Week 1: Revisiting the Essentials

• Review materials, paper types, and brush control.

• Warm-up exercises exploring water-to-pigment ratios.

• Quick landscape sketches focusing on value structure.

• Class demo: Simple barn or field scene using wet-into-wet and drybrush.

Week 2: Composition & Planning

• Focus on thumbnail sketches and compositional design.

• Explore focal points, visual balance, and movement in landscapes.

• Demo: Coastal composition or seascape with strong horizon placement.

• Students create 2–3 small studies.

Week 3: Atmospheric Skies & Weather

• Demo: Expressive skies — dawn, storm, mist, dramatic sunsets.

• Focus: Layering washes for atmosphere, lifting for light, controlling soft vs. hard edges.

• Exercise: Quick sky studies, then integrate one into a simple landscape.

Week 4: Water Reflections & Movement

• Demo: Still water (reflections) vs. moving water (rivers, waves).

• Focus: Glazing for depth, broken brushstrokes for shimmer, wet-into-wet control.

• Exercise: Two small water studies — one calm, one active.

Week 5: Trees & Foliage Variations

• Demo: Beyond basics — conifers, late-autumn bare branches, dense summer foliage.

• Focus: Layering greens, negative painting for leaves, tonal variety.

• Exercise: A “tree portrait” study with emphasis on seasonal character.

Week 6: Architecture in the Landscape

• Demo: Incorporating barns, cottages, bridges, lighthouses.

• Focus: Simplifying perspective, balancing hard vs. organic edges, use of masking.

• Exercise: A sketch combining simple manmade forms with natural elements.?

Week 7: Seasonal Landscapes

• Demo: Snow scenes, autumn foliage, spring bloom palettes.

• Focus: Seasonal color choices, texture techniques for snow, leaves, blossoms.

• Exercise: Students paint the same composition in two different seasons.?

Week 8: Nocturnes & Limited Palettes

• Demo: Night skies, moonlight, dusk.

• Focus: Working with minimal palettes, creating luminosity with glazing.

• Exercise: Paint a landscape using only 3 colors (plus optional white gouache).?

Week 9: Mood & Abstraction

• Demo: Pushing landscapes toward mood and expressive abstraction.

• Focus: Color harmonies, expressive brushwork, simplifying forms.

• Exercise: Reinterpret a past subject in both a realistic and abstract way.

Week 10: Personal Project & Critique

• Focus: Students apply all techniques learned to design and complete a personal landscape painting.

• Activity: Final critique and discussion — focus on composition, technical growth, and individual voice.