Molly Hashimoto makes watercolor look easy. With a simple watercolor set, the kind you almost certainly used a kid, she can make a beautiful watercolor sketch in a matter of seconds.

Molly taught classes recently through Sno-Isle Libraries. I took one of her classes on using watercolor for nature journals.

It was a lot of fun. While I didn’t create anything even close to art, I did really enjoy the class. And it made me desire to take more art classes. After all, the Northwest is so gorgeous, I would love to capture some of those scenes other than with my camera and my words.

Molly was kind enough to let me take photos of a few pages of her sketchbooks. Those photos are here, along with my very beginner attempts.

If you’d like to give nature art a try yourself, Molly has two classes coming up at the North Cascades Institute: printmaking on May 23-25 and landscape watercolors on June 20-22.

The institute is also offering a class, the artful map, on June 20-22. (I’ll be taking that class and I’m very excited to play around with making a map.)

See more of Molly’s work and read her blog here.