Wet-on-wet in Watercolour

with Lara Cooper

Participants will learn how to create beautiful watercolour washes and subtlety add form using wet-on-wet technique, developing skills that are necessary for their ongoing journey with watercolour. The workshop will focus around a simple still life, and build up the piece from drawing, to washing, and through to shading using wet-on-wet. This is an experimental type workshop and rather than come out with a finished piece, we will use the painting like an exercise to practice new techniques.

Appropriate for all stages of experience.
Lara Cooper is a painter in predominantly oil and watercolour, producing work rooted in observation of the beauty and simplicity of real life.

With a deep appreciation for the technical skill of painters of bygone eras, and a love for colour and texture, her work could be described as modern impressionism with a definite feminine outlook. Finding story in everyday moments, Lara captures snapshots of life that might otherwise go by unnoticed, bringing viewers to remember something innate, to find joy and contentment in life’s ordinariness.

Her work does not seek to jar or entertain but calls back quietly like a dream to something deeply shared in the human story. With this view firmly on her radar, she paints landscape, still-life, portraiture and figures in a sort of peaceful rebellion, doing it the slow way, with ever better eye through hours of practice.

Lara was recently a participant in Open Studios Sunshine Coast and completed an exhibition of 12 large oil portraits of men who have done Men's Rites of Passage through The Centre for Men and Families in Brisbane. She has been commissioned to design and paint a second mural this year at the Dhiiyaan Bethel site in Dalby and has opened her home studio as a private teaching and gallery space this year. Lara's work is held in various private collections across Australia and globally.

To find out more and see her work check out her website and find her on

facebook : Laracooperart
Instagram : laracooperart
Wet-on-wet in Watercolour

Session time(s)

(1 hour 45 minutes)

Special Requirements

**A note on materials - watercolour painting is VERY dependant on quality materials. Buy the best quality paper, brushes and paint that you can afford. Cheap materials with watercolour yields a very frustrating result. 

Paper
  • 2-3 sheets watercolour paper sheets, which we will cut up. 
  • Or an A3 watercolour pad. 
(Good quality Watercolour paper: 300 GSM Cotton, Cold Pressed. I use Arches, Saunders and Fabriano. Baohong is also a good brand and more economical.) 
Watercolour Brushes
  • A small mop brush Size 1 or 2 (brush size of a pen-sharpie, one that comes to a point when wet is ideal).
  • A long handled water colour fine rigger brush size 1 or 2 (brush size of a skewer).
  • optional: A large mop brush Size 3+ (brush size of a whiteboard marker tip one that comes to a point when wet is ideal).
Paint
  • Minimum 3 tubes of watercolour paint. Recommend: Ultramarine Blue, Raw Sienna and Burnt Sienna. 
  • Other colour suggestions: Hookers Green, Permanent Alizarine Crimson, Cerulean Blue, Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow. 
Good quality brands are Windsor and Newton, Maimeri Blu, Schmincke, and avoid student quality paints which often are not worth bothering with. The exception to this is Windsor and Newton’s student range, which is called Cotman and is more affordable than their artist range. Or local equivalent.
Other
  • A flat wooden board to work on, A3. (Not buckled, not cardboard, or a gator-board)
  • Roll of masking tape.
  • 2B pencil.
  • Water jar/or plastic container for washing your brushes.
  • Palette - a plain white plate is fine, or a white ice-cream container lid.  
  • Kneadable art eraser (better that a normal eraser because they don’t leave smudge marks). 
  • A roll of paper towel or a clean cotton rag such as an old tea-towel.