Paint, Collect, Create in Mexico in 2026: Oaxaca art workshop with watercolor + mixed media collage in Puebla
Imagine this: you’re sitting in a unique, sun-drenched “industrial rustic” art studio in Oaxaca, surrounded by cornfields, goats grazing, and oxen plowing the fields nearby. Your watercolor palette is open, watching locally sourced natural pigments bloom across the page. In the distance, church bells ring and roosters crow. Your brush moves across the page, painting the ancient symbols and personal talismans that Oaxaqueño instructor Pedro is teaching you—visual language that connects you to something deep inside yourself.
Talismán Oaxaca – our art studio
Now fast-forward to a weekend in Puebla’s historic Barrio de Los Sapos. You’re wandering a cobblestone alley lined with antique shops, fingers trailing over vintage postcards, weathered book pages, and forgotten ephemera. Your portable studio awaits back at the hotel—ready to transform these treasures into mixed media magic.
This isn’t just an art workshop with watercolor and mixed media collage. This is a creative pilgrimage for cultural explorers and visual storytellers who want to make art that matters.
Why This Retreat Is Different: The Story Behind Our Art Adventures
When Oaxacan artist Pedro Cruz Pacheco and mixed media artist Corrie McCluskey began their tradition of art adventures together, they discovered something powerful: creativity explodes when you combine artistic practice with cultural immersion and a sense of discovery.
Armed with a portable studio in a suitcase—a basic painting and collage toolkit, boxes of magazine clippings and pages from old books, scraps of fabric and paper, torn fragments of painting experiments—they traveled together to explore a new city through the lens of art-making. They realized that some of their most inspired work happened when they spent afternoons holed up in pop-up studios in hotel corners, creating mixed media pieces with collage and incorporating ephemera gathered from local flea markets and antique stores.
One destination kept calling them back: Puebla’s Callejón de Los Sapos (Alley of the Frogs), a historic street lined with tantalizing antique and “junktique” shops and a weekend antiquities bazaar. There, the hunt for vintage ephemera became part of the creative process itself. Each discovered treasure—a faded photograph, a page from a 1940s Mexican magazine, an old legal document written in beautiful script and sealed with colorful stamps—carried its own story, waiting to be woven into new work.
That’s when they knew: this experience had to be shared. This Art Journaling Workshop from Oaxaca to Puebla was born from the desire to show other artists that you can take a studio in a suitcase anywhere and make meaningful art. To share the adventure of experiencing raw and real Mexico and creating in response to it. To go beyond traditional art workshops and build a space for camaraderie, exploration, and authentic expression.
Your Week in Oaxaca, Mexico: Where Culture Becomes Canvas
Oaxaca is a feast for the senses and a wellspring for creative souls. This is where ancestral traditions are still practiced daily, where master artisans carry on centuries-old techniques, and where the art scene pulses with both indigenous wisdom and contemporary innovation.
Watercolor with Natural Pigments
Under Pedro’s guidance, you’ll explore watercolor painting techniques using both traditional paints and locally sourced natural pigments. Pedro incorporates personal symbols, talismans, Oaxacan culture, and the natural world into his work—and he’ll help you discover the visual language that speaks to you. These aren’t your typical art classes. Working with pigments made from Oaxacan earth, minerals, and bugs that grow on nopal cactus connects you to the land itself, adding depth and meaning to every brushstroke.
Mixed Media, Mark Making & Visual Journaling
With Corrie, you’ll dive into mixed media collage and experiment with mark making using handmade brushes, India ink and simple materials. This is where you take risks, let go of perfection, and discover what wants to emerge on the page. You’ll work in sketchbooks or on loose paper, developing your unique visual voice through playful experimentation. Expect to be surprised by what shows up when you allow yourself creative freedom.
Cultural Immersion Beyond the Studio
What makes this workshop truly transformative is how we weave art-making with cultural exploration. You’ll visit ancient ruins that whisper stories of Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. We’ll take carefully curated private field trips to artisan villages far from the tourist trail, where you’ll meet master weavers, papermakers, and red clay potters in their studios. You’ll sit with these artists, hear their stories, understand their processes, and witness cultural traditions that have been passed down through generations.
These intimate encounters with makers and their ancestral techniques become fuel for your own creative work. The colors, textures, symbols, and stories you gather during the day naturally flow into your studio art sessions.
The Oaxacan Art Scene & Culinary Traditions
After hours, you’ll experience Oaxaca’s soulful contemporary art scene and its legendary culinary traditions. Markets overflow with color, flavor, and handmade beauty. The city itself becomes your visual reference library—every corner offers inspiration, from the geometric patterns of traditional textiles to the play of light on colonial architecture.
You’ll create an artist book using Oaxaca-sourced handmade paper, building a visual journal of your journey that you’ll treasure long after you return home.
The Puebla Weekend: Your Ephemera Hunt Adventure
Just when you think the creative well couldn’t get any fuller, we hit the road for Puebla.
Barrio de Los Sapos: An Antique Lover’s Paradise
Puebla’s historic city center is a UNESCO World Heritage site, famous for its stunning Talavera tiles and baroque architecture. But for artists and collectors, the real magic happens in the Callejón de Los Sapos—the Alley of the Frogs.
This picturesque cobblestone street is lined with antique stores, vintage shops, and curiosity-filled spaces where every corner holds potential treasure. On weekends, the street transforms into an open-air antiquities bazaar where vendors spread out their collections: vintage photographs, old postcards, pages from Mexican magazines and books spanning decades, religious ephemera, theatrical posters, botanical prints, love letters, and mysterious fragments of lives lived long ago.
The Art of the Hunt
This isn’t passive shopping—it’s creative treasure hunting. You’ll wander with intention, eyes trained to spot that perfect piece of weathered paper, that image that speaks to your artistic vision. Maybe it’s a 1950s advertisement with bold typography. Perhaps it’s a faded photograph of someone’s grandmother, her story unknown but her presence powerful. Or a page from a botanical journal, the paper aged to a warm honey tone.
The hunt itself becomes a meditation on seeing, selecting, and storytelling. What calls to you? What colors, textures, and images resonate with your creative voice? Every artist returns with different treasures—and that’s exactly the point.
Collaging Your Finds
Back at our beautiful hotel in the heart of Puebla’s historic center, you’ll spend focused time in collage sessions, working with the ephemera you’ve gathered. This is where the weekend adventure transforms into finished art. You’ll experiment with composition, layering, and meaning-making as you incorporate your vintage finds into mixed media pieces.
There’s something deeply satisfying about giving new life to forgotten fragments. Your collages become conversations across time, blending Mexican history with your contemporary vision.
Who Should Join This Creative Adventure
This Art Journaling Workshop from Oaxaca to Puebla is designed for creative hunter-gatherers and cultural explorers who want more than a typical vacation. You’re the kind of person who:
- Gets genuinely excited about discovering handmade paper in a remote village
- Loves the thrill of finding the perfect vintage ephemera in a pile of old postcards
- Wants to develop your artistic skills while experiencing authentic cultural traditions
- Enjoys both structured learning and spontaneous creative play
- Values intimate encounters with master artisans and their ancestral practices
- Appreciates travel that goes beyond tourist experiences into real, true connection
- Is willing to step outside your comfort zone and embrace the unexpected
All skill levels are welcome, from complete beginners who’ve always wanted to learn visual journaling and watercolor painting to experienced artists seeking fresh inspiration and new techniques. The only requirements are flexibility, an open and curious mind, and willingness to participate fully throughout the workshop week.
If you’ve been feeling creatively stuck or disconnected from your artistic practice, this immersive experience is designed to refill your well and reignite your passion for making art.
What Makes This Workshop Experience Unique
Instruction from Two Perspectives: You’ll learn from both Pedro Cruz Pacheco, an Oaxacan artist deeply rooted in local traditions and symbolism, and Corrie McCluskey, a transplanted Californian who brings a mixed media and experimental approach. Together, they offer complementary techniques and philosophies that expand your creative toolkit.
The Portable Studio Philosophy: You’ll discover that you don’t need a fully equipped studio to make meaningful art. The portable studio in a suitcase approach is liberating—it teaches you to work with what you have and find inspiration wherever you are.
Private Cultural Access: Our carefully curated field trips take you beyond the tourist path to meet artists and artisans in their actual working environments. These aren’t staged demonstrations—they’re genuine encounters with people practicing their craft.
The Perfect Balance: We mix focused art instruction with cultural exploration, quiet creative time with group adventures, traditional techniques with experimental play. You’ll have space to work at your own pace while benefiting from community and shared inspiration.
From Oaxaca’s Villages to Puebla’s Vintage Alleys: The combination of week-long depth in Oaxaca followed by the weekend Puebla adventure creates perfect creative rhythm. You’ll build skills and gather inspiration throughout the week, then apply everything in a burst of ephemera-hunting and collage-making energy.
Your Creative Journey Awaits: January 9-19, 2026
This isn’t just about coming home with a portfolio of artwork (though you can). It’s about rekindling your relationship with creativity, expanding your visual vocabulary, connecting with a community of fellow artists, and experiencing Mexico in a way that transforms how you see and make art.
You’ll return home with:
- New watercolor and mixed media techniques
- A handmade artist book filled with your Oaxaca journey
- Collages incorporating vintage Mexican ephemera
- Deeper understanding of natural pigments and traditional materials
- Memories of intimate encounters with master artisans
- A refreshed creative spirit and new artistic confidence
- The knowledge that you can create a portable studio and make art anywhere
Space is intentionally limited to ensure intimate group dynamics and personalized attention from both instructors. Our small group size also allows for those meaningful private studio visits and the flexibility to follow creative impulses as they arise.
Ready to fill your creative well? Join us for this eight-day art journaling adventure from Oaxaca to Puebla. Bring your curiosity, your willingness to experiment, and your hunger for authentic cultural connection. We’ll provide the guidance, the inspiration, and the portable studio philosophy.
Your treasures are waiting in Puebla’s antique alleys. Your next artistic breakthrough is waiting in Oaxaca’s natural pigments and handmade papers. Your creative community is waiting to meet you.