What’s your art nemesis?

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For those of you who make what would be considered traditional art - painting in acrylic, oil, watercolor, ink wash, etc. or drawing - pencil, graphite sticks, conte crayons, colored pencils, ink, and those who work in pastel, that crosses through both the drawing and painting categories, what is your nemesis?

I have been working on photography for many years because unless you’re into studio photography or weddings, or commissions of any kind, it doesn’t require any real setup time and in the digital age, there’s no cleanup necessary.
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Previously I was a traditional oil painter for several years until the day job, massive overtime, and young kids kind of put the brakes on that. I switched to colored pencil, which I still enjoy but don’t have the patience for any more, pastel, which I enjoyed, but found a bit too messy for my taste, and I’ve finally landed on drawing - mostly pencil but also using technical drawing ink pens and combining it with pencil.

However, I have long been a fan of watercolor painting. I tried it several times in my 30s and found, after painting in oils, I just couldn’t get the hang of it. For example, you can paint in any order with oils, but generally it’s background first, then details in stages and it doesn’t matter if you’re going light to dark or dark to light. Watercolor is not that forgiving. You really need to plan out your lights beforehand and make sure to either leave them blank, use frisket (masking fluid), and work around the entire image with your lighter colors first, then finally put in the darker areas and the details with finer brushes. I just couldn’t get that in my head.

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Fast forward to the past year, I decided to give watercolor a try again, so I bought a nice, small watercolor journal with 140 pound cold pressed paper, which is actually thick enough for me to paint on both sides of the paper. I bought a very favorably reviewed set of pan watercolors with 36 separate (deep) pan colors, and I bought some not pricey but very nice watercolor brushes (I know good brushes and crappy brushes from past experience) and decided to jump right in. Fortunately, I have an art friend who gave me a lot of good, basic advice - make sure to work “light to dark”, which is just starting to sink in now, make a color swatch sheet of your colors, which I did (and I have to keep these loose pan colors from falling out of the tray so it doesn’t mess me up), and she recommended a couple of books on watercolor painting which I found on Amazon.

I have to say I love this! I still love watercolor! My paintings are getting better and even if they are still very “meh”, to me this is a great experience. Watercolor is no longer my nemesis even though it still fights me at every turn, but I’m starting to win some of the battles…..sort of.

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So if there is a medium you really like but you personally are really not very good at it - DON’T GIVE UP. Even if you never excel in that medium, my advice is to enjoy the journey.

For more of my works on paper, please visit my gallery here:

https://mary-bedy.pixels.com/collections/drawings+and+works+on+paper

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