Loosen Up Your Watercolor Painting—Here’s an Exercise to Try
Every time I lead a class or workshop, more than half of the participants mention the goal of “loosening up”. Here’s a skill-building exercise to help you move in that direction.
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Exercise, Exploration, Experiment or Artwork?
In planning an artwork, you often need to conduct related exercises, explorations and experiments. But it’s usually a bad idea to let them slowly morph into unplanned attempts at the artwork.
Dealing with “Problem Paintings”—Part 1: Too Boring for Words
If you’ve painted in watercolor for more than a day or so, I know you’ve been here: after hours of hard work, you’re struggling with a blotchy, overworked section that you know isn’t going to be right, no matter how much more effort you put into it. It’s tempting to conclude that you just don’t have what it takes . . . maybe it’s time to take up something easier to master, say, golf.
How do you deal with “problem paintings” like this? (click the picture to read more)
The Most Important Watercolor How-To
Having trouble finding the time and energy to paint? Try designing some Anti-Rules!
Intuitive Painting—Building in a Starting Structure
Starting with a blank sheet of paper and just doing whatever “feels right” is way too little structure for most of us. This video gives you a step-by-step starting structure that you can improvise on top of to create a dragonfly of your own style.
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…
Avoiding Overwhelm When Sketching on Location (or Working from a Photo)
To avoid overwhelm while sketching (or working from a complicated photo), collect “characters” now, arrange them to tell a story later.