Watercolor for the Soul

I remember quite well when I first started learning to draw. I was so proud of myself when I learned “the elements of art”. They are:

• Line
• Shape
• Form
• Space
• Value
• Texture
• Color

I felt like a true student then, and I recited that list over and over so I wouldn’t forget what I’d learned. Art, I realized, wasn’t just about making marks on a page. There were reasons for when, where, and how to make those marks!

Today, as I’m easing my way back into my studio and playing with watercolor exercises, the most logical place to begin — again — is with these most basic elements, especially the first two.

Art begins with lines — defined as a moving dot — and we use those lines to create shapes. We can then turn shapes into forms, but I’m not there yet with watercolor. I’m following along with a book of exercises — Watercolor for the Soul — by Sharone Stevens. This is an instance of finding the perfect book at the perfect time. The sub-title is “Simple Painting Projects for Beginners, to Calm, Soothe, and Inspire, and the sales blurb says “This fresh approach looks first at the process of painting as a means to de-stress and unwind.”

This is exactly what I need right now.

Before sharing my first practice exercises, I’ll fill you in on the latest updates. My husband recently had eye surgery, problems developed, and he had to undergo a second emergency surgery to repair a detached retina. That was a bit stressful. Meanwhile, I’ve developed vision problems of my own. I was just diagnosed with a retinal vein occlusion, and I’ll be seeing a retinologist for treatment. That’s a bit stressful, too. Not to mention the fact that it’s hard to do watercolor with blurred vision in one eye. But, I’m not letting that deter me.

The first exercises in the book are about lines. Straight lines. Curved lines. Thick lines and thin lines. I played around with both my watercolor set and my Japanese gansai.

Later, I added in a few dots and dashes, another part of the first exercise. Here are more lines from my practice session:

Finally, after diligently painting lines, I was ready to move on to the next element: shapes. The exercise was to first draw shapes in pencil and then add watercolor, and then to do freehand shapes with watercolor only. The first three lines — squares, circles, triangles — were drawn and filled in using watercolor. The larger squares below were drawn freehand using gansai.

Obviously my technique isn’t very good, but that’s not the point. This is all about de-stressing and unwinding, and the exercises did help me there. I also had an opportunity to once again see how much more comfortable I am with gansai than with traditional “western” watercolors.

So I’m having fun in my studio, doing the best I can with the limited vision I have, and using art as a way to truly soothe my soul. I’ll be moving on now to the next series of exercises — covering watercolor methods.

Until then, if, by chance, you’re feeling a need to unwind a bit, why not give these line and shape exercises a try?