I’ve had a complicated relationship with art in my adult life. As a child, I loved everything creative (and I still do), but art was always my main focus – mostly painting and drawing. I didn’t overthink it. It was 100% for the joy of creativity. When I went off to an art & design university, that joy left me completely. Art was graded and judged in ways that I’d never encountered before, in ways I didn’t even know was possible, and some of the professors were downright cruel. Art started to feel like a chore, not to mention something I wasn’t good at. So I dug into my advertising degree and moved along, not really painting much since.
Lately I’ve been feeling the urge to pick up a paintbrush, and I can’t really explain why. Perhaps I’ve exhausted every other creative avenue, or perhaps I wanted to revisit an old friend. Either way, I’ve started a new journey with watercolour. When I used to paint in high school, I always used acrylic. I love that you can paint over your mistakes and layer in whatever way you want to. Watercolour is a lot more delicate. The goal, and challenge (in my case) is to work in light layers to retain a range of values. At this point I’m just regurgitating stuff I learned in YouTube videos. YouTube has been my friend in this process, but more on that later.
I started where everyone does: with some very bad flowers and some questionable landscapes. I needed something fun and familiar, a “quick win” if you will, so I went back to one of my favourite subjects – birds. For someone who is actually a bit afraid of birds, I sure like to paint them. Here are some of my explorations:
I’ve been having fun playing around with mixed media – like watercolour, pen, watercolour pencils (Derwent Inktense are my favourite) and gouache. I love laying down a bunch of colour and seeing what I can do on top. Buying supplies for a hobby is part of the fun, and I’ve been having LOTS of fun. I particularly like Daniel Smith watercolours. They’re very pricey so I only invested in a few special colours. I also picked up a pad of Arches paper, but I haven’t worked up the confidence to crack into it yet.
Something I’ve had to wrap my mind around is doing something creative without a concrete goal. I’m in a creative field for work, so I tend to assign goals to even the most expressive of tasks. I’m also a millennial and therefore plagued by the need to monetize everything (I know I’m not the only one). I don’t really want to do that with art so, as of right now, my only goal is to improve. I’d love to get better at landscapes and confidently take this hobby on vacation (or at least to the garden). If I document it here, hopefully I’ll keep up with it!
I’ll leave you with some YouTube channels that have helped me get started on this journey:
And the list is growing all the time…
Happy making,
Jackie
A little disclaimer: This blog is very small, so it almost goes without saying, but I am not affiliated with any brands mentioned in this post.
by jackie rose 
Leave a comment