Yesterday was the last week of my 8-week class called “Loosen up with Watercolors” at our local (amazing) community arts center.
Against advice from the teacher, I attempted to paint a portrait of someone I know and love: my granddaughter. The reference photo (taken by my daughter) was from last summer when my granddaughter was 9 months old. (She’s walking now!)
I had the idea to use wine bottle webbing in the background for her playpen siding.
I had fun doing this, but I get why the teacher said not to paint family members as a total beginner. You’re too attached to the subject!
I want to learn how to make smooth skin tones, but I was too afraid to experiment on her adorable little face. I will try a stranger again next time, like that random chef from a magazine, which was my first ever watercolor portrait.
After my frustrating experience with complementary colors and sunsets, I made some gradients to try to better understand my color options.
I have no pink. Alizarin Crimson can work as pink when diluted or mixed with Purple Lake.
I decided I do not like Cadmium Orange and will avoid it in the future.
Today the teacher gave a dog portrait painting demo (something she earns money doing) and then everyone worked on whatever they wanted. I decided to go back to my rail trail painting and see if I can make it better by adding more layers. A woman loaned me a sea sponge for applying paint to get a certain effect (like fall leaves), so that was fun. I hope to finish that painting by the last class next week. I also want to try one more portrait before the end of the session.
Although there are definitely some shared techniques in watercolor painting (like lifting paint to lighten areas), a lot of the learning seems to come from trialanderror. Our teacher is self-taught and she swears she learned everything she knows (and she knows a lot) by just trying it. As she says, “it’s just a piece of paper.”
These are her top tips:
Painting Progressions
Light to Dark
Loose to detailed
Big to small brushes
Tealike to Creamy
90% to 10% of surface active painting to observing
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Update:
Here’s my “Rail Trail” with the additional layers. I do like it better now.
Each of the primary colors has a complementary color that you really want to avoid mixing with, at least for sunsets. If you put wet complementary colors near each other or layer them, you’re going to get brown. 💩
Red & Green = Brown
Blue & Orange = Brown
Yellow & Purple = Brown
That’s why my blue/violet to orange sunset sky ended up looking like a fried egg, especially from a distance,
The teacher said you can’t go directly from blue/purple to orange. You need some pink to transition.
She suggested using Alizarin crimson (not cadmium red) to make pink. It has blue undertones.
I tried again to get Key West sunset vibes, but without an ugly brown ring.
I’m not happy with the result. I really wanted a nice blended smooth gradient. The teacher said I painted “into it” too much. I need to try again, wetting the paper in both directions with my largest flat brush and then dragging the wet paint across in one direction only – end to end. In fact go off the paper with the brush.
Rather than masking, I could use a paper towel to lift out a circular moon or sun. (You can hold the paper towel in a round bunch and rotate the watercolor paper to create the circle.) And again, avoid complementary colors that will bleed into each other and make brown.
There are two classes left in this session and I need to decide what to do. I’ve been enjoying the class, but I’m not 100% sure that watercolors are my thing. But perhaps I should re-register and give it a bit longer.
One of the women who keeps re-registering is a very good watercolorist. She creates beautiful paintings of natural subjects like oyster shells and winter trees, and I can see that the teacher gives her good advice. Is that what I aspire to?
I am curious about both acrylic and oil painting, but those are more of an investment, and not as easy to whip out and work on at home.
Maybe I should take another drawing class and also re-up for one more 8-week session of watercolors. Maybe after that, I’ll feel confident enough in my drawing and color skills, to try working with real paint on an actual canvas.
Charcoal pencil sketch of a pug (like Horace from Poldark)
On the other hand, 8 more sessions of watercolors is a lot, if I decide I’m not that into it.
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Update: Third and final try on this silly Key West sunset! Water colors are hard.
Yesterday was a discussion of the various “resisting” techniques (tape, wax crayon, etc) and a demo of how masking fluid works.
I gave it a try in this painting, inspired by my photo shoot on the rail trail the other day.
Here’s the inspo pic:
You can see I tried to use the masking fluid (aka rubber cement) to try to create those tiny rays around the sun. The teacher said to rub them out a bit with a MagicErase sponge, which is a tool that watercolorists use to soften areas and rub out paint that has already dried.
I also used the MagicErase sponge on the bike path because I felt I had “overpainted” it. One of the hard things with watercolors is knowing when to stop. It’s very easy to ruin a nice effect by doing too much.
I sat away from the major gabbers in the class and was happier (although it did not go unnoticed that I changed my seat).
Today was a landscape demo and then we had to paint one of two photos in 10 minutes. I think the idea was to see what choices people make with little time to think.
I was the only person in the class who chose the stock photo of a sun with visible rays bursting through a dark forest. I thought…what the heck? I’ll give it a shot. (Everyone else chose a more natural image of a forest that the teacher had taken herself.)
This wasn’t the exact stock photo, but you get the idea:
Image from Pexels
The result isn’t great, but I learned about a few techniques in the process.
Some of the ladies bugged me today. The ones that already knew each other before the class started tend to chat constantly, even when the teacher is talking. Two of them speak so loudly to each other that everyone can hear their entire conversation. They lack self-awareness.
We now have three unused bedrooms upstairs, but we’re using our one and only dining room as a combo art studio, home office, and marijuana dispensary.
Because…stairs
I’m definitely seeing the benefits of living on one floor.
When your kids are home, it’s nice to have separate floors for various activities. Young kids can be sent “up to bed” and you can still watch your shows on whatever volume you want. Older kids and teens can go to the basement to roughhouse or just hang out adult-free. And everyone can have privacy and space when needed.
When it’s just the two of you, it’s different. Do I really want my other glasses enough to climb the stairs to get them? If I need a pain reliever in the middle of the night and the only bottle is in the kitchen, how bad is the pain really? Bad enough to go downstairs in a cold, dark house? Maybe I’d rather just try to sleep with the pain. A bee’s nest recently grew to massive proportions in our basement because nobody was down there to see them coming in. And how exactly are we going to deal, if my husband’s arthritis requires joint replacement?
Sometimes I decide to go upstairs to get something, get distracted by laundry sorting or some other upstairs activity, and return without what I went up there for. I’ve found that if I say my plan aloud (“I’m going to get a sweater”), there’s a better chance I’ll complete the mission. And if I forget, there’s a chance my husband heard me say it and can remind me.
So, convenience. That’s how empty-nesters repurpose space.
Our teacher likes to paint portraits, so we painted portraits today.
She first gave a lesson on creating skin tones. The basic recipe is this: a lot of cad yellow, a little cad red, a spot of cobalt (or ultramarine) and varying amounts of water.
Sometimes a bit of crimson for very pale/pinkish people or a bit of purple for darker people.
She strongly urged us not to try to paint anyone we know and love on our first attempt, so I pulled this Spanish chef out of magazine.
My husband thinks he looks a bit like Dominic West.
Some of the ladies flat out refused to try painting a portrait. They like landscapes. So that’s what they will paint, because retired ladies do what they want! I fully support this.
The teacher also introduced us to a truly amazing watercolor portrait artist named Ali Cavanaugh. Holy shit, this woman is talented.
Because my in-person watercolors teacher is self-taught and rather informal, I feel like I need a bit more formal explanation about how to use these famously tricky paints.
In typical 2025 style, I asked ChatGPT for the “best watercolor tutorials on YouTube” which sent me down a rabbit hole. So many teachers! I ended up liking Allison Lyon—a very talented young woman with a gentle, soothing baby voice. I’ve already watched 5 or 6 of her videos and learned some stuff (i.e. wet on wet vs. wet on dry).
Practice 3x5s from Alison’s tutorials
I’m not usually a fan of women who speak in baby voices, but given our stressful times, I may amend this view. Just listening to her talk will de-stress you.
I remember my mother giving me a blue Velcro coupon organizer in my twenties (a little portable folder with dividers for keeping various types of paper coupons—food, toileteries, etc.) She would also cut out and give me coupons for various things she thought I used. It was very thoughtful.
I don’t know what happened to that organizer. At one point, I remember thinking coupons were such a hassle. Half the time, my coupons had expired by the time I got around to pulling one out. All that effort and kerfuffling at the register just to save 50 cents.
I think I had abandoned paper coupons by the time I had my own family at age 30. And I’m pretty sure my millennial/GenZ kids have never once cut out a paper coupon.
Now of course, we have endless customer loyalty programs and accompanying rewards points, electronic coupons, discount codes, promo codes, etc.
I honestly don’t know if my kids have the time and motivation to take advantage of those types of savings programs.
But I do! I will sit in my car and hit the plus sign next to every single savings offer before I go into a CVS, just in case I buy something that applies.
Beware the senior citizen with time on her hands!
According to CVS, I have saved over $3,500 since joining their free “ExtraCare” program in 2016.
The satisfaction of seeing the total bill tick down after hitting “redeem all coupons” at the soulless self-checkout reminds me of the feeling of getting a 100% on your weekly spelling quiz. There’s really no intelligence involved. It’s all preparation, and you were prepared.
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