Watercolour Butterflies & Moths Workshop (30 May 2026)
Watercolour Butterflies & Moths Workshop with Ingrid Bartkowiak
2–5pm Saturday 30 May 2026
Join artist Ingrid Bartkowiak for an unforgettable afternoon painting Australia's delicate butterflies and moths in watercolour.
In this 3-hour session, you'll flutter the intricate wings of Australia's most delicate butterflies and moths to life painting with watercolour and experimenting with masking fluid and fineliner pens. Whether you're picking up a brush for the first time or refining your technique, this workshop welcomes all skill levels and provides everything you need to create beautiful watercolours.
To start, Ingrid will guide you through the basics of using watercolour paints, paper and brushes. You will learn how to activate your colours using water and how to mix colours, and how to layer colours to change tones and intensity. Ingrid will demonstrate how to bring these elements together to achieve different results, with a focus on the particular techniques that you'll be using in this workshop.
Ingrid will demonstrate how you could approach specific butterflies and moths such as the yellow tiger moth, spotted triangle moth and monarch butterfly or any special requests you may have. Ingrid will also demonstrate how to use wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques for your butterflies and moths and how to create different gradients and patterns for their wings. You'll also be shown how to use masking fluid and fine liners with watercolour to achieve some unique effects.
Next, it's your turn to practise your skills by creating gradients, brush strokes and colour mixing. You'll start by painting a butterfly working on A5 watercolour paper, breaking down the butterfly from reference materials by looking at the shapes and colours we see, what brush strokes we can use to create our illustration, and then we put it all together to create a full butterfly or moth. You'll then have the opportunity to bring your new skills together to create your own series of winged watercolour creations or add elements like flowers and leaves to a single artwork.
Materials
All the materials required for the workshop will be provided. Please wear an apron if you are worried about staining your clothes.
Who Should Attend?
This workshop is suitable for beginners with little or no experience, and more advanced students who would like to learn from Ingrid and develop their watercolour knowledge and techniques.
About Ingrid Bartkowiak
Ingrid Bartkowiak is a Brisbane-based artist and illustrator who paints Australian native flora, fauna and fungi using watercolour. Ingrid's work celebrates all things small and intricate, from tufts of moss on a footpath to the fungi sprouting from a wombat dropping. Her distinctive style is inspired by botanical illustration and the Arts and Crafts movement through its use of tiny patterns, exquisite detail, and vivid blocks of colour.
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Cost
$120 / $108 (Frequent workshoppers)
Frequent workshopper discount: Sign up for 2 or more Plant Empire workshops, or register 2 or more people for the same workshop, to receive 10% off the total registration price (discount will appear at checkout).
Location
Plant Empire has moved! This workshop will be held at our new premises in Tennyson, Brisbane: 15/55 Lofter St, Tennyson Q 4105.
Accessibility
In our new premises, we have ground floor workshop spaces as well as mezzanine level spaces with stairs. The ground floor spaces are all level without any steps, while the mezzanines are accessible via a staircase with 22 steps and 1–2 landings. Please let us know if you have any mobility issues that would limit your access to the mezzanine spaces so that we can ensure that your workshop is located at ground level by adding a note in the special instructions field when you register for your workshop: for example, "no stairs" or similar.
Reminders
You have full control over how (and how often) you receive reminders for our events. You will receive one email confirmation from us when you purchase your workshop registration; but we won't send any further email reminders, so please ensure that you have the workshop details in your diary. You can also use the "add to calendar" function in our events calendar to add workshops to your digital calendar and customise your reminder preferences.
Cancellation Policy
Please choose carefully before registering for this workshop as we do not offer refunds on event bookings. If you need to cancel your place up to 24 hours before the workshop, we will provide you with a voucher that you can use to attend a future workshop or any other purchase at Plant Empire. We regret that we are unable to provide vouchers for cancellations made within 24 hours of the workshop.
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