Over the summer, primarily in August, I took up watercolour painting. I don’t know what was going through my mind when I decided this but I do remember standing in the art supplies aisle of Walmart and realizing the paints and a watercolour book were not outside my budget. I do this often; I pick up hobbies on a whim. And like most of my hobbies, this one became forgotten as school started up again and my time became a precious resource. But still, even as obligations piled on my desk, I never put away the paints.
There was something about painting quietly at the beach that I loved so dearly. My products were meek in comparison to the references I followed but the paints were forgiving of my lack of artistry. My skill improved minutely in the short month I painted and I found a small sense of satisfaction and pride in my progress. I had little talent for painting but the time I spent working on it felt worth it. All this to say I miss being creative. I miss being abundantly proud of mediocre paintings of trees. I wanted to return to painting but I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep it up with important projects outweighing my desire to create. This is why I have chosen watercolour painting as part of my inquiry project.
Watercolour painting in and of itself is not very reliant on technology. In part I enjoy the break it gives me from computer screens and the constant dopamine machine that is social media. However, for this course, I think I can use technology to enhance my learning. As I mentioned I am only at the beginning of learning to watercolour paint and already I have encountered countless resources that have guided me in learning. Primarily I have used TikTok to search for tutorials (and I will link some of these tutorials at the bottom of this post). There is a community of people online who make videos showing painting techniques, ideas, and guides, many of which I followed to get started. I will continue to use these resources this semester and share them here. I’ve also looked online for photo references (or took some myself), though I didn’t save those references as I never expected I would one day be sharing the paintings! My goal with this project is to learn more about watercolour painting and expand my skills. I hope that by engaging with technology I will find new avenues to enhance my learning and catalogue my progress to look back on.
In the spirit of cataloguing my work, I figured I should show some works I had done in the summer. I used Genius Scan (more technology yipee!) to scan these to my laptop, though I do find the colours look slightly different when photographed. If that is something I can fix I will fix it for future posts.
I am excited to begin work on this project. Looking at my work from the summer has also allowed me to see what areas I need to work on and I have many many ideas! The weather is nice, maybe I will paint outside 🙂
LINKS:
How to Paint a Mountain by Mallery Jane on TikTok
Underwater Painting by Lacey – Curious Watercolour on TikTok
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