What I've Learned From 10 Years Of Watercolor Painting
Nov 03, 2025There have been many lessons learned throughout my 10 years of painting watercolor, and my mission is to share them with others who want to master this medium, improve their paintings, or streamline their painting process. This is the main reason I've created a YouTube channel and why I created Watercolor Essentials, my flagship course that teaches teaches 5 core watercolor skills: values, watercolor timing, color mixing, creating depth, and simplification.
Today, in this blog and video, I cover the 3 most powerful lessons I've learned through the years. I hope they push you in the right direction!
3 Tips After 10 Years Of Watercolor Painting
10 years of doing anything with consistency will teach you valuable lessons. If you're open to new and varied strategies, there's no telling how far you can take your skills. Here are the 3 most valuable lessons I've learned in the ten years I've spent honing my watercolor skills.
1. Paint Shapes, Not Objects.
When we paint something familiar to us - a tree, a truck, a house, a person - we often go "off script." We depict the object that exists in our mind rather than the shape in our reference photo or scene in front of us.
Defamiliarize yourself with the objects in your scene and to instead think of them as shapes. Instead of painting the archetype of a church building, instead study the shape in your scene, and notice how it connects with other shapes. Don't think of your scene as a bunch of objects arranged together on a single plane. Think instead about the ways the shapes connect with one another in the scene, and avoid letting your pre-conceived notion of the things in your scene get in the way.
The truck you're painting isn't just a truck, it's the truck in this particular scene that is in relationship with the rest of the painting's elements. The more you can detach from the picture of a truck that pops up in your brain when you think "truck," the more observant you'll become about this particular truck shape, and thus the more natural it will be in your scene.
2. Ask Yourself: Am I Painting Dark/Light Enough?
This is a question I ask myself throughout the painting process: from the first brushstroke of the first wash to the last brushstroke of the third wash.
To paint a vibrant and compelling painting, you must achieve a full spectrum of values in your scene. This means the darks need to be dark enough so that the lights have the contrast they need to translate. You cannot create a sun-soaked lawn, or a the warmth of a porch light at dusk, or the uplifting light of a sunset without a full range of values - from the lightest lights to the darkest darks.
It is the darks that make the lights pop, and the lights that put the darks in perspective. You want this contrast, especially at the focal point(s) of your painting.
3. Paint Less.
By this I do not mean to practice less. In fact, it takes many hours of focused painting time to see the results you want.
What I mean by paint less is to not fear simplification.
Take this scene, for example.
Notice that the hills in the background of the scene are not filled with details. The homes at the foot of the hills are obscured a bit too. There are hints of detail, but nothing that distracts the viewer from the focal points of the painting or detracts from the depth I wanted to create in this painting.
Your job as a watercolor artist is not to replicate a scene, but to create a mood, and offer a viewpoint. Some artists lean more heavily into those details, so some of this is a matter of preference, but do not sacrifice the scene as a whole by adding too much detail in the wrong places. Determine what you want to capture in the scene, and don't let your loyalty to a reference photo stop you from making good decisions for your painting.
Focus On One of These Lessons To See Progress
I may have only given you three lessons in this blog, but each lesson is enough on its own. Choose one of these to really focus on in the coming months and see how your paintings progress!
