Captivated by watercolor studies in a whole new way

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Captivated by watercolor studies in a whole new way

This is a spread of thumbnail studies in my art journal that I made from photos during my recent trip to Loreto. They really surprised me!

I’m not a landscape artist. I love vistas and views, but when I’m out in the world my eye tends to zoom in to the particulars. Like when I entered the Posado Las Flores on this same trip last week. It was immediate. I had to draw the entryway. I had no real desire to draw the town plaza or the foreign desert landscape all around me.

I do take pictures, though. And I enjoy painting abstracts.

So one afternoon

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Art making teaches us how to leap into the unknown

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Art making teaches us how to leap into the unknown

There was a time when first starting out on my art journey that I “had no ideas.” I didn’t know what to create next. These days, I have the opposite problem. Too many ideas crowd by head space. But you know what? Both lead to the same problem. Whether I approach the blank page with “no ideas” or “too many ideas”, I don’t know what to create next.

Intellectually I understand that it all comes from the same place—fear.

Fear of the blank page. What will I fill it with? What choices will I make? Will they be the “right” ones?

Bah! I have to catch myself in my own game. I find myself forgetting what I know to be true: “too many ideas” is a tricky cover for the same fear of not being good enough to pull off any any idea.

And the longer I’m paralyzed by fear of choosing, the longer

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