & Clouds

In this beginning-to-intermediate-level class, develop and sharpen the skills needed to create blended gradients and soft textures for watercolor skies. 

In the first part of the class, participants will be guided through the pictorial concepts that surround the dramatic tonalities and contrasts we admire in Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of clouds & skies. Then, through interactive demos and instructions, the class will be introduced to the hands-on techniques needed to create watercolor gradients as well as resist, blotting, and lifting techniques for indicating cloud formations. 

Supplies needed for this class: 

• Watercolor tubes in these or similar colors: Hansa Yellow; Indian Yellow or Cadmium Yellow Medium Hue or Quinacridone Gold; Cadmium Orange Hue or Vermillion or Pyrrole Orange; Carmine or Madder Lake Deep; Opera, Opera Pink, or Opera Rose; or Quinacridone Rose or Permanent Rose; Any red-purple such as Thio Violet, or Quinacridone Purple Red; Any medium-violet such as Permanent Violet or Dioxazine Violet or Carbazole Violet; Ultramarine Blue; Pthalo Blue Green Shade, Thalo Blue, or Manganese Blue Nova; Viridian or Pthalo Green; Sap Green; Leaf Green
• Optional: Burnt Sienna or Quinacridone Burnt Orange.
• Recommended brands of watercolor paint tubes:
  • Student/Learner grade: Van Gogh, Grumbacher Academy, or W & N Cotman.
  • Professional grade: Holbein, M. Graham, Daniel Smith, or Winsor & Newton.
• A 12-well circular palette with a larger center to mix paints. Jones Travel Palette is recommended.
• Round and Flat Watercolor brushes (synthetic ‘Taklon’ brushes are fine)
• 4 to 5 Round brushes in the range of Size 6, 8, 10, 12, 14.
• Optional: a 1 Flat brush that’s 1⁄2” to 1.5” wide.
• Recommended brush brands:
  • Starter brushes: Royal Soft-Grip Watercolor Round brushes work well. Similar quality in other brands such as, Simply Simmons work as well.
  • Better quality brushes: Princeton Aqua Elite and Silver Brushes are recommended.
• Q-tips and paper towel or pieces of cotton rag. Cut-up pieces from a clean, used t-shirt work well.
• Masking tape if a watercolor pad is used instead of a watercolor block.
• 2 to 3 empty glass jars or containers for holding water. Wide-mouth glass jars work well.
• Optional: Hair dryer if available, a white wax crayon or a small piece of candle for optional resist techniques, watercolor pencils for additional details.

These items should be available locally or online from Amazon as individual items in the U.S and in Europe or can be purchased online as individual items or as a set for Sudeshna Sengupta’s class-list (U.S. domestic shipping only).

About the Instructor:

Sudeshna Sengupta’s career as a teaching artist spans multiple decades, continents, and cultures that inform her pedagogy for decolonizing studio art. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1985 from Visva-Bharati University, founded by the first non-European Nobel Laureate (1913) and humanist poet Rabindranath Tagore.

After teaching art and design at the college level in New Delhi, Seattle, and California, she taught at New Mexico State University-Alamogordo, where she established its first intaglio printmaking studio in 1995. Besides the O’Keeffe Museum, Sengupta teaches credit courses with the School of Art & Design of the Santa Fe Community College.

Her etchings and lithographs from the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi have been featured in a landmark exhibition on Women Printmakers of India at the NGMA-New Delhi in India. Her work is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Association Musée d’Art Contemporain, France; Kala Institute, Berkeley, and more.

Sengupta also conducts workshops, short courses, lectures, and community-based art events focusing on multicultural and intercultural experiences that emphasize human, cultural, and environmental connectedness through creativity.

To learn more, please visit notes-and-doodles.com and visit her Instagram @santafe_online_art_studio

This class is being offered on a sliding scale.

$10 minimal fee.

$20 covers the cost of the class.

$30 covers the cost of the class, plus a contribution to support educational programs.