Expressive Watercolours - a 3-day workshop

Three days letting watercolour lead

Most watercolour teaching focuses on control: clean washes, knowing where the paint goes, getting predictable results. Tutor Emma Burleigh's approach starts somewhere else. She describes happy accidents as portals into new ways of seeing, and this workshop is built around exploiting them rather than correcting them.

Over three days in New Brewery Arts' Scissors Studio, participants work through colour, mark-making and intuitive painting, using memories, moods and visions as source material. The aim is less a set of techniques than a working relationship with the medium. It's pitched at beginners, returners and more practiced painters who want to loosen up.

Burleigh has published two course books on expressive painting practice: Soul Colour, a ten-week watercolour course, and Earth Colour, an eight-week mixed media course, both through Liminal 11. Her work has been shown at the Royal West Academy in Bristol. All materials are included in the fee.

Wednesday–Friday 12–14 August 2026 · New Brewery Arts (Scissors Studio), Brewery Court, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 1JH · 10:30am–4pm