Advanced World of Watercolor with Ross Barbera
Progress work from Ross’s class.
Week 1
Learned how to transfer a drawing to watercolor paper. - I just drew it
Started by laying in the yellow/orange, letting it dry, then masking it.
Continued by adding the purple/pink. Supposed to be magenta but I don’t have in my palette, so I used some kind of rose and prussian blue?
Week 2
Trying to stay patient and lay in the lightest colors of the background and build them up.
Also started this other painting based on one of Ross’s old ones.
Forgot my masking fluid in another bag so had to paint around some stuff. So far it’s been fun but still difficult to hold back from painting the darks.
Week 3
For the third week I had these two finished and framed for a class exhibition.
I worked on the fairy project and brought in stuff for that for advice from Ross. I forgot to take a final photo, and/or framed photo, but will get some next week.
I’ll have a deep dive on the fairy project since it’s kind of evolving into something and I have enough notes, sketches, and preliminary paintings that it’s becoming a thing. This class and next I will be focusing on this fairy project and maybe the colors project for Long Beach.
I will have a link to fairy project deep dive here when I get to it.
Perhaps the colors artwork? (I dunno)
Store link? Buy it.
Rejections? (I dunno)
Week 4? (Below)
Week 4. Ross went over how he mounts watercolor paintings to wood. Also demonstrated how to add water droplets to leaves in a painting. Very interesting.
Strolled through the strolling galleries to see everyone’s works. Mine are not great.
Ross has uploaded a collection of all the paintings here: https://www.watercolorpaintingworkshop.com/classexhibition2026.html
Still working on this fairy one. Feel like I’m trying too hard
Week 5
Bittersweet.
Ross demonstrated how to protect a watercolor painting by rubbing wax onto it. I waxed the fairy painting. Will wax it twice more. Mostly worked on compositions for the Popeye painting.
This was a very valuable class. I learned a lot of painting, framing, protecting techniques, and gained an appreciation of semi-realistic landscapes/floral/faunal(?) paintings.
Will continue mounting watercolor paintings to cradled boards and attaching to cheap floating frames.
Also would like to work more on botanical illustrations/watercolor paintings. Maybe even the fairy stuff… maybe even more Popeye stuff.
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Next class is silversmithing/jewelry making and Ross showed me that he used to add his watercolor paintings to the jewelry he made. Will have to watch his videos before mid April as that’s something I definitely want to keep in mind for that class.
The Fairy One was accepted to the 2026 Sands Point Fairy Festival exhibition.
