Only January 1 - 15, 2026
My goal this year is to help you build deep floral fluency so you can paint flowers confidently, intuitively, and from memory and life. Whether you’re sketching in your journal, creating a large canvas, or adding florals to a portrait, you’ll finally understand how flowers work — and how to make them sing in your art.
For each Flower-of-the-Month, I’ll teach you:
When you join this year, you’ll receive three magical bonuses:
Transform your art with color.
This deep dive covers everything you wish you learned in art school — color harmony, mixing, temperature, saturation, value, expressive palettes, and four full painting projects that take your work from boring to WOW. With 4 additional classes inside!!! Yes 4 WHOLE CLASSES to practice your color skills INSIDE!
Paint a stunning mixed-media portrait adorned with sunflowers, zinnias, peonies, and a magical flower crown.
This project brings everything you've learned about flowers together in one expressive, imperfect-beautiful portrait.
Build your stash of handmade collage, textures, and painted papers — tools you’ll use again and again throughout the year.
You’ll also get access to our warm, enthusiastic private Joy of Painting Facebook group, where I’ll be mentoring you throughout the year, cheering you on, and helping you push your creative boundaries with gentle encouragement and joy.
Joy of Painting 2026 is perfect if you want to…
$25 per month. (you only pay $39 for the first month as this includes a $14 one-time set up fee.)
Yes, You can cancel at any time. You have complete control over your subscription from within the Joy of Painting dashboard. You will only be charged for the month(s) that you are a member on the monthly plan.
You have access to your classes for as long as you are a monthly (or annual) member of Joy of Painting. As long as you are a member, you will have access to all of your past classes!
One of the biggest benefits of becoming a member right now is that you will NEVER have your membership price increased as long as you remain a member in good standing.
Joy of Painting is about JOY, not stress. The membership is always here to support you on your journey. You are welcome to do the lessons as they best suit your time and lifestyle. There is no rush. As my favorite yoga teacher always said, "do you best, and leave the rest behind."
YES! While my paintings look complicated, I break down each of them with step by step instructions. And by practicing with the monthly projects, you will find yourself getting better and better as an artist. No matter where you are on your artistic journey, my goal is to help you to refine your hand, your eye and your palette. Painting is a skill like anything else, and you will be amazed by your progress if you do each of the monthly classes.
I am so grateful to have found Cathy on my art and healing journey, and I hope you join in too. You will be so glad you did!
I am one of those people who has always felt creative but never made the time to pursue it or give it the space it needed to grow. 2 years ago I had to leave work due to health reasons, and the recovery has been slow, long, and full of space for me to let my creative juices finally flow. Its funny how life gives us these “gifts”!. I found Cathy Nichols through a recommendation from a friend, and I was just in time to join the Joy of Painting, another gift from life! Through the last year of following Cathy, and also joining her in person for a 10 day retreat in France, I have grown significantly in my art journey. Cathy is the “real thing”, in that she gives generously in her teaching and she genuinely cares about her students. She is so talented, and has such a warm, humble and personable approach to her teaching. She also has a great sense of humor! Through her membership I have finally gained confidence in my ability to mix color (this has alluded me until now, even after taking a few on line courses). Cathy’s teachings simplified color mixing and empowered me to create nuanced color palettes, create shadow and highlights, and bravely add pops of accent color that brought my art to life. I feel like I have a more solid foundation in collage, color theory, painting florals, and creating compositions that work. I also feel free to add whimsical creative touches that don’t have to be perfect. This membership has been so worthwhile, and I have found a community of fellow artists that I did not have before.
I’ve gained confidence in my painting and I have learned to let go and have fun! The first of each month is like a mini Christmas gift when I open my new class from Cathy! If you’re thinking about joining, just do it!
I’ve been a Joy of painting member with Cathy Nichols for almost 2 years now! After a 25 year break from art, while raising my family, I decided to do something fun for myself! These last couple of years have been wonderful! Cathy’s kind heart and cheerful style give me so much joy. Each month the episodes are prerecorded so you can work at your own pace, and the content is above and beyond the other classes I’ve taken online. She has taught me color theory, composition, mixed media collaging, and so much more!
Excited to go into the studio again!
I had never done collages before working with Cathy. She broke my perception that creating collages was just tearing up magazine pages and reassembling them. I never imagined that I would learn to draw, paint and create my own papers. But Cathy teaches all of that in Joy of Painting. Using Cathy’s technique has ‘jump started’ my normal painting process. I’ve started experimenting and subsequently developing my work in new directions! If it weren’t for Cathy, I probably would not be as excited every day to go into my art studio!
I'm learning to master the subtlety of colors with Cathy all the way from Germany!
When it comes to color, I'm a colorful bird. I love strong, clear colors - ALWAYS. That's why I love Cathy's pictures so much. They are so wonderfully colorful and despite having many different elements, they never seem overloaded or chaotic. Through Cathy I learned how to use color so that the strong colors I love would not compete but, instead, have greater impact. Cathy has also shown me how to use reference paintings from the masters as springboards for my own ideas.
