For me, one of the most fun things about running the blog this year has been opening up the writing team to include contributions from Hanna and Lynne. It’s been fun to go from a one-man operation to a team, and to be able to enjoy this blog as a reader!
Inviting additional posters has forced me to articulate some blog-writing philosophies that I’ve been gradually learning through experience. I thought you might like to hear them too. Perhaps you’ll learn you have a post bubbling in your brain, just waiting to come out!
Guiding principle
This blog began as a Word document with notes I was taking as I taught myself to watercolor. I turned it into a blog as much to organize it for my future self as to share it with the world.
When I’m deciding whether an idea is right for the blog, I ask myself: “Is this something I’d want to read six months ago?” My primary audience is always my past self.
The best ideas come from:
- A question I wonder about
- A revelation, discovery, or “a-ha” moment
- An experiment or exploration
- A system I have figured out
- A problem I struggle(d) with
- Something I want to remember later
Tips
In the spirit of my guiding principle, if I were to take what I know now and advise me before I started the blog, here’s what I’d tell myself.
You don’t have to have all the answers
We’re beginners teaching beginners here. To have something worth sharing, you only need to know a little more than you did a little while ago.
If you wait until you’ve mastered a topic before you write about it, (a) you’ll be waiting a long time, and (b) by the end, you’ll have forgotten the details that help other learners.
If you’re worried about being too didactic, consider phrasing your advice as “something I do/that works for me” instead of “you should” language.
You can be boring
The whole concept of this blog is too in the weeds for most people. These people are not my primary audience. I started taking notes and blogging because other sources weren’t in the weeds enough.
Your art doesn’t have to be polished
Shame about sharing mediocre art is a major reason that a lot of people don’t put themselves out there. I’m lucky that I started blogging when I actually considered myself a true beginner (had been painting less than a year) because I did not expect much of myself, so I got used to showing work that’s not polished.
Personally, as a learner, I’m often intimidated by art that’s extremely good: I could never emulate that! I prefer to learn from someone who is, like, two years ahead of me in their journey. I hope I can be that for someone.
Have a point of view
Avoid making posts that rehash common nuggets of advice that you haven’t personally tested or can’t personally stand behind. There are already lots of blog posts and books that regurgitate conventional wisdom. But conventional wisdom has failed me enough now that I take it with a big grain of salt.
Personally, I have found the most value from posts by experienced artists who are willing to share definite opinions about their unique, idiosyncratic personal preferences, including explaining why. Knowing the reasons helps me to judge whether I have the same taste and am solving the same problems.
I also just find it oddly soothing to hear people be opinionated about their hobbies.
You can be a little bit snarky
Sometimes being idealistic is less motivating than being spiteful. Consider prompts such as:
- An unpopular opinion
- A piece of conventional wisdom that you find questionable
- A must-have supply that you think is a marketing gimmick
- A common teaching method or metaphor that you find baffling
Just be sure to punch up – don’t judge other learners, small-time creators, or the art that people make. Judge pompous teachers and successful brands all you like.
Include images
Painting is a visual medium. A picture is worth a thousand words.
One idea per post
A wise coworker of mine once defined a project as “the smallest unit of work that is independently useful.” While I don’t have a specific length that I try to achieve, I think of a post as the smallest unit of text that has its own topic/point.
If you start to write a post about one topic, but end up writing a bunch on a tangentially related topic as a sort of intro, it’s usually worth putting the tangent into its own post.
This is especially worth doing if the tangent is a point/explanation/rant/screed that comes up a lot for you. You can write it once, and just link to it any time you want to reference that idea, instead of getting into the weeds on it over and and over again.
Don’t do extra work just for the blog
Blog about stuff you’re working on, experimenting with, or thinking about anyway. Don’t do extra stuff just for the blog.
This tip emerges from the blog’s roots as my own personal notes, and it’s probably the biggest reason that this project has had any staying power (December will mark its fourth birthday).
If I think about what types of posts to write from the point of view of “what should a blog like this contain,” I come up with a bunch of work I don’t really want to do. If I’m not thinking about what’s right for the blog, though, I will tend to organically produce a bunch of swatch pages and/or notes about whatever I’m currently curious about, and those can just be turned into posts!
On a smaller scale, occasionally I get hung up on a post because it’s 80% of the way there, but I feel it’s lacking just that one more bit of work to make it complete. Just one more illustration, diagram, example piece, experiment, etc. Or maybe I feel that the notes I made for myself are too messy and they need to be redone neater for the blog. In those cases posts tend to languish in the “drafts” for months. It’s better to just put them up in their current state.
Shrink the scope. Put up what you have. Move on.
Some common post categories…
- Monthly Retrospective: Every month I share the paintings that I did in the past month. And at the end of the year, I reflect on the year. This helps me to track my progress and is the equivalent to me keeping sketchbooks.
- Photo to Painting: Sometimes done in the monthly retrospective, sometimes separately, I share some recent paintings and the reference photos that inspired or informed them. I tend to only do this when I’m the one who took the photo.
- Color Spotlight: Gives details about a specific pigment or common mix; swatches examples of different brands; demonstrates color mixes you can make with it.
- Color Comparison: Explores the question “What’s the difference between (color 1) and (color 2)?” Compares hue, properties, and color mixes (especially low-effort when I’ve already made them).
- Limited Palette Study – for awhile I was doing example triads, showing how all 3 paints mix with each other and a painting painted from the triad.
- Mix Your Own – explores how to duplicate the hue of a paint with other paints. This generally originates from my desire to simplify my palette by removing a color, but wanting to make sure I still know how to get the hue.
- Artist Palette Profiles – using books or other blogs as the source, reports (and paints out as closely as possible) the paints that another artist recommends or claims to use in their personal palette. This is just because I’m nosy. Sometimes I also share paintings that I did in the style of the artist.
- Palette Check In – reports what’s currently in my palette and how I decided.
- Book or class notes– Lists a few things I learned from a book/chapter I recently read or a class that I recently took. I’m mindful of not reporting so much that I’m making paid material free, but instead focus on more personal takeaways such as the work that I did for the assignments.
Wanna pitch me your guest post?
If all this made you feel you have a post that’s right for the blog, feel free to pitch! Note that I don’t pay, and I don’t accept paid/marketing posts, and this blog is an AI-free zone. Contact logan@idyllsketching.com.