Vincent the Peaceful Assassin: Rediscovering the joy of art through watercolor pens

Because I am currently a lady of leisure, I have had more time to do things for sheer pleasure. One of the things I used to do that I stopped doing after awhile is painting. I was never very good, having only ever taken a single art class in high school solely because it seemed like one of the more enjoyable ways to earn an extra A for SPM. I did learn a few lessons that stuck though, such as thinking about where the light source is coming from in a scene, and that perspective is important to give depth. And I learned how to paint trees. Lots of trees. My favorite thing was to do tree trunks. They were never very good, but I really enjoyed the process.

Fast-forward about 15 years later, and I started picking up pastels as another medium that I could lose myself in. I wasn't very good at pastels either, but they're much quicker to do. In about half an hour to an hour tops, I could bang out a complete picture of a penguin, cat, owl, skyline, whathaveyou. Pastel pictures are easy to make but really easy to ruin as well, and the dust gets everywhere. You also can't blend colors the same way you could watercolor. But I never got around to picking up watercolor because I found the process of washing up so irritating. With pastels, when you're done you just blow off the dust and put them away.

Then I found this thing called watercolor pens. I never knew such a thing existed, but apparently they have for awhile! No washing up required!

Matt bought me a pack from Chromatek that came with a near tutorial pad so that I could learn how to use them. That turned out much more fun and satisfying than I anticipated, and was a good way to get used to watercoloring again.