At age 16, I knew I wanted to become a professional artist…but it was at age 11 when I really fell in love. This was the moment of my first watercolor lesson.

My mother exchanged piano lessons for art lessons…with her best friend from high school. Sandi had brought the best supplies! Winsor & Newton professional artist series paints, three brushes, a circular white palate that I still use TODAY to mix paints—no joke—and Arches watercolor paper in 140lb that we tore into quarter sheets (it was expensive).

She brought three brushes—amazing but I learned to paint a beautiful landscape that very day with only three brushes and four paint colors that we mixed on my circular white palate.

The brushes, I still have them today and they are very worn. One was a larger flat brush used for painting washes of color to make expressive skies with clouds. Another was a large round brush that we used to both load my palate with water to mix paint…and we also painted ocean waves of deep blue with this brush. The third brush was a smaller round brush for detail.

The colors that I specifically remember were yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, french ultramarine blue, prussian blue, burnt sienna, burnt umber and raw umber. There might have also been a green but then again, we might have mixed a green. No black—you mix blacks and greys. No white—white comes from the paper…so you must be careful to not lose white highlights.

The paper smelled like wet dog but the joy of mixing paint and adding those first colors onto the paper wet-into-wet was amazing. That is a joy that I still experience today. Every new painting offers new possibilities to bring color and light to life.

That first painting was a simple landscape that we copied out of a book that Sandi had brought. The book was titled Basic Watercolor painting by Judith Campbell-Reed and many of the example paintings were in black and white—because in the 1980s, printing color on every page was expensive.

I no longer have that painting but in looking at the example in the book (that still sits on my office shelf), we used 3 colors to create a simple green hillside painting with a soft afternoon sky. We mixed a dab of prussian blue with a minute dab of raw umber and a lot of water—Sandi taught that day that the best colors were mixed…and some colors go a long way so you only add a little.

I took the wide flat brush, loaded it with clear water and swept it neatly across the top of the paper in 3 or 4 horizontal strokes. We then took the soft blue color that we mixed, loaded the brush with that soft blue and then allowed it to sweep across the paper in even strokes, starting at the top. Each further stroke beneath had less paint and this created a soft graduated effect. When we got to the bottom of the wet area, Sandi lifted the paper up and allowed the color to further drift down—and a sky was born.

The next section had us mixing yellow ochre and a dab of ultramarine blue to make a very soft green. We also mixed yellow ochre with a dab of burnt sienna and again, yellow ochre with raw sienna. These colors along with the large round brush would paint a soft grassy hillside. Sections of grass were added with the smaller round brush. There was a lot of technique in this first lesson…too much to tell here. The final details were three birds that were painted with expressive V shapes.

This painting experience was inspiring to me! My painting had turned out exactly like the book’s example (thanks to Sandi). In fact, the first steps were in shown in black and white…the final image of the painting we were duplicating was the only example printed in color in this particular lesson.

I couldn’t wait for the next lesson and the beautiful dance between water and color that it would bring.

My mother was shocked at the cost of the professional watercolor paper but Sandi had explained that I would get the best results for my effort with the best paper. The quality of the paper was more important than the quality of the brushes or even the paint.

Needless to say, we (cat people…then) all learned to live with that familiar smell of wet dog. This humble first painting changed the course of my life.