April 1st, 2026

Online Workshops for the Spring Season

Celebrate the arrival of spring with a curated list of recorded workshops that will get you outside sketching wildflowers, bees, and garden vegetables!

By The Art Toolkit Team

A vibrant watercolor artwork of a bouquet featuring pink, yellow, and purple flowers, surrounded by paint swatches and a palette filled with various colors. On the left, there are leaf and flower sketches in green hues.

Last fall, when Bethan Burton taught Garden Journaling: Delight in the Details of Nature, we caught sight of the wonderful spring vegetables and flowers growing in her garden. Now spring has finally arrived in the Northern Hemisphere, making it the perfect opportunity to revisit our spring themed workshops. Read more about them below!

Springtime Flowers with Sushma Hedge

In Springtime Flowers: Practice Brush Techniques and Direct Watercolor, Sushma Hedge guides you through painting blooming bouquets in a beginner-friendly workshop.

A vibrant watercolor artwork of a bouquet featuring pink, yellow, and purple flowers, surrounded by paint swatches and a palette filled with various colors. On the left, there are leaf and flower sketches in green hues.
Art by Sushma Hedge from her workshop, Springtime Flowers.

Learn how to hold and maneuver your brush to create expressive marks that suggest a leaf or a flower petal in this celebration of spring.

A vibrant bouquet of various flowers, featuring yellow daisies, pink coneflowers, purple and lavender accents, and small orange blooms. The arrangement displays a mix of colors and shapes, creating a cheerful and lively composition.
Watercolor wildflowers from Sushma’s workshop by Jane Bearce.
A vibrant bouquet of wildflowers, featuring pink daisies, yellow blossoms, and delicate blue blooms, painted in soft watercolors.
Watercolor wildflowers from Sushma’s workshop by Tammy Xiao.

Pollinators in Ink with Robin Lee Carlson

In Pollinators in Ink: Explore Contrast and Color in Nature, natural science illustrator Robin Lee Carlson shows how to vary lines and create texture with a brush pen.

A watercolor illustration featuring a bee nestled among pink flowers. The bee has black and yellow stripes, and the pink blooms hang from a branch above, set against a soft green background.
Bee and manzanita sketch from Robin Lee Carlson’s workshop by Art Toolkit Founder and Expeditionary Artist Maria Coryell-Martin.

She breaks down her method for drawing species in the field, beginning with basic bee anatomy, and demonstrates how to paint a bee amidst manzanita flowers using Caran d’Ache Neocolor II Aquarelle Pastels as paints.

Two illustrated pages from a sketchbook, featuring colorful drawings of bumblebees on a background of soft pastels. One page shows a bee on green leaves, while the other depicts a bee hovering near pink flowers.
Bee sketches from Robin’s workshop by Melissa Jensen.
A page from an art sketchbook featuring colorful watercolor illustrations of bumblebees and pink flowers. One bee is depicted perched on a green leaf, while others are shown flying and resting near the flowers. The background has soft, blended greens and yellows.
Bee sketches from Robin’s workshop by Melissa Jensen.

Garden Journaling with Bethan Burton

In Garden Journaling: Delight in the Details of Nature, Bethan Burton provides a bounty of ideas, techniques and inspiration for keeping a nature journal.

A collection of botanical illustrations featuring various plants, including beets and tomatoes. There are watercolor swatches in green and earthy tones alongside sketches of flowers and leafy greens. The phrase "Harvest Time" is prominently displayed in a hand-drawn style.
Bethan Burton’s illustrated garden snapshots from her workshop, Garden Journaling.

Start with a color mixing exercise to discover the different shades of green in your garden. Then learn elegant ways to highlight detail in your plant sketches that make capturing the riches of your garden an easeful practice.

A colorful garden journal page featuring sketches of plants, including a leaf and yellow flower. Text highlights techniques for mixing colors and documenting gardening experiences. Illustrations of tomatoes, sunflowers, and radishes are included, along with a color palette and notes on gardening details.
Sketch from Bethan’s workshop by Maria Coryell-Martin.
Watercolor illustration of a green leafy plant with roots and a small fruit at the bottom. Handwritten notes and instructions about gardening and journaling are visible, including the date 10/29/25. The style is artistic with soft colors on a light brown background.
Sketch from Bethan’s workshop by Tammy Xiao.

To kickstart your spring painting practice, head to our Workshops page to purchase Recorded Access for these and other workshops, as well as to sign up for Live Access to our current Spring Workshop Series, featuring Understanding Value with Ohn Mar Win, Object Studies with Kate Rutter, Bending Perspective with Jenny Jing Zhang, and Adventure Art with Maria Coryell-Martin.

We love to see your workshop art—tag your Instagram posts with #LearnwithArtToolkit, or share them in Circle, our online learning platform for workshop participants!

Live Demos from Sushma, Robin, and Bethan

You can also check out previous demos with the instructors of these workshops below.
An artist sites on a rock, dipping a paintbrush in a Pocket Palette.

Art Toolkit Newsletter

Sign up to hear about our latest supplies, tips and techniques for field art, and special offers.

Join now and we’ll send you our free Tools for Observation mini-series. Follow along with Maria as she shares supplies, tips on contour and gesture sketching, and inspiration for composition!