Sarah Simon Watercolor Workbook

Getting Started with Sarah Simon's Approach to Watercolor

The Sarah Simon Watercolor Workbook has been around long enough that people either swear by it or completely dismiss it, usually without having actually used it. The core premise is straightforward: she breaks down watercolor painting into repeatable processes that work across different subjects, rather than teaching you to copy a single finished piece. That distinction matters more than most beginners realize. When I first picked up her method around 2018, I was frustrated with tutorials that produced beautiful results but left me with zero understanding of why they worked. Her workbook approach at least gives you a framework. You learn how to mix a limited palette, how to control your paper's absorption, and how to plan your washes before committing paint to the surface. Those three skills alone prevent about eighty percent of the mistakes I see from people learning on their own.

What the Sarah Simon Watercolor Workbook Actually Covers

The workbook focuses on practical exercises rather than art theory. Each section pairs a technique explanation with a corresponding painting task. You're not reading about wet-on-wet for twenty pages before touching paper. You learn the concept, then immediately apply it to a landscape study. This keeps momentum going and prevents that paralysis where you finish a chapter feeling like you understand everything but can't paint a single thing. One thing most people miss about her approach is the emphasis on value planning before color selection. She has you work through pencil studies and gray-scale thumbnails that map out where your light, midtone, and shadow areas fall. Getting this right early saves you from the dreaded "muddy watercolor" problem that shows up when you layer complementary colors over impulsive underpainting. I've watched students skip this step repeatedly and end up spending three hours trying to rescue a painting that should have taken thirty minutes with proper planning. The color mixing sections are where this methodology really pays off. She walks you through building a functional palette from basic pigments rather than buying a tube set and hoping for the best. Understanding which blues lean warm or cool, which reds pair well with which yellows for greens — these aren't abstract concepts in her system. They're tools you apply directly in each exercise.

I hit a specific wall when trying to apply her landscape techniques to coastal scenes. Her examples lean heavily toward inland terrain with rolling hills and forest edges. Saltwater environments behave differently because of atmospheric perspective and the way light reflects off wet surfaces. What worked for her mountain scenes produced dead, flat results on my seaside paintings. The workaround was combining her value-planning approach with loose plein air sketches from my own reference photos. I stopped trying to force her indoor studio exercises onto coastal subjects and instead used her process as a foundation while adapting the application to my actual subjects. That adjustment took about two weeks of deliberate practice before things clicked.

How to Use This Method Effectively

The workbook assumes a certain level of basic supply knowledge. You should already know what hot-pressed versus cold-pressed paper feels like, how much water to use with a #6 round, and why you shouldn't press hard when lifting color. If you're completely new to watercolor, you'll want to supplement this with a fundamentals primer before diving in. Her method builds on existing technique rather than teaching it from absolute scratch. The exercises progress at a pace that works for most people, but don't rush through them. Each painting is designed to reinforce the previous one's lesson. Skipping ahead means you'll encounter problems you don't have the tools to solve yet. I've seen this happen when students try to jump to the advanced landscape projects after finishing the color mixing chapters. The foundation isn't there yet, and the frustration sets in quickly. One common mistake I notice with this workbook is treating it like a reference book rather than a working manual. People buy it, flip through the pages admiring the examples, and never actually complete the exercises. That's equivalent to reading a cookbook without cooking. The value comes entirely from doing the paintings, making mistakes, and adjusting your process. Plan to spend at least an hour per exercise, sometimes more depending on your experience level.

The downloadable components are straightforward PDFs that print cleanly at home. No special software required, no subscription traps. You pay once, you access the material. That's about as simple as educational resources get, which is refreshing given how many workbooks now bury content behind paywalls or require app downloads just to view the lessons.

Where This Approach Falls Short

Let me be honest about the limitations. The Sarah Simon Watercolor Workbook isn't going to teach you figurative painting, botanical illustration, or abstract color field work. It's focused on landscape and nature subjects using traditional representational techniques. If that's what you want, you'll find value here. If you're interested in other styles, you'll hit the boundaries of this method pretty quickly. Another issue is that some of her color combinations don't translate well to every pigment quality available today. A few years ago, certain manufacturers reformulated paints that changed their transparency and staining properties. Recipes that used to produce clean mixed greens might now come out brownish depending on which brand you're using. I ran into this with a specific yellow-green wash that turned sludge-like when I switched from a major brand to a smaller boutique manufacturer. The fix was simply adjusting my mixing ratios slightly and testing on scrap paper before committing to the final piece. Keep pigment references handy so you can troubleshoot these variations as they come up. The workbook also doesn't address digital workflow or modern printing techniques for reproducing your work. If you plan to scan and sell prints, you'll need supplementary knowledge about color calibration and output settings. Her materials predate the current digital art workflow, so that gap is understandable but real.

For beginners looking for the most complete starting point, I'd recommend pairing this workbook with a dedicated fundamentals course on brush control and paper handling. The combination covers the gaps where her method assumes prior knowledge. For intermediate painters who already have solid basics, this workbook fills a useful niche by giving you a structured path to move beyond beginner exercises into more developed landscape work. The practical exercises are where you'll find the most benefit. Set aside your schedule, grab your supplies, and treat each assignment like a real project rather than a checkbox. That's how you actually internalize the techniques instead of just reading about them.