Painting Water Reflections in Acrylics - Beginners - Southwell Library - Adult Learning

Explore the beauty and challenge of painting water in this beginner-friendly acrylic painting course. You’ll learn how to capture shimmering reflections, gentle ripples, and the movement of light on water using simple, effective techniques. Through step-by-step demonstrations and guided practice, you’ll build confidence in colour mixing, brushwork, and layering to create realistic and expressive water scenes. This course is perfect for anyone wanting to improve their landscape painting skills in a relaxed and supportive environment.

You’ll explore how to simplify forms, mix bright, broken colour, and apply energetic brushstrokes to create lively and expressive paintings. Working from photographic references, you'll develop an understanding of how to bring that freshness and spontaneity into your own work.

Each session will focus on a specific theme such as light, reflections, colour harmony, or capturing movement. You’ll be encouraged to take creative risks, respond intuitively to your subject, and gradually build a more confident, personal painting style.

Materials needed:

Acrylic or watercolour paper A4 pad

White acrylic gesso

40x 50cm or A4 canvas

Acrylic paint (Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Blue, Magenta, Cadmium Red, Titanium White)

Synthetic brushes

Funding and Fees

If you receive certain benefits, you may be able to take the course for free.
If money is stopping you from enrolling, please visit our funding page to see what help is available.

Living in England

To book and join one of our courses, you must live in England permanently and either:

• Live inside the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) area (Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire)

or

• Live outside the devolved areas listed below

You cannot enrol if you live in these devolved areas:

• Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA)

• Liverpool City Region Combined Authority

• Greater London Authority

• North East Combined Authority

• South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority

• Tees Valley Combined Authority

• West Midlands Combined Authority

• West of England Combined Authority

• West Yorkshire Combined Authority

• Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority

• York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority

• Hull and East Yorkshire

• Greater Lincolnshire

• Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority

• Cornwall Council

• Lancashire Combined County Authority

• Buckinghamshire

• Warwickshire

• Surrey

Residency Requirements (Additional Information)

If you live in the UK on a visa, we’ll need evidence of your visa to confirm funding. You can upload this when applying, and you’ll need to complete a short questionnaire.

Some exceptions include:

• Your visa must last until after your course ends.

• Asylum seekers must have lived in the UK for at least 6 months while their claim is being processed.

• You are supported by your local authority under Section 23C or 23CA of the Children Act 1989, or under the Care Act 2014.

Anyone who does not meet the funding criteria would need to pay full course fees.