Letting my fears go and my toddler paint with aquarelles

I’ve always liked watercolor painting, at least for as long as I can remember. I used to spend long hours during summer vacations or weekends playing with my watercolors, sometimes getting to the results I wanted and other times getting frustrated with the flooded construction paper.

Anyway, at the end of my high school years I started taking painting classes and the best of it was that the teacher asked for good painting materials. During my first years at university I took aquarelle classes as well, on an on an off basis. The best part again was that I was introduced to new techniques and officially allowed to use aquarelle paper and other good materials that prevented the frustrating floods.

I then painted a fair amount of aquarelles and even got to sell some of them to friends and gave them as gifts for weddings and other special occasions. However, even during my golden years as an artist I still wasted paper, eventually got discouraged with a finished product and ended up throwing my work to the garbage can. Just as when I was a child and got those frustrating floods.

My child has also shown interest in watercolor painting. For me it’s been a 3yo process to let him use my “quality” supplies. I started 3 years ago by providing him with some construction paper, medium quality aquarelles and my quality brushes. About 2 years ago I gave him my Grumbacher aquarelle paintings and decided he will eventually learn how to use them properly. However, I still kept my professional aquarelle paper pieces with me until YESTERDAY.

In fact those papers were bought about 7 or 8 years ago, when I intended to make a work of art from them. I’ve been keeping them all this time with no purpose since I haven’t painted in a long time. Anyway, those are “expensive” and I thought I needed to give them a good use (meaning “adult use”.)

Yesterday I let them go when I saw my child struggling with a watercolor flood. I felt a kind of compassion for him while I recalled my childhood and how frustrating it was to have that flooded paper. I felt the impulse to offer him my “expensive” watercolor paper, and I’m glad I didn’t give it a second thought. After a few seconds there he was painting as a professional, with my “expensive” Grumbacher watercolor paintings, the “expensive” brushes, on “expensive” paper.

I didn’t mention him how “expensive” and “good quality” the paper was. I just told him I had some watercolor paper and asked if he wanted to try on it. Obviously he felt the difference and got into painting until my collection of 10 pieces of different sizes all turned into art work.

Wow, it took me all this time to realize he needed them more than I, but at least I’m happy I was able to realize a way to help him with his watercolor self learning.

If you have a child struggling with watercolor floods, tell him or her that I understand the frustration and please try to get him a better quality paper.

Here’s a picture of his work with the watercolor paper. It would be quite impossible to achieve something like this (I mean on this size-see the pen for a reference), using regular paper.

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