Watercolour & acrylic · Sydney

Colour that moves on its own.

Classes, courses and commissions from a small studio inspired by the Steiner Waldorf approach and shaped for modern life — where children meet colour before they meet a single line.

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Press and drag to paint · hover to stir the water

Three studies

Every sheet below is wet.

Water spreads through the paper, the pigment travels with it, and the paper drinks both in as it dries — just as it does on the table. Paint on any of them.

Wet on wet

The paper is soaked and smoothed with a sponge before any colour touches it, so every stroke opens like a flower and keeps moving after the brush has lifted. In a Waldorf classroom children begin with three colours — lemon yellow, carmine red and a deep blue — and discover every other colour where those three touch.

Try this Lay yellow beside blue and leave them alone. The green that gathers between them is the paper's doing, not yours.

Paper: Soaked, then sponged
Edges: Soft and feathered
Colours: Three primaries

The paper is still wet — it stays workable for about a minute.

Veil painting

Thin, transparent layers on dry paper, each one left to dry before the next goes on. Light passes down through every veil and back up off the white of the paper, which is why a painting built this way seems to glow rather than shine. Waldorf teachers call it veil painting; most painters call it glazing.

Try this Paint a band, wait for the shine to leave it, then cross it with another colour. Look for the fine dark line each veil leaves where its water dried last.

Paper: Dry and stretched
Edges: Crisp, with a darker rim
Pace: Patient

Dry paper. Each layer dries in a few seconds.

Acrylic

Acrylic is watercolour's opposite: opaque, quick to dry, and mixed on a palette before it touches the canvas. With only white and three primaries, every other colour is yours to make — even the shadows, which are the object's own colour with its opposite worked in. It covers whatever is underneath, so it can go light over dark, and a loaded brush or a palette knife leaves the paint standing up in ridges.

Try this Put blue and yellow on the tray and drag across them until they turn one green. Then paint with the green you made, and add white for a lighter one.

Palette: White and three primaries
Mixing: On the tray, not the canvas
Surface: Primed canvas, toned indigo

Put paint on the tray, work it with the knife, then paint.

For every age

Colour is a language children speak before they have words for it, most of all before they turn seven. So classes are grouped by age, guided by the stages of childhood the Waldorf approach describes.

Early childhood
Class 1–3
Class 4–6
Class 7 and up
Adults
Teachers & homeschool

Ways to paint with us

In the studio

Classes

Small groups that meet weekly, a term at a time. Every class lists its exact dates before you enrol.

See this term's classes

At home

Courses

Lesson-by-lesson video courses to work through at your own pace, at your own table, with your own brush.

Browse the courses

Made for you

Commissions

Watercolour portraits of homes and pets, and murals for houses, restaurants and cafés around Sydney.

See past commissions

Your sheets

Keep a sheet from any study above and it will wait for you here.

Come and paint.

The studio is in Sydney. Tell us who is painting and we'll find the right table for them.

Get in touch