My watercolor progress and importance of guided learning

Previously I mentioned my desire to learn watercolor painting and now I have some results to show :)

To be honest, I still don't spend as much time with watercolors as I would like. More productive learning would require more practice, in my mind. I always make plans, like “I will paint on weekends” or “in the evenings” but in the end, all of those plans flop and I just end up painting when I have time. It's not bad though, you have to appreciate what you have :)

What exactly is my learning process?

At first, I tried sketching something completely on my own but I quickly didn't like my results and put the watercolor paint aside, haha. I'm not even going to show that!

Then I found a book by Wendy Tait! Oh my, that was The BOOST that I needed. The book contains 3 step by step tutorials and I've completed the two of them! Look at the results below.

Even though these tutorials don't have literally every step explained (which is understandable because it would be practically impossible to record every single step), they are well balanced! Just enough details for instructions to be clear and concise but still leave something out so that you can figure it out yourself.

Well, maybe not everyone will like that, but I do, haha. I'm the type of person who goes “okay, let me try that myself” when learning, so I appreciate when some things are left to my deduction. But only those things that I can figure out based on what I learned previously, you know :)

In short, if you want to learn watercolors, I definitely recommend Wendy Tait's books! After completing the third tutorial I will probably go on a hunt for her other books and tutorials.

And here are some things I sketched and painted with watercolors myself.

By the way, look at them attentively, because you're going to see one of them in another, “stitched” interpretation soon! :)

Like I said before, the purpose of learning watercolors for me is to cross the bridge between imagining an embroidery design in my mind and getting it done on fabric. The stage in between is where I would sketch and color what I envision so that I have a clearer understanding of the design and how it is going to look on fabric.

To be honest, I should practice more, of course... Two “unique” (I mean out of my head, without any lesson or tutorial) drawings in a month is not really what I aim for. And now that I'm busy with the needlepainting course, I have even less free time for watercolors, hm.

Well, we will see how it goes. I don't know when the next update on my progress will be but probably not in September, haha.

Conclusion

I'm so happy I took up watercolors! It's been a while since I was a beginner in hand embroidery so it was very refreshing to step in those shoes again. It helped me to remember how it was when I did my first stitches so I hope it will reflect in my instructions and posts on hand embroidery too :)

Also, I came to appreciate guided learning much more. If not for Wendy's step-by-step lessons and clear instructions, I would never be able to pull these kinds of drawings myself.

My first works that I wasn't satisfied with, were very simplistic and, honestly, disappointing and discouraging. 

On the contrary, every time time I complete one of the lessons under Wendy's guidance, I reach more confidence!

That's why, in my mind, the best way to learn something is to follow someone's guidance in terms of tutorials, lessons, courses etc. And along the way try to work and do something on your own, putting in practice all the things you've learned from the teacher :)