Frustrated with Watercolor Painting? (How to keep going)
Dec 22, 2021It's so tempting when you're on social media and you follow artists that you admire to think they must not struggle. It is important to remember that you're seeing their finished work. You're seeing the polished version of each piece and not the struggle along the way.
The reality is that every one of these artists has had hundreds - if not thousands - of failed paintings along the way. Another thing you might not realize is they still fail. Some of the best artists that I know still fail. In fact, if you're not failing, you're not pushing yourself. You're not growing.
So today we're going to talk about what to do when your painting fails and how to keep showing up when you're frustrated or struggling.
Watercolor is very mentally taxing. Creating for a long period of time can be exhausting. And with watercolor, especially, there's not a lot of ways to correct your painting. That’s the nature of the medium. I know that at the end of my painting - after a couple hours of concentration - is not the best time to decide whether my painting was successful or not.
Andy Evansen says he likes to get his paintings to about 90%, and then he steps away. Then he comes back a few hours later or the next day to decide what finishing touches the painting needs or to decide that the painting is finished. This is a great way to give yourself a little bit of distance between what you've created so you can give an honest assessment of your painting.
So the next thing I want to talk about isn't something that can happen overnight. But as artists, we need to learn to separate the value that we assign ourselves as people and as artists from the outcome of a specific painting. Don't hang your self-worth on the results of a single painting, whether it's positive or negative.
One tip on this journey is to become more aware of the messages you tell yourself and how you treat yourself. Start recognizing those patterns. We need to learn to separate the result from our self-worth, and this starts with the way that we talk to ourselves about failure.
Another practical tip is to create a practice calendar. This is pretty simple. You take a blank calendar and every day that you work toward becoming a better artist, you mark off a day on the calendar. Maybe you sketch for a few minutes. Maybe you do a value study. Or maybe you do a full painting. Any of it counts.
It sounds so simple, but when you go back and look over the month, you can see how many days you’ve invested in yourself as a painter. If I am feeling down about the results of a painting, I can look back and acknowledge how hard I have worked and be encouraged by my consistency.
And so if we can transfer our positive feelings to the amount of effort that we're giving in our pursuit of becoming the best artist that we can become, every time that you've chosen to paint, you've taken a small step towards your goal. And then you can start to think of each one of these paintings - even the ones you’re not particularly happy with - as steps in a very long journey.
But here's the interesting thing about the journey - it never really ends. There's never going to be a day where you say, “I'm finally here! I'm finally a great artist!” Because when you get to a certain point, you're going to start to notice ways to improve or other things that you're excited about painting. This never ends, and it is part of the reason making art is so appealing.
This is a lifelong endeavor. I think about the artists I admire and respect the most. They are continually practicing. You would think what do they have to worry about? They're very successful. Their artwork is brilliant. It's inspiring. It's moving to me. What in the world could they be striving for now? But there's no end to the journey. They realize this, and they keep working.
And so I don't know if this is encouraging to you, but there's never going to be a day where you wake up and you realize that you've arrived. You're always going to be taking those small steps forward.
It can be really easy to get frustrated with the results of a certain painting, but realize it's a small part of the bigger picture. The more times that you choose to keep showing up and to keep engaging in painting, the better off you're going to be.
Everyone gets discouraged. I get discouraged too. I want all my paintings to be successful, but how boring would that be if there was no room for growth anymore?
So try to keep these things in mind as you keep pushing and keep working and keep striving forward as an artist:
- Every painting is a step forward.
- Take a step back and give yourself some space to assess your work.
- Learn to value the days you show up and work toward your goal.
Before you go, I wanted to mention that if you haven't checked out my free video lesson, How to Avoid Overworking Your Painting, take a look at it. You can follow the link below to watch it, or you can access it in my bio on Instagram. I've got some really good feedback from this lesson, and it addresses something that I had to work through quite a bit when I was first learning how to paint watercolor, and that is overworking my painting. I give you eight different tips to help you with this skill. Check it out to learn more!