Planning Your Own Watercolors

Generating and refining a concept for a painting, tools and strategies for design, planning and evaluating work-in-progress.

Painless Watercolor Planning, Part 2: Choose & Refine Your Painting Concept

Painless Watercolor Planning, Part 2: Choose & Refine Your Painting Concept

This article is the fifth in a series about creating paintings with more emotion, power and personal meaning. Here are links to the first four: Is My Painting Done? Are You a “Photocopier”? There’s a Better Way The Lazy Way to Build Painting Confidence Painless Watercolor Planning, Part 1: Exploratory Drawing I’ve broken up my…

Painless Planning for Watercolor, Part 1: Exploratory Drawing
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Painless Planning for Watercolor, Part 1: Exploratory Drawing

This article is the fourth in a series about creating paintings with more emotion, power and personal meaning. Here are links to the first three: Is My Painting Done? Are You a “Photocopier”? There’s a Better Way The Lazy Way to Build Painting Confidence I know that taking the time to do some planning would…

Jul 2019: Finding Focus When Working on Location
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Jul 2019: Finding Focus When Working on Location

Some strategies I use to manage the overwhelming amount of information when painting on location, so sketching enhances my enjoyment, instead of raising my stress level. And so I have a better chance of coming back with photos and sketches that I can actually use to create satisfying, personally meaningful paintings.

I used a spray bottle to soften and allow the color to run on the right side of the "background". I like how the yellow color of the lemon ran and softened, giving it some atmosphere and bringing the viewer's attention more to the crisper edges in the bowl.
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Go (a Little) Wild!—How to Loosen Up (Just a Bit) in Watercolor

Are you a control freak when you make art? Or does your inner child go wild? Most of us want to make art that combines structure and spontenaity, but that’s not easy! In workshops and classes at all levels, when we go around the room and talk about what we want to get out of…