Creating Winter Wonderscapes with Artist and Caretaker Kati Christoffel

Last week, watercolor artist and longtime GMC caretaker, Kati Christoffel, led eager participants through another wonderful painting workshop. This time, we transitioned into the winter season with a delightful snowy scene of a classic Long Trail shelter. Kati’s art workshops have been one of our best virtual event series, attracting dozens of aspiring artists from across the state. Kati’s patience and clear instructions mean any participant can walk away with a picture to be proud of. If you’re on the fence about joining a painting workshop, read through to get a sense of the experience!

Start with your supplies — and your Zoom link — handy.

All you need for a GMC art workshop is paper, pencil, and an artistic medium of your choice. Kati uses watercolors and teaches basic watercolor technique, but you can also use colored pencils, crayons, or anything else.

First, Kati showed us how to sketch our shelter, down to the roof overhang and support beams. We colored the shelter with a soft brown and used the back of the paintbrush to add woodgrain-like texture. We then sketched out a snow-covered spruce tree and filled the background with a soft, blended blue-gray reminiscent of a cloud-covered snowy day.

watercolor in progress — First-time watercolor user Chloe Miller attempts to nail a snowy gray.

We painted a lot of trees, from a detailed snow-covered spruce to a dense forest of varying detail. Watercolors are a forgiving and flexible medium, where varying the amount of water in your brush can create striking impacts. Finally, we carefully practiced drawing a Northern cardinal and peppered the bright winter birds throughout our snowy scenes.

Thank you again to Kati and everyone who participated in the painting workshop. You can follow Kati on her Instagram account @watercolorwanderer, and past recordings of her painting workshops can be found here. This workshop was also made possible in part by the Burlington Beer Company, a corporate sponsor of the Green Mountain Club. Tune in to our upcoming workshops here. We also host a winter Outdoor Adventure Speaker Series, with details here.