Wednesday, January 13, 2021 In Andrej’s Class

I hinted heavily (i.e. sent a link) to my husband for a birthday gift this year: a watercolor instruction booklet that had caught my eye several times on Instagram.

Step-by-step advice from the masters! And isn’t it nice to know that this particular master, Andrej (yes, we can call him by his first name – he doesn’t mind), is ranked among the TOP20 watercolor artists of the world? (We don’t need to know who does this ranking – it’s not important.) With Andrej at the helm of my watercolor exploration ship, I felt assured that everything was possible. Simplicity itself!

The booklet is actually very well designed. Each lesson includes a photograph – taken, no doubt, in Italy, where even the grout between tiles looks beautiful and worthy of painting. You also get watercolor paper with light sketches of the photograph, two for each lesson. The paintings call for a limited palette of colors from which you will be able to get all the hues that you see. As promised, you get step-by-step instructions on how to do the painting. Lastly, you can see how the artist(s) version turned out.

I approached the first lesson with an insane amount of over-confidence. I liken it to watching figure skaters do their simplest elements on the ice, making it look so easy that those of us who can skate say to ourselves, “I could do that.” Naturally, we know that there will be no triple salchows or toe loop jumps in our repertoire, but surely we can eke out an elegant figure eight or a graceful move from skating backwards to going forward. We fail to recognize the sheer amount of work and practice that goes into all that graceful movement. We put our skates on and go fall on our butts. Many times.

It was a lot harder than I thought. I had a hard time getting the colors right, getting a smooth lay down of color, getting the right balance of water and color, keeping it from looking blotchy in places, preventing color bleed… The one on the left was Attempt #1. It was kind of Andrej to include two sketches on which to practice. If you don’t compare the second one with Andrej’s, it doesn’t look too bad, but it’s definitely not a triple salchow.

Still, I’m eager to go on to the next 15 lessons with the hope that by that time I finish #16, I’ll be out on the ice at least not falling on my butt. It’ll be fun, right?

P.S. I started lesson # 2 today. Ugh, the first attempt was AWFUL. My butt hurts now.

Signing off with Watercolor Wednesdays, this is Lynniebee.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning.