IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES

Glass Gardens is a watercolor illustration course built around one of the most quietly captivating subjects imaginable — glass containers filled with growing things. Terrariums, bottles, vases, cloches, jars — each one a little world of its own, and each one a drawing and painting challenge worth taking seriously. You'll work through subject breakdown exercises before moving into the full illustration, learning to see and render transparent glass, the greenery inside it, and the relationship between the two with pencil and watercolor. Along the way you'll develop an eye for how light passes through glass, how plants sit and overlap within a confined space, and how to build a composition that feels lush without feeling chaotic.

UNLOCK A NEW SKILL

With a background in graphic design and fine art, I create illustrations that tell hidden stories. What makes Glass Gardens distinct is the challenge at its center: drawing transparent objects. Glass is one of the trickiest subjects in illustration because it has no color of its own — it exists entirely in reflection, refraction, and the shapes it distorts. This course teaches you to stop trying to draw the glass and start drawing what the glass does to everything around it — the way it bends a stem, brightens a highlight, or creates a shadow with a perfect curved edge. Paired with the organic softness of watercolor greenery, that pencil-and-paint combination produces illustrations with a level of quiet realism that pure watercolor alone rarely achieves.

BUILD YOUR CRAFT

The subject breakdown practice in this course exists because glass and greenery together are genuinely complex — they ask you to think about transparency, layering, and negative space simultaneously. Working through those elements in isolation first, before assembling them into a complete illustration, means the final piece doesn't have to carry all the learning weight at once. By the time you're painting a full glass garden, your hand already knows how to suggest glass without overworking it, and your eye already knows where the plants need to breathe. That preparation is what separates a finished illustration from a labored one, creating a depth that shorter classes simply can't match.

WHAT YOU GET

When you enroll, you'll receive a single downloadable workbook covering orientation, supplies, and all the handouts and reference material for the course. The video curriculum includes subject breakdown exercises and a complete start-to-finish illustration walking you through pencilwork, watercolor techniques, and the full process of building a glass garden from first mark to final detail. Everything is downloadable and yours to keep.

LEARN OFFLINE, ANYTIME

Every course includes a dedicated Start Here lesson — your personal download hub where all your workbooks and videos are organized and waiting for you. Save everything to your device and keep learning wherever you are, whenever you want.