Mindset

Why am I not painting? 7 Problems + 21 Solutions

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[UPDATE: An earlier draft of this went up with only 5 problems and 15 solutions.] I didn’t really paint in June, for a bunch of reasons. I feel better when I’m regularly doing art than when I’m not, yet it’s so easy to fall into the pattern of not painting. There are lots of reasons … Read more

The hidden artistic benefits of poor visual memory

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“You must have a good visual memory, you’re an artist,” a teacher once told me, trying to talk me out of my discouragement about geometry. But in my personal experience, art-making and visualization ability are surprisingly unrelated. I’ve always been interested in art, and I’ve always had poor visual memory and spatial reasoning skills. Some … Read more

Finding Your Art Style

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I find it hard to tell my own style. I look at my art and I know what I was trying to do, or what my reference looked like. I can imagine what other favorite artists would have done with the piece. My own work looks like a bad version of what I was trying … Read more

How (Not) to Learn Watercolor

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Are you tired of enjoying watercolor? With these quick tips, you’ll be slogging your way through an unpleasant learning experience in no time. Focus on the destination, not the journey. Remember, the goal is to become perfect, which is both normal and attainable. You’ll know when you’ve arrived! Hold off on everything good until that … Read more

How to Gift Your Art Without Stress

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In various periods of my life when I’ve been big into art in a public way, I’ve had friends and family ask for art as a gift, or received comments at the holidays such as “Gift-giving will be easy for you this year since you can just give your art.” This is always intimidating, because the idea of giving my art as a gift can be stressful!

At the same time, I have happily and successfully given my art as gifts on a number of occasions! In this post, I’ll offer tips on how to come up with a great gift idea and keep your stress level low.

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Doing the Thing When You Think You Suck At the Thing

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Sometimes you just have to paint cats on it and live to fight another day. A galaxy night sky I was disappointed in, November 2021.

Being a beginner is hard work. Old hands take a lot of things for granted: They know their equipment. They have the basic equipment. They’ve built up muscle memory. They know what style they do. They have a style. They can reliably produce at least a few types of images. They don’t have to look absolutely everything up. 

Why can’t I skip to the step where I’m good at things? 

Here’s what I’m beginning to wonder, though. Is there a point where you feel you are good at things? 

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Do you have to be able to draw to do watercolor?

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I drew a lot of magic anime girls when I was a teenager so the idea of drawing doesn’t bother me in theory, but I went into watercover very nervous about my ability to draw landscapes – things like mountains and trees – which I had never practiced before. Tutorials that started with drawing made me nervous. How can I paint something if I can’t draw it?

After working at watercolor drawing and painting for the last year, I believe that they are different, but related skills. It’s definitely possible to learn to paint something without knowing the techniques for effectively drawing the same thing. So if you can’t draw, or don’t really want to learn because paint interests you more, don’t worry. But you may learn more than you think about drawing through the process of watercolor.

Quick sketches showing different ways of composing the same scene: mountain peak in the middle, or mountain peak on the side?

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It’s okay to be basic.

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A postcard-sized watercolor painting of a bright purple, red, and yellow sunset over the ocean with silhouettes of palm trees. "Wish you were here" is typed over it in a script font.
(c) January 2022 by Billy Idyll.

I mentioned last post that I’ve been reading a lot of watercolor books, some of which I find off-putting. But even among those that I like and that I learn a lot from, I’ve yet to read one that does not, at some point, completely alienate me by making a little dig at something I like. Usually, it’s bright colors. 

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