Watercolor Painting for Beginners: What I Learned Teaching Myself at age 53
- Kathy Buskett
- 20 hours ago
- 7 min read
Evidently, you CAN teach an old dog new tricks.
I turned 53 this summer, and this year I taught myself how to use watercolor.
Anyone who really knows me well will tell you that I don't like using color. Or at least I didn't.
There's actually a technical reason for that. I've been doing linework for so long in my live work that I like working with lines. I do use color live, but I use these vintage art sticks that can cost $100 a pack and sometimes $20 a stick, so I don't exactly want to burn through those. I also don't like how hard you have to press with them or how the color goes over my lines. Then I have to go BACK over the lines, and it just takes too long.
The same thing happened with commissions. People would write or call and ask me to do a commission, and I really didn't want to do them because they took too long for what I was getting paid. It doesn't make any sense to put eight hours into a $50 commission. So I basically stopped offering inexpensive commissions and only did more expensive work or full-fledged paintings.
Watercolor Painting for Beginners:
Watercolor Pencils Were My First Step
Flashback to last summer.
My friend Jenny came to my house with all her art stuff, and we sat down and experimented with watercolor. She showed me some tricks and tips while I bitched about it pretty much the whole time. 😂
But she reminded me about watercolor pencils, which I had used before, and I thought, OK, I can do this. So I've been using watercolor pencils and experimenting with them for the past year.
The main reason I started was because I wanted to color the children's book I illustrated. Since then I've illustrated another one, and I have about 30 more on the way. I still have to redo some of those original illustrations because the characters have evolved as I've drawn them, but I've been getting more and more comfortable with using color.
If you're looking at watercolor pencils for beginners because regular watercolor seems intimidating, I get it. Watercolor pencils were what finally got me comfortable enough with color to try something I had spent years saying I didn't like.
So yeah, if you're thinking about them, I would say buy a cheap set and try them.
The $12 Watercolor Kit That Got Me Painting
Now flash forward to this summer.
For my birthday on August 14, we went to Biloxi for the weekend. It was a nice, relaxing weekend, although I wish we'd had more time because that was pretty much my vacation.
We had to go to Walmart while we were there, and I always go through the art section because I'm a sucker for art supplies. I saw this tiny little watercolor kit for about $12, and my son Matthew was with me.
He said, "I'll buy that for you for your birthday."
So I started experimenting with it. The whole kit is self-contained, including one of those brushes that you put water inside, so all I really needed was a paper towel. I could take this little thing anywhere, sit down at a restaurant and paint.
And I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually LIKED it.
ACEOs: Tiny Watercolor Paintings That Got Me Hooked
Right after we got back from Biloxi, I asked Jenny if she knew about ACEOs.
She said, "Aren't those for artists?"
And I said, "Well, yeah, but other people are buying them online now too. And
wouldn't it be cool to just sit and make some art for ourselves for a change?"
When you're an artist for a living, you don't always get to do that.
So we met at a local coffee shop.
ACEOs are tiny pieces of original art, only 2½ x 3½ inches, about the size of a trading card. I'd already done the linework on some cards, and we sat there with our watercolors and started playing.
Jenny said, "How about a sandpiper? I like sandpipers."
So I pulled up a picture of a sandpiper, and we were off.
My First Easy Watercolor Paintings
I did the little sandpiper and then some other seabirds, an osprey and a few pelicans, and eventually I started doing other sea creatures. I live on Mobile Bay, right on the Gulf Coast, and people here love buying ocean and coastal things for their homes, so there certainly wasn't a shortage of things to paint.
But mostly I was just having fun.
I had some kids ask me to teach them how to draw animals and i didnt make the class because I wasn't sure how to teach it. So this was also experimentation for a possible future art class.
You can tell that the sandpiper and some of those first pieces were early ones because they're kind of flat. Meaning there's not a lot of depth to them. I was doing my best and relying mostly on what I already knew about color theory, using really limited color palettes like blue and orange or purple and yellow.
For me, these little ACEOs were perfect easy watercolor paintings for a beginner because they were small enough that I wasn't afraid to mess one up. If I wanted to try something, I could just try it. If I messed up, no harm no foul, I could chuck it. (But I didn't wind up chucling anything!)
Learning Watercolor With Animals and Sea Creatures
I kept working at it and started getting a little more adventurous. I worked on making the water reflections look real on the dolphins, and later I did the manatees. You can actually see me getting better as you go through the paintings.
Apparently easy watercolor animals became my own personal beginner watercolor course without my realizing it. I started with a sandpiper, then tried other birds and sea creatures, and each one gave me something different to figure out.
Then recently I painted a dog that somebody asked me to do, and I honestly think it may be the best dog I've ever drawn. I also did a portrait of a man that someone asked me to paint. Somewhere along the way, people started asking me to do commissions again.
And now I have a way to do them that actually makes sense.
Small Watercolor Paintings Solved My Commission Problem
I can make someone a small, original piece of artwork without spending eight hours on it, and I'm using a medium that I actually enjoy. That's the part I never expected. After all these years of saying I didn't like color, I think I've finally conquered watercolor.
These small watercolor paintings and ACEOs give me another option between a quick sketch and one of my much more expensive, full-fledged paintings. I hadn't really set out to solve a business problem when Jenny and I sat down at that coffee shop. We were supposed to be making art for ourselves for a change.
Funny how that worked out.
Why Learning Something New at 53 Matters to Me
There's another reason learning something new at 53 means a lot to me. My mom died from dementia. She didn't have a very long battle with it, but in the last year or two of her life she declined sharply, and it runs in my family.
So I've been reading about the benefits of learning new skills and how good it can be to keep challenging our brains as we get older. I know my own memory isn't what it used to be. I wake up in the morning sometimes and don't remember everything I'm supposed to do, so I've learned that I need to make my list the day before.
I can't control what happens as I get older, but I can keep working my brain. So, I'm learning watercolor. I'm illustrating children's books. I'm writing a novel. I made my website mysef (https://www.caricaturesbykathy.com), and I'm working on another one. I'm going to keep writing, drawing, painting, learning and doing the things that make me use my brain for as long as I possibly can.
What I Learned About Watercolor as a Beginner
When I look at these little paintings in order, I can actually see what happens when you keep working at something you don't know how to do yet. The first ones aren't as good as the last ones, and they're not supposed to be.
I'm 53 years old. I've been a professional artist for decades, and I was still a beginner when I picked up that little watercolor kit.
If you're trying to figure out how to learn watercolor, I don't have some fancy system to sell you. What worked for me was starting small, using what I already knew about art, experimenting, and giving myself permission to make things that weren't necessarily going to be sold to anybody.
It turns out that making art just because I wanted to make art was exactly what I needed.
So yeah. Evidently you CAN teach an old dog new tricks.
Or is it a new dog old tricks?
Strike that. Reverse it. 😂
About Kathy
I'm Kathy Buskett, a professional caricature artist and live event illustrator with more than 27 years of experience.
I spent ten years drawing professionally in Las Vegas and now live on Alabama's Gulf Coast, where I create live guest sketches, commissioned artwork and illustrations.
I'm also illustrating children's books, writing my first novel and, at 53, apparently adding watercolor artist to the list.
Want One of My Tiny Paintings?
I'm now accepting a limited number of commissions for these little watercolor paintings, including pets, people and coastal subjects. If you'd like me to create one for you, I'd love to hear what you have in mind.
And if you found me because you're looking for a live artist for a wedding, corporate event or celebration, that's still what I spend most of my time doing. I create fast, flattering live sketches that give your guests both entertainment and an original piece of art to take home.
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