Watercolourist, Jem Bowden offers top tips and advice on how to learn and improve as a painter
Some of us want no more than a hobby from our art. We don’t mind if our paintings are not very impressive and don’t need to see much progress. Others of us tend to have some ambition to impress ourselves, and perhaps much more. Both these outlooks are healthy, but one will need to involve a lot more learning than the other. For me, learning is its own reward, and I’ll come back to this point at the end.
One thing I’ve always been aware of is that painting is a psychological matter. Our attitude to our painting and our frame of mind during the process govern all, including whether we learn and develop. And there’s a lot to learn about, from materials and techniques, to concepts like composition and colour theory. We also learn about our self-discipline and our openness to new ideas or challenges.
Included in this article are some of my paintings that in retrospect I recall have some aspect of learning connected with them. Most were painted entirely en plein air (unless otherwise stated).
1 Enjoy the process and don’t worry about the result
This has been a core tenet of my philosophy and teaching for as long as I can remember, but how exactly do we do it?
If you’re going to learn then you’ve absolutely got to feel free to mess up. It is always helpful to see your art as an adventure. This will help you to have no expectations about the result, allowing you real psychological freedom. If each brushstroke is an adventure into the unknown, you’ll be in the moment, fascinated by what is about to happen, learning from surprises and everything you observe.
I recognised long ago that what I viewed as the best watercolour effects, and overall paintings (to my eyes) tended to entail taking some risks. Wet-in-wet technique to a beginner will be outside of your control, and hence comfort zone. In my tuition I take students head-on into this technique from the outset, embracing the excitement of its unpredictability as an alternative to what otherwise develops into fear.
In observing classes of students, it’s often the extrovert approach that leads to faster
