# Create Your Simple Watercolor Calendar - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/create-your-simple-watercolor-calendar/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Illustration & Drawing · Quick win · Rated 6 /10 # Create Your Simple Watercolor Calendar Updated September 2026 Amarilys Henderson · Watercolor Illustrator, Design Thinker All levels · 33 min A genuine 30-minute project that delivers a finished, printable calendar, but the design software lessons assume prior skill. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fcreate-your-simple-watercolor-calendar%2F1486263238) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. Create Your Simple Watercolor Calendar promises a finished product in half an hour, and it largely delivers on that promise, provided the student already owns some baseline comfort with a design program. Taught by watercolor illustrator Amarilys Henderson, the class walks through painting twelve small watercolor motifs, handlettering the month names, and laying both onto a twelve-page calendar template. ## What the course actually teaches The painting segment is the strongest part of the class. Henderson demonstrates a genuinely useful technique: pressing harder on a round sable brush to widen a line and lifting pressure to thin it out, which turns simple line doodles (snowflakes, pumpkins, loose foliage) into something with visual rhythm instead of flat outlines. She pairs this with a repeated-motif approach, building a page of asterisk-shaped snowflakes or dabbed foliage rather than one large illustration, which keeps the bar for "good enough" low and gives the student plenty of usable scraps once scanned. The handlettering section covers a dual-tip brush marker, explaining how pressure applied on the downstroke versus the upstroke mimics calligraphic contrast. For students with rougher handwriting, Henderson offers a skeleton-then-muscle approach: draw the bare bones of a letterform first, then thicken and add serifs. It is a reasonable entry point for lettering beginners, though it is covered briskly and would benefit from more repetition or guided practice than the class allows. ## Where the pacing breaks down The layout lessons are where the class shows its seams. Two full tutorials are packed in, one for Photoshop and one for InDesign, and both move at a clip that assumes the viewer already knows their way around guides, layer masks, Paste Into, and vector tracing. Steps like grouping layers, creating a clipping mask from a selection, or using Image Trace in Illustrator to convert a scanned word into an editable vector are executed quickly with minimal explanation of the underlying menu paths. A true beginner to design software will likely need to pause and hunt for menus that a more experienced user would breeze past. This mismatch is the course's central tension: the blurb calls it beginner-friendly, and the watercolor and lettering portions genuinely are, but the finishing stage requires either prior Photoshop or InDesign fluency or a willingness to rewatch sections repeatedly. The good news is that this gap does not require redoing the painting or lettering work; the raw materials the student produces in the first half remain reusable no matter how the layout stage goes. The color unification strategy is worth calling out as a nice piece of design thinking that gets shortchanged on explanation. Henderson pulls a light background tint and a darker accent color directly from each page's own artwork using an eyedropper, so every month feels distinct but the calendar as a whole reads as one cohesive object. This is exactly the kind of "why it looks professional" insight that separates a mediocre student project from a good one, and more time spent on it would have strengthened the class considerably. Overall, this is a tight, project-based class that rewards someone who wants a fast creative win over the holidays and already has some software footing. It is not the class for someone who needs Photoshop or InDesign taught from scratch alongside the art. The standout The demonstration of using a single brush at varying pressure to create wide-to-thin line work is the one technique that elevates the whole project beyond basic doodles. ## What you will learn - · Handlettering consistent month names with a dual-tip brush marker using pressure control - · Painting simple watercolor line drawings using brush pressure to vary stroke width - · Building a repeatable visual motif (like asterisk snowflakes) from simple shapes - · Cleaning up scanned watercolor art in Photoshop to isolate line work on a transparent background - · Assembling a unified calendar grid layout in either Photoshop or InDesign - · Applying a cohesive color system by pulling tints and accent colors from each painted piece Best for: Beginners and hobbyist painters who already have basic Photoshop or InDesign familiarity and want a fast, complete year-end project. Skip it if: Anyone with zero design software experience looking for a step-by-step software tutorial, since the layout lessons move quickly and assume comfort with layers, masks, and vector tools. Clarity of Instruction Engaging Teacher Helpful Examples Organization of Lessons [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fcreate-your-simple-watercolor-calendar%2F1486263238)