Beginner mistakes and I probably made them all

There are a number of common mistakes that beginner watercolorists make. Most of these mistakes certainly have an impact on the success of the paintings, others are probably more comical. Here are some of the less consequential ones that I’ve made:

• Acquiring too many paint colours, instead of mixing my colours: When I started painting I read that it was important to use artist quality paint. So I went to eBay and found someone selling about 40+ tubes of Winsor&Newton tubes of paint for a really good price (approximately $100) - so I bought them. I don’t regret it because they were so cheap, but I still have most of those tubes of paint and many aren’t half empty yet. I also continued to buy colours from other brands (Holbein and MaimeriBlu) which are now some of my favorites. Now, I like to mix most of the colours that I want from some favorite basic colours.
• Buying too many brushes: I probably have approximately 30+ brushes which include two sets of top quality sable round brushes. I currently use almost exclusively my Escoda brushes. That could change as my needs change.
• Purchasing cheap paper: Well that is one bad habit that I stopped as soon as I had the pleasure of using better quality paper. My preference is now Fabriano Artistico extra white 300 lbs - either rough or cold press.
• Obtaining too great of a variety of frames: I’m sure you’ve detected the pattern so far. I’ve got many many frames of different styles and sizes. In the future, I want to standardize to a few sizes and frame types. Luckily, my husband built a wonderful storage area to hold my frames. As I sell some of my paintings in those frames, I'll buy what I want to standardize on. However, most buyers seem to prefer paintings mounted on wallboards – as opposed to wooden frames.  So I may have  some of those frames for the next 20 years.
• Collecting watercolour books:  I've slowed down with the book purchasing - because I have no more shelf space. I probably get a new book a month or two (ok so maybe 3 in the past month) and I also have a lot of watercolour magazines that I've purchased.  It's difficult to resist buying a CD with 5 years of watercolour magazine for about $25. Could you resist?

 

Of course there are many other more consequential mistakes (e.g. not enough values, using wrong size brushes, etc.) that I’ve made and learned from, but I’ll talk about those another day.

 

Today I want to share with you a small (9" X 12") apple blossom watercolour that I finished recently. It will be part of a collection that I'm painting.  The first one I painted during the holiday season was accepted recently into a juried art show that begins in a few weeks.

 

If you’ve read my blog recently, you know that I had been waiting for some special paper to paint a larger branch of apple blossoms. The paper arrived and the painting is well on its way and I’ll probably share it with you in a couple of weeks.

 

Have a great week.

Danielle