100 Days of Watercolor Painting

Last year I took a course on designing fabric, and it encouraged watercolor painting as one way of exploring my creative voice and making art. To say that I’ve never had success with paints would be a dramatic understatement. For the most part, I find painting to be tremendously frustrating – I want to be able to look at something, then paint a picture of it. Maybe not photo-realistic, but you know, one where you can tell what I was looking at. (Okay, I’ll confess, photo realistic is my actual goal.) This year I’m going to make a commitment to myself to really dig into watercolor painting, and do a 100 days of watercolor painting project.

Bethanne Nemesh offered a series of lessons during her Art Therapy Thursdays, and I was stunned by how she was able to show me how to make things that looked like real things. I share more of these pieces in this post.

I also began a class with Ana Victoria Calderon on Domestika, but I didn’t finish it. It’s so odd – this pattern of starting things and then just wandering away from them comes up again and again in my life. Almost everything.

I’ve picked up my watercolors every now and then, and while I do enjoy using them, I’m not giving them enough attention to really learn the art form. I want to make it a part of a daily practice, so that I can learn more techniques. I’m vacillating between taking a course, finding a book, or just doing more explorations on my own.

My first step towards contentment with the watercolors is accepting that for now, I’m just exploring shapes and behaviors of the pigments. Every time I pick up my paints, I come up with questions. Like, what if I used the watercolors on an easel? I am particularly taken with how they behave when the paper is really wet, flowing and moving into each other. If the paper was at an angle, that would probably be more dramatic, but would I just end up with a soggy gray/brown mess? I think I’ll find out tomorrow.

Another thing I’ve played with is embellishing the paintings in a little journal with stitches after the work is dry. That is pretty fun. It also leads me to doing watercolor on a piece of cotton stretched on a canvas. Would it work, would the pigment be permanent, as in, could I use it in a quilt? I know it would be easier to just do it with dyes, but I have all of these great watercolors.

Over-purchasing supplies is one of my worst habits. I currently have the full line of Dr. Ph. Martin’s liquid watercolors, which are probably a lifetime supply. I also have a large set of paints from Koi, a small set of metallics, and an absolutely gorgeous little set from Beam Paints. (The folks at Beam are First Nation People in Canada.) Then there are the palettes, brush sets, and some fancy water cup thing. And a paintbrush holder from Fish Museum & Circus, of course. I may also have a set of gouache, which I have never opened and have no earthly idea what they are. I need to stop buying things and start using them, but maybe after I buy a little set from Hydracolour.

Starting on July first, I”m going to make a commitment to myself to do a daily watercolor painting. Just a small one. I’ll play around, and find the answers to my questions about watercolors. I’ll share my daily painting over on Instagram, probably in my stories, so it doesn’t clutter up my quilting feed. I think exploring a different medium will help me decompress from what has been a fairly intense quilting practice recently.

I controlled myself, and didn’t buy a handmade paper journal with a leather cover to do this project. Instead I’m using up papers I have already purchased to do my explorations, and I found an old notebook to use to keep notes in. Does anyone have a great tutorial for making journal covers? Because for sure, this one is not sparking my joy.

If you want to join me with a 100 days project of your own, please do! When I am able to stick with these projects, they always make me happy, and I learn a lot from them. You don’t need to be doing watercolors, or painting, either. Anything that you want to set aside time each day works for this kind of project.