Lessons learned from watercolor

Five timeless reminders about art and creating

I recently took a watercolor class.

The last time I seriously painted was in college, during one of the prerequisite classes for my design degree.

I consider myself a moderately skilled artiste. But gosh, watercolor is hard. It doesn’t behave the way you expect it to. It bleeds, it blends, it swirls. It’s hard to layer—basically impossible to layer unless you let your paint dry down.

I didn’t expect it to be easy, of course. But I also didn’t expect it to be so hard.

The entire course experience reminded me of my first attempts at writing a novel. I say attempts, plural, because I tried to write a novel dozens of times before I finally succeeded.

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Why did it take me so long? Well, writing is hard. Most creative pursuits are hard! (Like watercolor.)

This recent class got me thinking about art, creativity, and learning from experts, so I thought I’d share a few lessons I learned/was reminded of during the course:

1 — Practice makes proficiency

“Practice makes perfect” is a lie. Perfect doesn’t exist. But impressive? Proficient? Undeniable skilled? Practice is behind all these things. If someone makes their art look easy, it’s because they’ve spent years honing their skill.

We all know this, and yet it’s easy to forget or overlook. It’s easy to experience a book (or album or painting) and be so blown away by the creator’s talent, that achieving that level of skill yourself seems impossible. The artist is just TOO GOOD.

It’s like that TikTok meme where the voiceover says “How did you get so good? It’s magic! I’ll never be this good!” while talking over the video/audio of an individual admitting “It’s practice!” as they display their skill. There’s a lot of these floating around, but here’s a good example:

@rollinwithkatethe secret is practice and that is all 😂🛼 #rollerskating #rollerskater #practice #progress #progression #rollergirl #selftaught #skatepark #rollerskates #fyp #foryou

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Mastering anything requires time and effort. How much? Well, there’s that “rule” that you need to put in roughly 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. We can’t be experts at everything we try, and I certainly didn’t want to become an expert at watercolor. But I had hoped to create at least a semi-impressive piece of art by the end of the workshop.

Yep. Semi-impressive. Within a course amassing six hours of total work. That’s not nearly enough practice.

Looking back, it’s laughable. And yet, I’d hoped. Mostly because…

2 — Beginners are naive

Beginners run on dreams and wild enthusiasm. You don’t know what you don’t know, so you dream big and often have heaps of confidence… sometimes too much confidence.

The scientific term for this is the Dunning–Kruger effect, a cognitive bias whereby people with little experience in a certain subject/skillset will greatly overestimate their ability or knowledge of said subject/skillset.

Photo via Geek Culture

The real world result of this effect can be comical. Someone clearly unskilled and/or with little knowledge in a given area will exude massive amounts of unearned confidence. You see this on social media all the time. Joe Schmoe will explain a book to the author of said book. Or he’ll say “Did you even read the article?” to the scientist/journalist/doctor who wrote the darn article. The more ignorant, the more confidence the individual may project. (Notice the confidence gap in the above curve and how the expert has slightly less confidence than the beginner! Wild, right?)

But the Dunning-Kruger effect can come into play in subtler ways too. I felt it when I took the watercolor class. I never assumed to be more skilled than the instructor, nor did I think I’d be able to even remotely match their talent. (That would take a lifetime of practice.) But I did think I’d be decent.

Spoiler: I was not decent.

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Or perhaps I was, just barely, only it took way more effort and focus than I thought it would to achieve mediocre results.

Why did this happen? Simple. My naivety got in the way.

I walked into the workshop near the top of the Dunning-Kruger curve, completely ignorant but with ample confidence. By the time I finished the course, I was at the bottom of the curve. I’d learned enough to know how little I truly knew about watercolor, plus I now had an idea of just how much work I would have to put in to become even moderately skilled at it. This location on the DK chart is sometimes called the “pit of despair”—and for good reason. It is hard to remain confident when you realize just how little you know. That said…

3 — Being naive is a kind of magic

When we are beginners—naive beginners—we tap into something pure and unburdened. We don’t get in our own way, because we don’t even possess enough skills for an inner critic to exist.

These days, I spend most of my writing sessions wishing I could tap into the confidence I had as an aspiring writer, long before I started pursuing publication. “Pre-Debut Erin,” I call her. She wrote from the heart. She wrote with joy. Her books weren’t the best on a craft level, but gosh did she believe in her writing.

In a way, the DK effect is a double edged sword. I think it is important and necessary for an artist to slog through the low valley and slowly climb the ascent on the other side toward "Expert.” But that slog… It takes a toll.

It is so easy to lose the passion of your “greener” self. Confidence can get stamped out quickly. A few bad interactions with external validation (E.g.: rejections, crummy trade reviews, poor reception, trouble selling again, low sales, etc), and you can start to doubt yourself at every turn.

I loved how magical my watercolor class felt. Even once I realized I wasn’t very good at it, I was still enough of a beginner to see the blank page as a potential masterpiece. And while I painted, there was no inner critic whispering in my ear. Ignorance is (was) bliss.

4 — You don’t have to be good at your hobbies

I’m better now than I was when I started the watercolor class. But I’ve also only put in six hours of work. I am nowhere near proficient and I’m not sure I want to be.

Some people have hobbies and are experts at them. But being skilled (or even decent) at a hobby doesn’t have to be the goal. The whole point of a hobby is to do it for fun. According to the dictionary app on my Mac, a hobby is “an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure.”

For. Pleasure.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary even specifies that a hobby should be unrelated to your job/core skills, defining it as “a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation.”

Especially. For. Relaxation.

I like to learn. I like to be good at the things. This is why the thing that used to be my biggest hobby (writing) has turned into my job and area of expertise (author, writing instructor). And as wonderful as this is, it sucks some of the joy out of what used to be a blissful escape. It’s changed my relationship with words. I sometimes still have fun while writing, but I sure don’t consider it relaxing.

It’s okay if some of your hobbies are just that—hobbies. You can be good at them. But it’s okay to just tinker and play, too. That’s sort of the point.

That’s basically why I first signed up for this watercolor class. I wanted to do something different and to do it for me. I wanted a small break from author life (writing), freelance gigs (design work), and parenthood. A few hours when I wouldn’t be distracted by my phone. When I couldn’t read. (I love reading, but it is so tied up in writing and publishing that it doesn’t feel like a true escape anymore. It’s still related to work. My inner editor makes comments as I read. I dissect what works and doesn’t. I critique. I wanted to turn all that off.)

The course was a success in that regard. It was a thing I tried. I might try it again, I might not. My goal is not to become great at it, and that’s fine.

5 — Personal style (and process) can’t be taught

Art is about expression, which is an impossible thing to teach.

When artists take classes, we’re often attempting to learn more about the fundamentals of a specific craft. My watercolor workshop, for example, focused mainly on color mixing in the first class. Then the second and third classes tackled the process of layering, adding detail with the goal of painting realistic fall foliage.

I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t really care if my paintings were super realistic. My personal preference leaned more abstract. I wasn’t as interested in painting the exact leaf I picked from the prop table as I was in using that leaf as inspiration.

And that wasn’t a fault of the teacher; It was me realizing something about my own artistic style.

When taking classes, instructors (experts) will often give you steps to follow because it helps break a complex task into easily digestible chunks.

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From here, a student’s job is to listen. To practice. To experiment. To use the craft “rules” to strengthen and enhance the unique lens that only they can bring forth.

Ultimately, creative workshops are all about giving you the tools to master a certain element of your craft. Personal voice and style (and even creative process) is something you have to find and develop on your own. Which is basically my favorite writing mantra—your milage may vary—in action. Go in with an open mind, take what works for you, and leave the rest.

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None of these lessons are life altering. In many instances, they were things I already knew, but the workshop nudged them top of mind.

As I struggle to draft new books and find homes for them, the most important reminder is perhaps this: You have to do the work.

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Whether you’re already an expert or a green newbie or somewhere in between, you have to sit down and put in the hours.

It takes a lot of time and energy to become skilled at something. I think of all the hours I’ve invested in design. All the hours I’ve put into writing. These are things I’m definitely skilled at, and it is a direct result of a lifetime worth of effort.

If you are just starting to write your first novel, please do not judge yourself by the works of seasoned veterans. You’ve only put in a fraction of the hours the established writers have.

And if you’re an already published author, please do not judge your first draft by the quality of published fiction. You’ve only put a few weeks/months of work into your manuscript, whereas the published book has been revised and polished for many months and/or years.

It’s always hard at the start. It’s sloppy and messy and the road ahead definitely goes uphill. It’s supposed to be this way. The hill gets easier to summit with practice—with those years of experience. But there will always be a hill.

This is normal. This is to be expected.

To use a quote from A League of Their Own, “It's supposed to be hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”

Keep writing, friends. Keep practicing. Keep putting in the work.

Until next time,

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1. I’d always get a few chapters in and then bail—because I needed to research/brainstorm more first, or was struck by a different novel idea and moved on to that, or simply lost enthusiasm. It took me until my mid-twenties to write a complete novel.

2. The definition of “decent” will vary between people. To me, my work in this class was just barely, by-the-skin-of-ones-teeth decent.

3. I take a similar approach in the workshops I teach on my website. I touch on core principles of good design and character arcs, giving practical tips, sharing step-by-step guides, and highlighting real world examples. From there, participants can choose to implement the strategies that work for them and leave the rest.

4. “Do the Work” is the title of Julie Falatko’s Substack which is about, you guessed it, doing the work. It’s a great read and well worth subscribing.