News — art struggles

Do you struggle with muddy watercolors? Do you want to get brighter mixes? Understanding color bias was a major step towards solving these issues for me. As a self taught watercolor artist, I spend a ton of time on blogs and YouTube. There is so! Much! Info! on any topic you can imagine on the internet. I spent a ton of time researching watercolor supplies after the free class I took at the library. I'm such a nerd--and I secretly hoped if I researched enough and bought the exactly right supplies I would have an edge over every other beginner. Silly right?...

"Alla prima" is a term I just discovered last week. It means "at first attempt" or "all in one go" and I just love this idea! It describes my favorite way to paint and it makes it sound so much more legitimate. "Hello, I'm Jen Roberts and I paint alla prima."  It just sounds fancy that way! Wikipedia also tells me the French version of this is "au premier coup" which I like quite a bit too (possibly due to my years spent studying French in college!). Painting alla prima just fits my impatient nature. I don't want to fiddle...

I recently discovered a new artist who I'm slightly obsessed with: Gwenn Seemel. She has an incredibly distinctive style and huge backlog of blog posts for me to catch up on. I was recently going through a series of her 17 tips for loving your own art, and thinking about how to apply them to my own work.Many of the items on her list are opposites, such as suggestions 1 & 2: find other artists' work that you consider boring, and learn to appreciate other artists' work. So lately I've been trying to think really critically about my reaction to...

I've seen a lot of advice around the internet on how to overcome fear of the blank page as an artist. I can totally see how that huge, unblemished white expanse that you spent your hard earned dollars on could be intimidating. Much more often however, I experience fear of the second layer.  Putting down a beautiful first wash is easy. Watercolor's flow and mind of its own means it will do amazing things without much work from me. Deciding what to paint on top of that--without screwing the whole thing up--is hard! I often buckle under the pressure, and end up...

Deciding to paint somewhat late in life means I spend more time than I'd like second guessing myself. That nasty whiny voice comes up and wonders "what basics of design and composition am I clueless about because I didn't formally study art?" No one's ever actually said or even hinted anything remotely like that to me of course! My self doubt just seems to have a way of sneaking in.Being "self-taught" may still have some negative connotations, but I think a lot of that is fading as more and more of us become self-taught via the internet. The current pandemic and...