Nov 21 | "Imagining Watercolor" w/ Deborah Stein

"Imagining Watercolor," A Hands-On Workshop

w/ Deborah Stein

Saturday, November 21, 2026 12 - 4pm

In this in-person four-hour workshop, you'll have a full afternoon to discover the whims and possibilities of handmade watercolor with exercises, presentations and demonstrations to find your way in.

You’ll get to be as mischievous as you want with it, learning brushwork and technique then abandoning it to invent your own ways of working. It’s a chance to experiment freely and maybe even too wetly with Deborah there to guide and encourage you to try everything, then break all the rules. It's an occasion to dive into the world of water, color and inventing images.

After dipping our brushes for warm-up experiments, we’ll wander into the world of imagination with prompts to unearth impressions, articulations and ideas on paper. We’ll have short 15 minute presentation to look at artists and illustrators from the medieval to the modern and how their watercolors might inspire our own work and the themes of the day: colorimeters, leaf anthologies and hidden landscapes.

Watercolor is a beautiful way to remember how to play and have fun, to learn techniques while loosening a hold on perfection, and a chance to explore and honor your inner wonk and paint what you feel and see as it begins to appear on the paper. There will be a short discussion on paper types and suggested brands, brushes and a little dive into how watercolor is made too and lots of time for questions and attempts at answers. You’ll go home with your explorations, finished pictures and hopefully inspiration to last you a long while with this accessible portable beautiful material.

All skill levels welcome.

*Materials are included in the fee: you'll try a large array of handmade watercolors and other watercolor paints, all sorts of good watercolor paper and brushes, but you are free to bring your favorite watercolors and brushes to workshop. It also includes a small kit of handmade watercolors (made by Deborah with Kremer pigment), paper and other surprises for you to take home! 

Deborah Stein lives, paints and writes in New York City and a small mountain town in Northern New Mexico. She teaches visual narrative and painting workshops for artists and illustrators about seeing and translating the world with words and pictures. She’s taught in alternative art programs in NYC, Iowa City and San Francisco, made a Bob the Dinosaur for Prairie lights in Iowa City and apprenticed for a year with a family of toymakers in Varanasi, India with a fellowship from the Stanley Foundation. She was an Artist-Educator in NYC Schools through the Museum of Arts & Design in the 2000s and most recently leads workshops for picture book artists alongside Sophie Blackall at Milkwood each summer and at the Highlights Foundation with Margaux Kent in PA as well as online and in-person residencies via her own rogue art school, the Storycamp Disco. Her shows, presentations and creative watercolor workshops at L’Ecole Des Beaux Arts (LDBA) in Santa Fe NM have focused on helping beginners and artists of all sorts find their way with watercolor through the lens of imagination. You can see more of Deborah’s work and story at www.deborahjstein.com