Finding Your Style | Planning Your Own Watercolors

How to Use Reference Photos More Creatively

Do you feel like your watercolors are mostly copying photos, maybe with a few editorial changes? Here are some ideas for breaking free from “the tyranny of the photo” so you can use your photo references more creatively to express what really excites you about your subject.

Other lessons mentioned in this video, in case you want to catch up:

3 Simple Strategies for Designing Your Own Watercolors (even if you’re a beginner)

How to Use Autodesk Sketchbook to Plan Paintings (and changes to paintings in progress)

UPDATE: Sketchbook is back to being a paid app (about $20). May still be worth it to you, but if not, check out Kleki: https://kleki.com It has the same functions I use in Sketchbook. Laid out a bit differently, but click the question mark icon in the upper right for help navigating.

"Red Cedar, Before the Storm", watercolor, 11x21" ©2006 Lynne Baur

Planning Your Own Watercolors | Technical How-to

Dealing with Problem Paintings, Part 2: The Hyperactive Overachiever

In the last post, I gave some ideas for dealing with a “too boring for words” problem painting. The one you were never excited about in the first place. Our “problem child” this time is the opposite of boring, it’s trying to do too much. When I’m running into trouble with one of my own…

Finding Your Style | Planning Your Own Watercolors

Is My Painting Done?

This article is the first of a series on creating more powerful, personal and expressive paintings. When I teach watercolor classes or workshops, there is often a moment where a student comes up to me, thrusts a painting into my face and demands: Tell me what’s wrong with it. What do I need to fix?…

Planning Your Own Watercolors | Sketching

Avoiding Overwhelm When Sketching on Location (or Working from a Photo)

To avoid overwhelm while sketching (or working from a complicated photo), collect “characters” now, arrange them to tell a story later.

Line and wash painting of a candle and mug of tea.

Creative Energy Journaling | Planning Your Own Watercolors

Celebrate Light!

Isn’t it a wonderful quirk of nature that just as the coldest months are about to begin, the days also begin to lengthen? The winter solstice is this Sunday night. After that, the days start lengthening toward spring. Why not take a little time from the rush and stress of the winter holidays and simply…

A close-up of the reverse transfer method. I misted the wet paint with water to make it run and give the image a dream-like quality.

Creative Energy Journaling | Finding Your Style | Technical How-to

4 Creative Techniques to Celebrate the Full Moon

The moon is full this coming Monday night and it looks like we might have clear skies here in the Twin Cities area. One of the things I love to do in my art and in my journaling is celebrate the natural world—changing seasons, dramatic weather, the plants and animals I live among. And the full…

Creative Energy Journaling | Finding Your Style | Planning Your Own Watercolors

Explore and Inspire Yourself with Word Clouds

Have you ever noticed the cluster of words that sit in the sidebar of some websites, some of them bigger, some smaller, sometimes in multiple colors? Bloggers often “tag” articles with keywords to help readers search for topics of interest. The bigger the word in this “tag cloud”, the more often the author has used…

Other lessons mentioned in this video, in case you want to catch up:

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