News — beginners

Welcome to the Late Blooming Watercolors Late Holiday Gift Guide! Christmas is just over a week away, so this gift guide will only be useful if you need to do some last minute shopping for the budding watercolorist in your life. 1. Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolor Sketcher's Pocket Box Set This is one of the first sets of decent watercolor paint I purchased, and it's still my number 1 recommendation for those getting started with watercolor. It's considered "student" grade paint, but it's still a huge step up from the Crayola watercolors many of us used as children. It comes with a...

Do you struggle with muddy watercolors? Do you want to get brighter mixes? Understanding color bias was a major step towards solving these issues for me. As a self taught watercolor artist, I spend a ton of time on blogs and YouTube. There is so! Much! Info! on any topic you can imagine on the internet. I spent a ton of time researching watercolor supplies after the free class I took at the library. I'm such a nerd--and I secretly hoped if I researched enough and bought the exactly right supplies I would have an edge over every other beginner. Silly right?...

"Alla prima" is a term I just discovered last week. It means "at first attempt" or "all in one go" and I just love this idea! It describes my favorite way to paint and it makes it sound so much more legitimate. "Hello, I'm Jen Roberts and I paint alla prima."  It just sounds fancy that way! Wikipedia also tells me the French version of this is "au premier coup" which I like quite a bit too (possibly due to my years spent studying French in college!). Painting alla prima just fits my impatient nature. I don't want to fiddle...

Deciding to paint somewhat late in life means I spend more time than I'd like second guessing myself. That nasty whiny voice comes up and wonders "what basics of design and composition am I clueless about because I didn't formally study art?" No one's ever actually said or even hinted anything remotely like that to me of course! My self doubt just seems to have a way of sneaking in.Being "self-taught" may still have some negative connotations, but I think a lot of that is fading as more and more of us become self-taught via the internet. The current pandemic and...

How do you decide what to focus on? I want to do ALL THE THINGS! Lately I’ve been following a ton of printmakers on Instagram. I’d seen some beautiful prints from artists such as Kim Herringe and Sarah Matthews, so I recently asked for and got a gel printing plate for my birthday. I was hoping I could use watercolor paint with it instead of my beat up old baking sheet...but that was not to be. I tried it first with watercolor of course, but it took a ton of paint to get what was not even a smooth layer (shown...