Watercolor artist and teacher

Hi, I'm Rachel!

Let's get lost in my world of watercolor.

I paint realistic portraits of people and animals, and I help watercolor lovers understand how water behaves, so they can paint with greater intention and freedom.

Rachel Coclea holding a flat brush
Watercolor study
The Art of Water Control

Learn watercolor by understanding the water.

Watercolor takes more than copying steps. My course gives you a clear, calm path through paper, brush and the moment they meet, with close-up lessons, practice along the way, and a Water Control Grid you build yourself.

No fixed class times or deadlines. Learn whenever and wherever it suits you, go back and repeat whenever you need to, and ask me whenever you get stuck.

What you'll build along the way

Observation leads to understanding

Three shifts that change the way you paint, one small experiment at a time.

Observe

Read your paper and your brush at a glance, and know what wet, damp and dry will do with your paint.

Understand

Trace blooms, hard edges and uneven washes back to their cause, instead of guessing what went wrong.

Create

Plan your layers, choose soft or crisp edges on purpose, and paint with the freedom that understanding gives you.

Rachel Coclea at her easelMore than 40K followers across social media
About Rachel

From watchmaker to watercolor artist

I'm fascinated by the way watercolor balances delicacy with intention. Its transparency can create incredible softness and light, yet every brushstroke asks us to observe, understand, and trust the process.

Before becoming an artist, I worked as a watchmaker, and that still shapes how I paint. I run a diagnosis with every painting: what happened, why it happened, and how the water behaved between the paper and the brush.

Observation leads to understanding, and understanding gives us the freedom to create.

Let's connect
Let's connect

Got a question?

I'm happy to help you figure out where to begin. Send me a message and I'll get back to you personally.