Followers of my blog might recall that I was painting daily through April, going through the lessons in the 30 Days to More Confident Watercolor Sketching course I created in 2022. Well, mostly April. I didn’t finish til midMay! 

I approached it with a few goals – and some of those changed as I worked through each painting:

1. Paint larger – instead of postcards, paint 1/8th sheet size, about 7.5×11. 
2. Discover what it’s like to paint mid-sized flowers – not small sketches, not flower-focused large works…but flower elements at a middle-ish size.
3. Play with new brushes.
4. Where possible practice large background washes.
5. Add bonus content to lessons. Not video, but as much as possible, at least a few steps along the way. 

Going through all the paintings together at the end was a great exercise – and the lonnnnnng video below is the result! Pull up a  cuppa something delicious and visit with me – apologies for the length but if you figure 30 paintings – lots of them did need more than just 1 minute, so it grew long!

Tutorial: Learn to critique your art…gently! Assessing 30 of my own pieces

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Tips for self critiques

Artists can be our own worst critics – and learning to assess your work from an independent viewpoint is the one thing that can change that.

1.  Step outside yourself. Look at your work as if you’ve not seen it before – as if you just walked into a gallery. What works? Where is your eye drawn to? 
2. Be honest. That means both honest about what isn’t working well, AND what is. Some of us are overly cheerful about our work when we need to see areas to work on; and some of us are just down on all of it. In reality we’ve all got a mix, so see if you can find both successes AND areas for improvement in each work.
3. Give distance. Don’t do a serious critique til you’ve slept on it. Not on the art of course! But create some distance from the work. Put it away for a little while, a day or three at least. Pull it out and pin it up in an area of your home or studio where you’ll “stumble” on it when walking in. That can give you some distance from what it took to create.
4. Only compare to yourself. If you get into a habit of critiquing your work over time, this gets easier – because it becomes very clear where you were in your skills six months ago, six years ago. You’ll have a better idea of the things you’ve been working on and if you’ve made progress. Without regular critiques and goal-setting, it’ll be harder to get an accurate look back and therefore harder to track progress.
5. Write down things to learn. As you finish a work and find an area you want to improve, don’t just say that and move on to something else. Write it down – whether in a journal, diary, or a sticky note to post nearby. See if there’s a book on the topic that’s available, or an artist you follow online who’s great at that thing. Do they have a book, a YouTube channel, or live or real-life classes? Set a goal to find a way to learn what’s on your list.

What other tips do you have? I’d love to hear your experience in the comments!

Sale!

I’ve put this category of paintings on sale, and they already started out at quite the deal…snag yourself something for your own wall, or to save for a gift for a birthday, anniversary, wedding…maybe even for Christmas (HINT: you can frame it now, and enjoy it for months til you wrap it up for Christmas, eh?)

Note these are each approximately 7.5″ x 11″ which is not a standard size mat. I’d recommend trimming the painting to 7″ x 9″ (these have a little space to trim up) and “float” it in an 8×10 mat. You could also take it to a framer if you’ve got some money to spend on it.

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