Coming Around
For all my fears towards wet media, it became really fun after I got past the initial anxiety. I'm much better with my brushes now, and I've ruined them less compared to when I started. Now I get why plein air artists just LOVE watercolors. It feels encouraging when you can sit down, make some loose washes, and you have something vaguely recognizable. It's not very dependent on having a good lineart, which I still struggle with, compared to say, alcohol markers.
I've done nothing but gansai (Japanese watercolors) and occasional ink the past week, I think I'm due to switch just so I don't end up settling (and I like my other stuff too). It's so damn comfortable, though. Covering large area with markers and coloring pencils tends to be pain in the ass. Well, nothing stopping me from laying down washes for backgrounds and just use my other supplies for the foregrounds.
I think the biggest epiphany that has helped me move forward is discovering that I'm a shapes-first kinda person rather than lines-first kinda person, and for my whole life I've been taught the lines-first approach being the correct way. If I can't do a clean sketch, I have no business laying down colors. However, if I put down lines first, I get too rigid and the end result would look wonky because I keep staying within and don't readjust as I go. While shapes-first approach is more common in wet media, nowadays I just do it no matter what medium I use. It's just more intuitive for me to start with blocking rough shapes in light colors and finetune the details as I go. It feels more forgiving and allows me to stay flexible. I should have figured it out sooner, because that's how I've been doing my digital art forever. I'm not hung up on it the way I do traditional art because no one taught me digital art so I just sort of winging it...
Would it make it easier for me to stay in art had I known there were another, equally valid, approach? Perhaps, but I'm glad I get to learn it now rather than never. I'm a big believer in we're ready when we're ready. I wouldn't have the means to procure supplies of this quality back then anyway, so it was likely that I would have been frustrated by something else. My heart goes out to every kid out there who got burned trying wet media on copy paper.
For all my hatred towards hypercapitalism, there is a part in me begrudgingly acknowledging that there was no way I could get something this good at prices this low. These days, Chinese companies have gotten so good in both products and packaging. And they sell everywhere. I don't have to pay a kidney to obtain Japanese/European materials, though I do still wish there are local options available. For real, folks, the slight towards Chinese knockoffs is kind of out to date now. American and European companies shifted their labors there, and now they make the good stuff while the original countries are left floundering when they realize they have outsourced their manufacturing capability so much in the name of efficiency. Oops?
Metallic watercolor is something I didn't know exist. Initially, I had trouble applying it, but now I use a bit at the end of every painting, just as a fun accent. Does it help my case in archiving my art digitally? Obviously not.
My last couple paintings turned out so well it's almost scary, as if I had gotten past a milestone without knowing it. That's why art is difficult. There is no real marker of progress and the only way to know is to keep going on. There is no pressure to get better, I don't make it a mission to get better, but I do get better in the long run. I don't like roasting my past efforts. Everything I do is the best I could do in a given time. However, looking at the first picture I did June last year, when I restarted the practice, and looking at the one I just finished... I can't believe I've gotten here honestly. If you told me I would get hooked on watercolors in less than a year, I would have looked at you funny.
All in all it does align with the way I view things: I don't want to view myself as a "finished" concept. My identity is fluid, and while I'm pretty rigid on my philosophies, the path I take and the person I can be are never set in stone. The core of my identity remains the same, the self is ever-changing. I don't want to refuse partaking in an experience just because somebody with my profile might not enjoy it. So long as it doesn't contradict my values.
An odd wording indeed, "somebody with my profile", but I do meet people who goes I'm an INTJ and INTJ people do not like X so I don't try X. Regardless of how I feel about attempts in categorizing personality, I find that a confining way to live. We can arrive at the same place having trodden many different walks of life, and those experiences color our perception differently. How do you know if X doesn't truly suits you, then?
And here's the twist: sometimes, said person can be convinced to give X a try and surprise surprise they like it. And then they go on full existential crisis mode because INTJ people aren't supposed to like X and if they like X does that mean they're not INTJ??? Should you scoff at these "irrationals", replace MBTI with anything, really, even Ravnican guild pairs.
I digress.
I don't even think I had this much fun doing art back when I was in middle and high school. I was too preoccupied in making something good and catching up after my friends. We started in the same grade in primary school, heck we went to the same art course. Every blank page was a proving ground. No wonder I stopped.
There is nothing to prove now.
I'm still here, bedsheets covered in paint and I'd had to scrub ink off my cushion, making art.