Teaching Intuitive Watercolor atSummit Community Gardens
In which I share about teaching a new kind of watercolor class where we paint absolutely nothing.
Last week I taught a watercolor class in Park City with the Summit Community Gardens, who has a beautiful spot at the foot of the mountains. We had glorious evening weather with the backdrop of the Park City ridgeline and a garden full of food and flowers that served as our inspiration. Now, usually when I teach watercolor, I’m teaching skills and plein air landscape painting with a goal of trying to capture the view. But, what if I taught a class on how to paint nothing?
My therapist would be proud of that idea. See lately, I’ve been painting intuitively, maybe even with feeling you could say - creating art that isn’t necessarily anything but an exploration of color and form. My therapist, who is specifically an art therapist1, has been trying to get me to do this for years, ever since I started seeing her. I eyed her with speculation, but nodded along when she made these curious suggestions. “Sure. I’ll give it a shot.”
I did not, however, give it a shot back then. Nor did I start meditating like she recommended. I gave excuses like lack of time, that I painted a lot already, and the fact that I spent so much time in nature already - I didn’t need any of that.2 When she first suggested painting what I felt, I recognized that, yes, I’m sure that would be a good thing to try. And wise perhaps to let some of those things out in a safe way on the page. But two years ago when I started working with her, the concept of “feeling my feelings” was still so foreign to me that painting them in addition to feeling them, well, honestly that seemed impossible. I had spent so long trying NOT to feel, that documenting them with art was tantamount to me flying to the moon, with my arms.
But in these last two years, I’ve tackled a number of things, covered a lot of ground, and worked a few kinks out.3 And in that time, much to my surprise, I have started painting things that are not actually things. I have no idea what they are, although if you pressed me, I’d probably say they are landscapes. Although, I’m not sure I could label any of them with specific feelings, yet4. Certainly, I can say I’m using my intuition and not consciously planning things out, like my little engineer brain prefers to do.
Little breakthroughs came sporadically. The ink paintings (here, here, and here) of the last few years certainly helped. The cold wax pushed it along, because I’m learning a new medium and I’m allowing myself to be open to what could be. And then at the creative workshop in June led by Anna Brones and Sarah Uhl, I learned a little exercise with watercolor that had me curious about painting without a goal in mind. It’s been interesting to allow myself to paint “nothing”. Fun, dare I say it.
So back to last Thursday. This highly experimental class had 22 wonderful guinea pigs who seemed up to the challenge. I brought the supplies, they brought the wine. I made them throw out the idea that they were going to be painting the mountains behind us. Frankly, some of them looked relieved.
I started off teaching them my rules about my sketchbook practice. Then we made terrible paintings that were expressly for the purpose of learning about the principles of watercolor, but again, we didn’t paint anything specific.
Pro tip: Watercolor is the interplay between water and color. This seems incredibly basic, but figuring out the right amount of water and the right amount of color is crucial and difficult. There is no recipe to follow, only practice to learn when you need more water (or less), and how much color you need to create the effect you want.
As I prepared for the class, the ideas I wanted to convey about watercolor painting reminded me very much of Taoism - ideas like painting without preconceived ideas, allowing the painting to emerge, duality, and magic, of course.5 Someone should write the Tao of Watercolor, I thought, and then I checked and sure enough, it already exists.6
We played for 2 hours. We had no preconceived notion of “results” and I wanted to empower my students with the ability to paint without worrying if it was any good. In fact I offered a prize from a goodwill box in the back of my car for anyone who thought they made the ugliest painting. It helped that I narrowed down their color choices to 5 or less and I gave them a roll of washi tape to contain themselves. Also peeling tape off at the end is incredibly satisfying. It’s one of the best parts of painting on paper actually.
At the end, I think I remember the jokes and the laughter the most. And there were some special parts of their work that held real promise of something. Was it emotion, form, the colors, or something else that had me saying, “ooh, I like that!”
I’ll definitely be teaching this class again, although I may need to work on the name. “How to Paint Nothing” might not draw in the crowds.
Stay tuned next week to find out more about my experiments in Cold Wax. Patrons who support this project will receive the full newsletter and I’ll be teasing the rest of you with cropped selections to entice you in.
$5 per month, cancel at any time. $50 for the year. Patrons will:
Get to see all the 100 paintings as I make them.
First dibs and a discount on the cold wax paintings when they are done.
Help selecting the 12 images I’ll use for my 2025 calendar.
And the satisfaction of knowing they’re supporting an experimental art project.
Gratitude from me, of course.
Highly recommended, especially for artists, because they understand the emotional intricacies of trying to hang your heart on the wall and then sell it to strangers.
I do, in fact, need it.
PS, still very much working on things. I guess we always we will be.
Baby steps people! Baby steps.
I’ll be honest, my main knowledge of Taoism comes from the Tao of Pooh and my high school senior theology class on world religions. Don’t @ me for not remembering it all.
Ordered it. Looking forward to reading it.
I’m an example of a non artist who would jump at a painting class - painting nothing. That might be suitably non threatening! Also, as I have been reading your posts this morning, I remembered that somewhere I noticed a basic watercolor class about clouds and sadly knew I’d never remember where I saw it. And voila! There it is.