Painting Brush Strokes with Soul and Story
Coming Soon
Painting Brush Strokes with Soul and Story
A Beginner‑Friendly Gouache Course in Narrative Painting
Due for release in September 2026
Painting Brush Strokes with Soul and Story is an invitation to paint with intention, presence, and meaning.
Designed for complete beginners, this course gently teaches gouache techniques alongside a deeper understanding of how story emerges through light, gesture, colour, and restraint. Rather than illustrating a scene, students learn how to create emotional conditions where narrative can be felt and imagined.
You’ll learn how to work with light, brushstroke, colour, and restraint to create paintings that feel soulful, personal, and alive — even if you’ve never painted before. No prior painting or drawing experience is required.
Lifetime access to the complete beginner‑friendly gouache course
Lifetime access to the complete beginner‑friendly gouache course
Gouache Foundations
Learn the essential basics of gouache — how to mix, layer, soften, and rework paint with confidence. You’ll understand how gouache behaves on paper, so you can paint without fear and begin building skills gently, step by step.
Brushstrokes with Soul
Learn how to paint with presence rather than perfection. You’ll explore gesture, pressure, rhythm, and breath so your brushstrokes feel alive and expressive. Instead of aiming for accuracy, you’ll discover how simple marks can carry emotion, atmosphere, and quiet story — even in the smallest study.
Light and Contrast
Discover how light and shadow guide the viewer’s eye and shape meaning in a painting. You’ll learn to work from strong reference images, simplify values, and use contrast to create depth, focus, and quiet narrative tension.
Story in Paint
Learn how story emerges without needing to “explain” anything. Through colour, symbolic choices, layering, and intentional restraint, you’ll create paintings that hold narrative threads and leave space for the viewer’s imagination.
Lifetime access to the complete beginner‑friendly gouache course
Lifetime access to the complete beginner‑friendly gouache course
A Note from Wendy
Wendy Shipman
The MakeHer Studio
I’m Wendy — an artist, writer, and qualified coach, and the founder of The MakeHer Studio. I live on New Zealand’s Kāpiti Coast, where the rhythm of the sea and the changing light often find their way into my work.
Through both my coaching and my art practice, I’ve come to understand creativity as a place of listening — a space where story, memory, faith, and reflection gently meet. Painting has never been about perfection for me, but about presence: learning to slow down and trust what is emerging.
I created Painting Brush Strokes with Soul and Story for those who feel drawn to painting but aren’t sure where to begin, or who are longing for a more thoughtful, supported creative practice. As a coach, I hold space for people to begin gently and without pressure — and this course is an extension of that same care, offered through paint, light, and quiet making.