I’ve been calling myself a beginner for 5 years, but I think I’ve figured out how to know you’re intermediate-level artist. It’s when you’re off the map.
Many hobbies, watercolor included, have a fairly clear progression of skills for beginners to learn. At the beginning, it can feel like an overwhelming amount to learn. Each book, video, blog post, or article contains tips that blow your mind.
Then, one day, you realize all your learning resources have become repetitive. Every all-purpose watercolor book feels the same. Clickbaity videos with titles like “the one WEIRD TRICK that REVOLUTIONIZED my art practice” just end up rehashing standard advice you’ve seen a million times. You’ve reached the end of the progression. Now what?
By no means have you mastered the medium. You still feel like a beginner in terms of your skill level vs where you want to be. But you’re adrift, without a clear course charted for how to get there. A fellow intermediate artist confided recently, “I feel like the GPS has been turned off.”
I’ve been feeling this directionlessness too, lately. What am I supposed to do now?
The invigorating, terrifying answer: Anything you want.
One reason there’s no map is because it’s up to you. Once you understand the basic building block skills, there is no more one-size-fits-all advice. Each artist/learner must decide what interests them, what to focus on, what to learn more about. There are no “general intermediate lessons,” only special topics.
How to DIY a new road map
Without a clear road map to fall back on, here are ways I’ve found to build my own “curriculum.”
Make a List of What You Want to Learn
When I feel like the source of inspiration has dried up and I don’t know what to do next, it always helps me to make a list.
- What techniques, topics, or subjects have I not tried?
- What terms have I heard that I still do not really understand?
- What intrigues me?
Prioritize the list according to what excites you the most. Here is your learning plan!
One of my top tips for maintaining your list: prune ruthlessly. If the list gets too long or you’re uninspired by what’s on it, feel free remove items. You don’t have to do or learn everything! Nobody has the time. I have found that most people who do this exercise start by fixating on their weaknesses or even things they have no interest in because it jumps to mind as “a topic I don’t know about/something I’m not good at already.” For me personally, I find it usually more interesting to build on my strengths and deepen my knowledge in topics that already interest me.
Do the Hard Tutorials
It always seems like a tutorial is either too easy or too hard, doesn’t it? When I was at the beginning of my journey, it seemed like just about every tutorial was too hard, and now they’re mostly too easy.
Well, if you encountered tutorials at the beginning of your learning that you found too difficult or advanced for you, maybe it’s time to revisit them.
Notice (and Practice) the Skills Tutorials Don’t Teach
Tutorials can be great at teaching practical and crucial skills in mark-making, water control, layering, etc., but they generally do certain parts of the process for you, which can leave you uncertain as to how to face the blank page without them. Here are some of the skills tutorials can hide or hand-wave:
- Decision-making, such as deciding what to paint, deciding the most important/main idea of the scene, deciding how to compose or frame the scene, deciding what to keep in/leave out.
- Identifying where you even can make a decision, such as what options you have for techniques/tools.
- Using thumbnails, studies, or other planning tools to guide your decision-making. I struggle with this particular step! In tutorials, they always seem like busywork but they become useful when you actually need to make your own decisions.
- Breaking down a scene into layers
- Selecting colors
- Making an undersketch (especially if you typically follow teachers who provide a sketch for tracing)
- Recovering from mistakes
I have found immensely helpful to my development to wean off of tutorials and become more independent at making these decisions myself. Tutorials aren’t bad – I still use them from time to time to learn specific techniques, or just to have a relaxing time and not have to make so many decisions. But you can feel dependent on them if you use them all the time.
Its doesn’t need to be all-or-nothing. You can practice one of these skills at a time while still using a tutorial by making your own variations.
Use Your Own References
Even if you don’t use a tutorial, using high-quality, professional photo references means some of the hard decisions are made for you! The photographer has decided how to compose the scene, what to focus on, and what color scheme to use (even if you’re deciding how to translate that into paint, they made the design choices). I have found that sraightforwardly copying a single reference can prevent me from making those decisions for myself.
I find I am more involved in the design process when I:
- Use two or more photo references for the same painting.
- Use my own photos as references. When I use photos I took, I often have to make more decisions because I am more aware of deficits in the photo and opportunities to change things. I am also more likely to have personal memory of how the moment or location felt, intangibles the photo doesn’t show.
- Paint from life!
Study a Book
As you probably know from my posts, right now I’m working my way through Jeanne Dobie’s Making Color Sing, chapter by chapter (starting with chapter 1). I chose this book because I love color. Slowing down to do a blog post about each chapter, including personal projects inspired by the chapter, has essentially turned a $24.95 book into a yearlong class.
It’s easy to read a book, but it’s harder to really absorb the knowledge. I find that I can turn a book into a “curriculum” by assigning myself exercises and/or projects for each chapter, to explore the ideas presented and reinforce my learning. Some books suggest projects and exercises, but few do a good job. I feel like what I’m learning most is the skill of designing assignments!
At the end of each chapter, I ask myself:
- What was the author’s main point? (Or, what was the most interesting part to me?)
- How can I test this idea for myself?
- What’s a simple project that would showcase this skill/idea?
Study Your Own Work
Review your past work and find common themes to identify your personal art style. This can help you to build on your strengths.
Recently I asked my friends to tell me what themes they saw in my art, and I did the same. I found it a lot easier to identify themes I saw in others’ art than my own.
Go Back to Your “Why”
What made you want to pick up a paintbrush? What were your original sources of inspiration?
I like to keep a few inspiration pieces front and center in my art area: a couple of framed pieces from my favorite artists, a few favorite pieces of my own, my original first color palette, some fun stickers and postcards. This reminds me of what I like when it begins to seem far away.
Celebrate Now!
It’s common to fixate on what you don’t know, what you’re unsatisfied with. And as an intermediate, it can feel like your progress has slowed way down, which it has: beginner progress is much quicker because you’re starting from nothing. Still, I think it’s important to reflect on how far you’ve come and how much you’ve learned since you began. You have attained some skills and abilities that your beginner self could only dream about.
At the beginning of your watercolor journey you were probably overwhelmed with everything you had to learn. You know so much more now than you did then!Take a moment to think about:
- The types of pieces you can create fairly reliably
- The techniques you’re confident with or find easy
- Your “signature style”
I think often about my goals when I began painting. I wanted to painted simple gradients and layered mountains. I could do that within the year!
I’m now usually aiming for more complex scenes. I’m glad to be exceeding my original goals, which were fairly modest, but I think it’s also important to practice “wanting what you have” and to remember that I do have skills now that, just five years ago, were only wishes.
Leave a Reply