How old are you?

You might try to find some exercises in the Learning Zone classes and exercises stickey. Do you keep notes? Perhaps start a notebook or folder of studies and exercises that you find useful in getting back into the swing of watercolor. Write yourself notes on them. The notes might help refresh your memory when you review them later. You aren’t alone as I experience similar when switching from watercolor brushes on watercolor paper to Chinese brushes and ink on rice paper. I spend several sessions practicing on cheaper rice paper ($15 for 50 12″x18″ sheets) and on magic cloth with just brushes and water.

The thing about watercolors is seeing what the cats do. If you don’t like cats, you probably should not have cats, much less be trying to herd them.

If you don’t like what they are doing, you are in the wrong medium, just like dog lovers should own dogs, we have things like oils, acrylics, etc which give you almost complete control. Your own desire for control will be a problem, and you are always going to be limited by your own views, but you can just do lots of glazes, lots of micromanaging, but you never will see what the medium can do when you let it loose.

You have to learn how to dance with watercolors, and when to let her lead.

How do you learn, you put miles on the brush. Yep that means learning a lot of technical things, but relax, just start playing instead and you will pick up that stuff without even noticing you did, the technical will sort itself out, you will just develop a knack where there isn’t one. But it takes a lot of practice.

Don’t assume it will do what you want, assume it will do something better, then you have to be humble and go, that was pretty cool. That whole “not invented here” you gotta grow out of, the really cool stuff is often an accident, but too often we are so intent on doing our plan that we don’t even notice a much better idea.

Lot of the skill isn’t about controlling the cats, its about putting a piece of yarn in front of the cats, and realizing that they will play with it. Or catnip, or whatever you do. We use gravity, blowing, splatters, or just using our brushes to add gushes of water, or other dry brushes and towels to remove water ( the second most often neglect ).

Another way of putting it, its like being married, where instead of telling your partner what to do, you convince her that it was her idea. You are leading in a way, but softly and you are ok with her thinking she’s in charge. There is a bit of personal growth needed to actually not require that feeling of being in control, of being in charge.

I’ve come to a conclusion that painting watercolor is like herding liquid cats up a hill. You sit down to drink some tea just to discover in horror that all those cats ran down hill again.

Oil painting does not seem to have the same steep trajectory, I wonder why; 1-3 paintings and I’m up and running again. But taking a two week break in watercolor means a two month long climb of re-learning and re-remembering everything. Scratches and hisses and all.

Anyone here came up with any remedies for this by any chance? A favorite video that hits all the right memory notes? Drills to do to get yourself up and running faster?

Learning to be a watercolorist is like learning to drive a car. Need to learn where the gas petal is, how to turn the car on, how to operate the lights etc, and then learn to drive. You can become a good watercolorist, but need to learn one thing at a time – techniques, color, value, composition, using whites, etc etc.

I like dogs much better than cats, but watercolor much better than oils. Does that make me a contrarian? I love Brian Meyer’s comment, “Don’t assume it will do what you want, assume it will do something better.” In fact his whole post is pretty much on point there.

But why are people taking the original-poster to task, so much? I read his inquiry as merely a plaintive cry in the wilderness, a frustration-howl not unlike many of my own. He’s hoping for commiseration not condemnation, and not instruction either, or so I get the feeling …

I am not into commiserating, we got art to make, and cats to let loose. Let the dogs out too. There is far too much negativity out there.

The attitude you have going into this is probably more important than anything else, often we are seeing the glass as half empty, instead of half full. If you think you gotta herd cats, you aren’t ever going to get where you need to go.

People are actually doing wonderful things, then they are over working it trying to make it fit what they want it to be. Learn the techniques and keep it simple, don’t try to keep inside the edges, part of what makes watercolors neat is, well its watercolor, its doing all those drips and blossoms and all that other stuff. And you see beginners going, how do i stop that, instead, that is neat, why did it do that and how can i use that next time.

The real answer is just keep painting, don’t expect it to look good right away, instead invite disaster. If you just go into it with an attitude of how crazy can i make this go, with full wet into wet and drips, you will be learning at an accelerated rate, especially if you are going thru pads of paper. If you instead carefully plan and orchestrate a completely controlled piece, where you do everything exactly where it needs to go, well its art, there is no right or wrong, but usually this means you are painting the fleas before you paint the dog.

This is my approach in concept ( not saying this is what you should do, but bear with me to see the point, to be honest i use a different approach depending on my mood, but this is the one that seems most relevant to this discussion) and a simplified way soas to describe my view of it. ( to a degree this comes from watching thomas schaller do a demo, who is one worth looking up, probably will see my point better if you relate it to his approach/final pieces )

Start wet, use lots of colors, and rich colors. Have an idea of where the focal point is, and there you either avoid paint, or you ensure there is lots of clean water moving color off of that point. Think here in big shapes, sky, figure, whatever. Nothing should have sharp edges if you have the entire paper wet, that is ok. Now part of the trick here is you use strong colors, even primary colors, but you add water which runs down the page, and the result is rather lighter tints, pastels even, but its all myriad patterns. Let this dry. After you do this 10 or so times you actually will be choosing colors wisely, and save your white, at first just do it without thinking it thru that far, the real concept is what you do here is part of your final picture, but you gotta try it a few times prior.

Now you have what I call toned paper, but using lots of colors, it will have very interesting shapes. You can go in and do more washes to create more over all shapes, remember that you want to control edges – wet into wet for things in the distance, but things up close should have sharper edges ( against dry paper ), but the goal here is basically having very light areas and midtones. The way the water dripped down will have the Wrong colors all over the place, but this will come out making the picture more interesting, and unify it.

Now you have a dry surface, here you do what I call calligraphy on top of the toned areas. Calligraphy is marks on dry paper, the shape of the marks matters. Now here again do the big overall shapes first, only after those all work, do you do details. The fact its toned forced you to really push your values on top, that weak tea does not work on this. So you have a wet in wet voice, and a wet on dry voice, washes and calligraphy, and they inter-relate and work together.

Now look up books or stuff showing artwork done on toned paper, the reason why artists draw on toned paper is the same reason your calligraphy can pop, its the contrast, but its also the unifying color moving thru the entire picture. Lot of really good books on figure drawing describing how to work value – all good things to know that apply to all subjects.

As an example, this was done this weekend at lake murray plein air. Not the most successful, but it fits this concept, and since its simple it really is easy to use it to communicate. The goose who was behind me watching me do this, the paint of him i did afterwards came out a lot better.

My approach was very simple, big washes for the sky of pthalo blue and pyrrole orange, yep orange, big solid huge marks of it, that sky was the first wash, as was the meat of the water below. The first thing I did was right where the horizon is, is pile on the orange. Then I hit the top with lots of blue, then I just hit it with water soas to lighten everything. You can see a trace of the orange at the very bottom, but the orange and blue, if its tinted, makes a wonderful muted color you see at the horizon. Further I knew the hill would be orangish ( it was actually green ), and I knew water would reverse/reflect the sky, going from light to dark.

It got out of control, so i blasted it with clean water, basically lightening it since that orange was still too much. Some of the shapes you see were entirely created by a river of water moving down the center dropping off the bottom. You can kind of criss cross with your brush and redo the wash if you do it fast, and if you do the ENTIRE area – the issues come up if you don’t have water on there evenly. This was all slopped on like a maniac, then I did what is often really hard, i just waited until it dried, just let it go, if it does not do what you want, just go with it. Just having the orange of the hill there at the beginning, it dripped down, and it looks like a reflection.

Now the trees on the left, hill to the right, obviously calligraphy, mostly dry brush, but after i used water under it to pull them into the lake. If you look closely you can see i was just striking the paper with the brush for some of that, it does not have to be accurate, just in the general overall shapes to read right.

I actually did more washes to create the water, careful to make it light to dark, but i kept this subtle at the top, and tried to make it go darker as i went down.

Now i was next to another artist, who started with drawing the hill, the trees, she was doing all the details, and was wondering how to do the sky, the water. It is very hard to put big washes like that into a picture afterwards, it just requires more skill. But if you do them after, you can aim your dark shapes at the edges of the washes, it makes it look like you intended this or that, when really what you are doing is just using what mother nature gave you, and going with it. I actually didn’t know where the horizon was going to be in this picture, i chose where based on how the initial wash came out.

If you paint the fleas first, it is very hard to do the do after. But fleas are very easy to find good spots on the dog. Do the big stuff first, if the big stuff does not work, move on to the next picture, fleas don’t fix pictures.