I’m super excited to announce that my Teacups course is now open for enrollment!

4 week Self-Paced course

Find out more and sign up

Please check out the video which gives you a good idea of what we will be covering in the course.

(BTW I’m holding my new special teacup bought especially for this course. It’s a T2 called Neverending Summer – Oranges and is such a beautiful design!)

In the Teacups course, I break down every step you need in order to sketch them in your own style. There are three main parts to the course – 2 theory sections and a demo section.

The course contains a lot of new content that I’ve never shared before!

In Theory 1 we will look at how teacups are a perfect subject to learn how to sketch with edges, shapes and volumes and to sharpen our basic observational skills.

You’ll learn not only how to draw ellipses (including concentric ellipses) but also how to see foreshortened shapes and look for important relationships between edges. You’ll also learn how to do some simple sight measuring so that your teacup sketches look less wonky.

And then you’ll develop skills to analyse, simplify and interpret teacup patterns and sketch them in your own style.


Teacups are also perfect for learning and refining many watercolour techniques and this is what we’ll look at in Theory 2.

We’ll explore how to:

• develop the basic skills of getting the right ratio of pigment and water in our washes (teacup sketches use a combination of watery, juicy and pasty washes)
• combine the colours in our palette to create beautiful patterns and understand more about their unique pigment characteristics
• use more advanced wet-in-wet techniques and take risks in order to create lots of watercolour magic!

And then in the Demo section of the course, we’ll use all the skills we’ve learnt in the two theory parts to sketch teacups in a range of media – ink and wash, watercolour pencil and watercolour and paint-only. There are 8 different demos showing various techniques and covering a range of teacup patterns and shapes.

I’ve had so much fun putting this course together so I want to share some behind the scenes…

My videographer helped me set up four camera angles to best record the lessons. I’m especially excited about this angled overhead view (that’s a new addition to my setup) as it clearly shows my palette (especially when I’m mixing) and also the amount of water in my washes.

And I also have a detailed camera view to capture the angle of my brush and all the subtle adjustments I make to achieve the best results from my watercolour washes. As I reviewed the videos I came up with a new phrase to describe this – it’s The Dance of the Dagger!

For this course I’m actually editing all the video lessons myself… and learning new software at the same time – thanks to the advice of my videographer! 🙂

DaVinci Resolve is amazing to use when I have four different angles to choose from – the Multicam feature is a huge time-saver and fun to use. It’s making it easier for me to decide on the best camera angle to explain what I’m doing. My teacup sketching involves my most sophisticated watercolour techniques so having these camera options is helping me put together the clearest instruction possible.

I’m so excited about this course as it pulls together many of the skills that I’ve explained in detail in my other courses (Foundations, Watercolour, Edges and even Buildings and Watercolour on Location). There is so much to explore as teacup sketching involves a rich combination of drawing and painting, it sharpens our skills of observation and interpretation and is a celebration of pattern and colour!

If it’s a good fit for you I’d love to see you inside the course. Here is the link to find out more one more time. And if you have any questions about the course please send us an email using the contact form on the SketchingNow site.

And finally, to all those who have already signed up… I’m looking forward to going through this course with you and hope that you are enjoying collecting a few teacups and/or patterned vessels to sketch.