Fixing your mistakes

During my art journey, I always had a fear of watercolors. It was the medium where I was the most afraid of making mistakes. With graphite pencils, you could erase your mistakes. With oils and acrylics, you could paint over any mistakes you made. With watercolors, mistakes felt much more permanent. Once the paint dried, there was no magic eraser to lift off the errant strokes. Being a translucent medium, painting over the mistake wasn't an easy option either.

At first, I was so fearful that I would spend enormous amounts of time doing a pencil under sketch that I would erase over and over again until it was just right. And once I had that pencil sketch perfect, I would almost be too afraid to start painting because I was petrified of making a mistake.

But, I’ve learned that nothing in art is permanent if you don’t want it to be. With watercolors, you can incorporate your mistakes into your final piece. You can also, if you’re quick enough, lift up the colors with some water before the paint dries and make it appear as if the mistake was never there. With this card, all the shadows of the cupcake were on the right-hand side, as if the light were coming from up and to the left. When I got to the bottom, though, for some reason, I started painting the shadow so that it fell to the left, completely opposite to the frosting shadow.

I quickly realized the error and used a paper towel to soak up the original wash of blue paint. You can still see maybe the faintest outlines of it, but it’s mostly gone. The painting isn’t done yet, and I’m mostly just playing around with colors and watercolors.

I think there’s a lesson to be learned here -- maybe it’s that if you recognize your mistake soon enough, you can fix it and move on. Or maybe, mistakes are all part of the art process and part of life, and you shouldn’t be afraid to make them. Or maybe it’s just a simple watercolor cupcake painting on a restless Tuesday night.