I am not an artist. I have never considered myself an artist. When I’m looking for something I’m bad at, art is my go-to answer. When I meet someone who can paint or draw, I’m fascinated by their ability, and I often mention that I wish I were good at art.
Spending so much of my life convinced that I am a bad artist means that it’s almost impossible for me to be anything besides a bad artist. I’m very good at being a bad artist. In middle school, my small school had an art class, and while I enjoyed the class, I didn’t really know how to get better. I wanted to draw cute kittens, but rather than showing me how to do that or helping me to see that I could get there through these other steps, my teacher directed me to more cartoonish drawings with clear lines. Then she gave me a B on a project I had worked on. I was frustrated and annoyed, and when I had the chance to give up art for study hall, I decided there were better things I could work on.
Looking back, I know that I was arrogant and unwilling to put in the work at the basic steps so I could do the type of art that excited me. But I also wish my teacher had shown me that rather than a bad artist, I just had low drawing skills. Being a bad artist is an identity, and an identity that I have embraced now for many years. But this identity keeps me from being anything but a bad artist. It keeps me from even trying to improve.
My roommate, Kendra, is an artist. She has always enjoyed art, and over the years, I have seen her improve as an artist as she practices basic and more complex skills. Sometime last year, she bought some watercolor paints and she has been using them to paint little journals of her travels. She also pulls them out during lulls in conversations or when the people around her are on their phones (that doesn’t happen in most of our friend circles, but sometimes when she stays with certain friends, they have different attitudes toward being together).
As I watched her paint and use her painting as a way to connect with people, I started to wonder what I would paint if I were to buy watercolors also. That was an easy decision. I love sunsets, and since sunsets are more about color than precise drawing skills, I thought it would be easier for me.
This thought simmered in the back of my mind for several months before I decided to buy the watercolor, brush, and notebook set. And it was cheap—only about 40 kuai ($6) for the set.
After it arrived, I watched a couple of short YouTube videos about painting sunsets. The main things I remember was that the videos said you should get the whole paper wet as the first step so the colors would blend well. The videos also had some suggestions about what colors to use for clouds and mountains.
Then I got to work. I have a picture in my living room of a sunset I saw when I was in Hawaii, so I used that for my first reference picture. I learned a lot from trying to paint sunsets. I learned that covering the page with water does help the colors to blend, but it also makes it difficult to make the colors very dark.
I also learned that rocks are a lot harder to paint than they look. And clouds. I struggled with clouds. I still struggle with clouds. And the sun. Should be easy, right? Just an orangish circle. But is it really orange? And how do you paint a circle when my colors keep bleeding into each other, and the circle won’t stay a circle? And what about water? How in the world are you supposed to paint water and show that it’s something different from the sky that uses most of the same colors?
But as I have struggled with these things, I have started to look closer at the world around me. When I see a sunset, rather than just snapping a picture and turning away, I pause to look at the colors. Where are the purples and pinks? And what do clouds actually look like? How might I use my watercolor paints and brush to get that image of a cloud? How does the light come through the clouds? And oh look! There’s an airplane track—why did I never think of putting airplane tracks in my paintings?
A lot of my paintings come from sunsets that I see around me. I have a view out my window with the mountains and the trees and just the pinkish sky showing through the trees. My window faces south, so I don’t have a clear view of the sunset, but I do love the sliver of sunset that I get to see.
I painted another view from memory. I used to live on the 28th floor of an apartment building facing west. Every time I was home, I could look out at some beautiful sunsets over the city with the mountains far in the distance. I tried to capture that once. When I showed my dad, he tried to convince me that it’s a scene from Independence Day-hahaha.
Later on, I kept noticing the silver linings on all of the clouds, so I tried a couple of paintings that had those silver linings. I’m still working on those because I usually use yellow, but really the silver linings are more of a whitish color. I tried mixing white with my yellow, but it doesn’t really make a difference.
I tried to paint clouds that have different layers, like a darker middle and more of a gray outside, but those clouds came out looking like weird sheep.
I’m still working on my suns. My watercolor pen stores water in half of the pen, but sometimes it leaks out water when I don’t want it to, and that makes the suns a bit wet. I spend a lot of time dabbing the water away with a tissue and adding more colors. I like the mix of colors this creates eventually, but it usually takes a while.
Eventually, I went back to the first picture I had done. I wanted to try it again. I used some of the things I had learned, and I love the new picture so much. I especially love comparing them. A lot of art is trial and error, and until I was willing to try, I could never get to the beautiful side of things.
I still want to figure out how to paint the rays coming out from the sun when it’s behind a cloud. I love that. I tried once, but I’m not very satisfied. I want to keep working on it. I have some more ideas, but I need to keep trying.
Some of my paintings are not my favorite. I have shared some of these paintings with you because no one starts out as a perfect artist. One of the things Kendra has taught me is that it’s ok to not be great, but if a fear of being bad keeps us from trying at all, that’s a bit sad. I have shared some pictures that show my low art skills because that’s part of the journey.
But I also have some pictures that I really like. But I don’t want to stop here. I want to keep painting and keep growing. I taught European culture for a couple of semesters, and we talked a lot about art. Since then, I’ve been reading more books about art and going to more art museums, and I love looking at beautiful art. Trying to paint helps me to appreciate great art even more.
Anyone can be a bad artist. I’ve been a very good bad artist for many years. But over the last few months, for the first time in my life, I have tried to be something besides a bad artist. I’m a bit hesitant to share these pictures with people because it’s a bit humiliating to not be very good at something, but I am trying to fight against my own pride, and sharing these with you is something I can do in that fight.
Is there anything that you aren’t good at that you have been trying to learn lately? I’d love to hear about it!
