My Watercolour Summer
I’ve always wanted to call myself an artist. This piece follows that search: quick sketches, iPad rituals, acrylic frustrations, and my watercolour summer.
DiPartures is my chance to write about things apart from my SoEV project which has thankfully brought most of my readers to this Substack.
If you are new to this Substack, you can check out my other sections INS(oev)IDE, where I write about the stories of being a street photographer and some commentary on clothing and style or GENEs, interviews about clothing.
I’ve always wanted to consider myself an artist. As a scientist (both academically and professionally), I was boxed into the analytical and mathematical for so long that I felt a need to push back. It’s also because I simply enjoy creating, even if it’s only for myself.
I’ve played in art spaces all my life. In high school art classes, sketches in the margins of notebooks, learning guitar, and now an obsession with photography. Still, I’m not sure I can claim the word artist when thinking about my personal adjectives.
When I first started taking street portraits, I refused to call what I was doing art. I felt like I was only documenting others. Their clothing was the art, not my photos. Photography is, of course, an art form, but the way I practiced it didn’t feel like one. Even when people said “I love your work,” implying I had an artistic portfolio, it never sat right.
I am still working on that journey. As much as I’ve pushed back against labels, artist, is one I’ve wanted to be able to self-identify as, forever. This piece is about that journey: what photography has taught me about art, what drawing and painting have added, and why I still feel there’s work to do. It’s also a way to finally share some of these creations. Part of finishing art is showing it. I’m not ready for a gallery, but this digital space lets me release the work and, in doing so, pushes me to keep creating.
Sketchy Beginnings
Learning to draw and paint has been a slow process. I’ve always been the type to have sketches in the margins of notebooks, occasional focused bursts of drawing, but it came and went, and my skills seemed to plateau quickly. I’d start down a path of discipline but usually find distractions in other creative endeavors soon after.
In 2017, on a trip to Italy, I brought a notepad with the goal of drawing something every day. I don’t remember what inspired me, but I knew I’d need something to do on long train rides and during hot afternoon breaks after busy mornings of sightseeing. I knew I wanted to keep some sort of journal to remember the trip and wasn’t interested in writing, but thought drawing something each day would help me remember. Ironically, I’ve since lost that notebook, but the habit stuck. On later trips I kept sketching, sometimes letting friends add their own drawings. It was a way to pass time and quietly rebuild the muscle memory of drawing.
For a while, I treated small sketches as a kind of journal—quick drawings to capture trips and moments I could look back on later. They filled cheap notebooks, with no real system, but the intention was always the same, keep creating in the margins.
Going Digital
In the spring of 2020, I decided to go digital. I wanted a way to preserve my illustrations as I had the habit of misplacing these small journals, and I had been playing around with programs like Adobe Illustrator for a while as well. My goal was to do daily iPad drawings each day during my summer holiday. I’d always wanted to draw digitally, but earlier styluses never felt right. The iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil changed that; even if my skills didn’t match the tool yet, the authentic feel was definitely easy to jump into.
From 2020 to 2024, I drew every day in the summer. At first, they were simple, isolated sketches. Symbols or splashes of color to mark what I’d done. I had no style, but it was more about learning Procreate and treating it as a journal.
Over time, the ritual took hold. Each night before bed, instead of scrolling or watching something, I drew, even if it was just 10 minutes. Some days I had the energy for detailed scenes and would get lost for an hour; other days it was a quick icon to mark the day’s events.
But drawing every day meant learning every day. YouTube tutorials taught me about form, color theory, and layer management. Wanting to get better meant observing the world in a new and more purposeful way. Slowly, I grew more ambitious, filling the canvas with fuller compositions instead, rather than sticking with the small sketches.
Photography was teaching me alongside drawing. The same lessons could be applied cross-discipline; composition, symmetry, colour, depth of field. The hours I poured into photography sharpened my eye, but also built confidence: composing quickly and editing fluidly were becoming a reason I could produce so effectively. Practice was the art and the tool.
Each fall I’d set the iPad aside, sometimes for weeks but occasionally would be inspired to add an illustration here and there. After two years using Procreate I was comfortable enough to experiment and draw inspiration from other artists more intentionally.
My sketches became less about documenting the day and more about learning how to make cohesive illustrations and dig into the tool further. The quick symbols had grown monotonous. Too many days looked the same: stroller walks, coffee runs, photo walks, runs logged. To avoid complacency, I shifted fully from journal entries to complete scenes. That shift forced me to think about foreground and background, perspective and detail. Sometimes I planned with small sketches, other times I worked directly from photos or just created from memory, but the challenge moved me from digitally “drawing” to digitally “painting”.
It was during this time, that my preferred “style” started to emerge. Like with my photography, it has become a combination of comfort, the tools I am using, my influences, and my own preferences. Having developed a style I was comfortable with also gave me the confidence when I sat down to have a plan of attack. Like with my photography my senses around how to make the images sharpened and what to create, and leave behind, became more refined.
Another Humbling Leap
By the end of summer 2024, I felt I needed to push myself beyond the iPad. When I made the jump from pencil to digital, there was definitely a learning curve integrating the endless possibilities of brushes, colours, layers, but also learning to control a different friction than pencil on paper. As I kept with it, my brain started to think in those same tools. Procreate had been invaluable, but the shortcuts like color-picking, endless layers, quick resizing, were starting to make me lazy. I felt myself plateauing again, both in my desire to keep drawing, but also in what I was able to achieve with the time I was putting in. The iPad also carried its own distraction: too often I’d open it to draw and end up scrolling Reddit instead. Thinking I’d be heading to YouTube for a quick drawing lesson, spending an hour watching anything else. I needed to push myself outside of this comfort zone to keep growing. There was also the AI creep seeping in, I was losing my taste in digital artwork, knowing that at any time I could type in any prompt and get something way better than I could do myself (although, soulless).
That fall I took the leap into acrylic painting and began spending time in the school studio. I’ve been painting weekly since, and it’s been humbling.
Some lessons transferred but painting introduced challenges I’d never considered. Prepping a canvas, choosing brushes, mixing paint, waiting for layers to dry, cleaning up afterward, avoiding splattering paint all over what I’ve already done. Each step slowed me down, and more than once I found myself stuck, staring at a half-finished painting, unsure of the next move.
The Latest Challenge
In wanting to continue my summer journalling/illustrating habit, I decided that the “easiest” way to continue, while still learning how to paint, would be to integrate bringing a small watercolour kit with me.
I purchased a small, travel oriented watercolour set and started messing around in the middle of spring to prepare myself for a summer of daily painting. This felt like one of the most “old-man” things I could ever do, not exactly the “edgiest” artform. But I fucking love it.
At first I started to just learn the brushstrokes and tried to understand the paints, how they flowed, how to mix, and how much water is required for the style I was going for.
I started by working on Michael Marchenko-esque portraits of my photos. Being exposed to his art on a nightly basis reading Robert Munsch books to my daughter, but also having a large collection of reference photos, made this an easy choice, and a great starting point.
From there, I decided to start painting something else I love photographing, car hoods. For my release of my Spring Zine “ROSSO”, I created a set of small paintings that would go along with the first few copies sold.
And while I started to feel more confident in my drawing and water colouring abilities, I was still a bit hesitant to start this as a daily ritual, and rightfully so, the first few paintings in my “journal”, were not great. Maybe it was the subject matter, or it was my general hesitation in how I wanted to document the summer, but my first few pages…weren’t great.
The self-sabotage and denial started to return…maybe I should just go back to the iPad…it was easier to travel with anyways…I had become better at it, I’m sure I’d get back to painting in the fall anyways…the intrusive thoughts of leaving my watercolours at home during our first trip away were very close in my mind, but I packed them anyways, and I am glad I did.
Final Thoughts & Gallery
I’ve attached a handful of the paintings I did this summer. It’s been fulfilling to flip back and see my progress and show friends and family as I completed these during the summer. The descriptions below give a bit of insight into why I decided to include those specific pieces.
They took a bit longer to complete vs. the iPad drawings, but I stuck with it, made a lot of mistakes, and learned a lot.
I would say I am leaving this experience inspired. I don’t plan on continuing a daily practice, as returning to work doesn’t afford me the time anymore, but I will continue to look for opportunities to fill this watercolour book and buy a new one. You’ll see in many of the paintings below, my technique needs work. It may be the dry-block paints I am using, or just not mastering the water to pigment ratio, but I am still working on many aspects, including mixing and gradients.
Finally, even though I now have this “portfolio” of physical paintings, I still hesitate to call myself an artist. Maybe that hesitation, and holding onto the desire to be considered one, is actually what keeps me going. Every time I’ve plateaued, I’ve had to push into something new, learn new skills, fail, find moments of success, but at the end of the day, continue creating.
Fun read. Nailed the Marchenko impressions
all I can say is that reading this made me happy