If you’ve been following along on this roller-coast rare disease journey of mine, you might remember that I decided to learn to paint – with watercolours – back in 2019. I’d signed up for a bunch of creative arts courses, at local community centres, galleries, and libraries, all of which were scheduled to begin in early 2020. Then, as with so many other people’s plans, these courses were all cancelled due to the current pandemic.
After a year of feeling as though my plans were on hold, I decided at the end of 2020 to try to find some live-virtual or online courses. By this time, many art schools had switched to virtual courses, using video-conferencing technologies like ZOOM.
The first one I tried was a free one-hour session with an organization in the UK called Art Safari. They usually run safari trips for artists, as a travel agency run by – and with – artists who provide on-site instruction and coaching. This “Wake up your Watercolours” session took place on January 27, which was the first time I picked up a paint brush to use my still-in-their-wrapping watercolour paints.
I quickly realized that I’d need to learn to draw in order to improve my ability to paint a scene. So I bought a learn-to-draw book on February 19, recommended by another painting student, and began teaching myself to draw. That book, by the way, is “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. My local bookshop was selling the book as a package with the companion workbook, which I found very helpful.
It’s been almost five months since I first used watercolour paints, and I thought it might be fun to share some of my creations with you. I should mention that I’ve been harnessing my since-childhood desire to learn to paint in watercolours as the basis for my own DIY plan to help manage the symptoms of the rare autoimmune and neuro-inflammatory disease with which I was struck in 2016. I’m calling this DIT plan my “art-as-therapy” plan, although it’s not at all like art therapy (1) which is actually a form of psychological support.
CRPS or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome causes; fully-body autoimmune fatigue, mostly in the late afternoon/evenings; chronic high-impact pain in my right hand and forearm (neuropathic pain worse than shingles, joint pain, allodynia or skin pain – and up to 5 other specific pain types, depending on the day); a ‘mild cognitive impairment’ from the neuro-inflammatory aspect of the disease, which developed at the end of 2018 and forced me to abandon my beloved career in bioethics/biomedical ethics; and more…
Although I’ve only been painting for a few months, I’ve taken advantage of many of the virtual art courses and offerings now available due to the pandemic. I’ve now taken several art courses and workshops since the end of January.
Most important have been the courses, workshops, and free weekly sessions with Art Safari. (2) Their weekly live “speed-sketching” sessions – guided by an artist – focus on a different category of wildlife each week. Butterflies, elephants, cheetahs, hares, lions, penguins, and more; all with the intent of learning to sketch or paint quickly to be able to capture images of animals in the wild.
These live sessions get quickly to the heart of drawing; “Follow the line of the cheetah’s neck, across that hump over its shoulders, down the back to the tail. Note the curve of the tail, and the…” You get the idea! The artist-instructor tells you what to look for, what to focus on as you draw.
In mid-February I took their two-day introduction to watercolour painting, their back-to-back live-virtual courses “Watercolour Basics” and “Taking Watercolours Further”. At the end of March I took a landscape painting course with them, then in April I took their intriguing “Landscapes of the Imagination” one-day workshop. I love their approach to watercolours, and to art in general, so much that I’ve already signed up for more of their sessions this summer and next fall!
I also took art courses through the Visual Arts Centre here in Montréal, a historic art school founded by women artists for women artists back in 1946. (3) Originally The Potters’ Club, it was created when women weren’t welcome in art clubs. First off I took their virtual-live 8-week watercolour course, for 2 hours each week. Then I attended one of their full-day virtual watercolour workshops, with two others coming up later this summer.
The class one week was dedicated to urban landscapes, with homework to paint a couple of local scenes; these are my two “homework” paintings from that week. A local pharmacy and an industrial building, both of which I ride past on my regular bike rides. Each of them had beautiful flowering shrubs or trees in bloom, which is what attracted me to them, even thought I wasn’t able to paint them properly!
Watercolour painting & photo ©Sandra Woods 
Watercolour painting & photo ©Sandra Woods
Several other courses I took were provided through community art centres across Canada. One was a 5-week course, at 2 hours per class, and the other was a 4-week course that lasted 2.5 hours each session. A few Canadian museums offered live 1-hour workshops for beginners, and some art supply companies offered an assortment of free or low-cost 1- or 2-hour live or pre-recorded workshops.
Printed flyer for “Watercolour and Gouache” workshop by Jordan Rhodes, from Strathmore art supply company; sketch and paintings by Sandra Woods 
Printed flyer for “Watercolour and Gouache” workshop by Jordan Rhodes, from Strathmore art supply company; sketch and unfinished painting by Sandra Woods
In February and March I participated in a fantastic event, called Sketchbook Revival. This was a free 21-day event, featuring a different 1-hour pre-recorded workshop each day across artistic mediums. Several watercolour artists were featured, including naturalist John Muir Laws, local Montréal artist Shari Blaukopf, Susan Chiang, Angela Fehr, and more. (I’m not providing references or links to all of these artists, or the following ones; if you’re interested, you can simply Google them!)
Angela Fehr, a West Coast Canadian artist, then offered her Watercolour Jumpstart program for free. This is a pre-recorded 4-week self-paced online course, about two to four hours per week, depending on how much time a student opted to spend on each exercise.
I attended live-virtual workshops with other individual watercolour artists including Renée Dion (a local artist who creates landscapes and flowers from “flowy” abstract shapes formed through wet-on-wet), Sherril Girard (a former Montreal watercolorist, now living in Toronto), Dan Marshall (in the US), Claudia Myatt (in England), and Michael Solovyev (who lives right here in Montréal). And, of course, I watched a number of recorded tutorials and workshops. Some of the most memorable were provided by Linda Gunn (US), Andrew Pitt (UK), and Keiko Tanabe (US).
After all of this, though, I’m still a beginner! I wasn’t planning to share much of my learning-to-paint “artwork”, but changed my mind after a few people commented – over on Instagram and Twitter – that seeing what I was doing had encouraged them to try something a bit outside of their our own comfort zones. Whether or not you’re thinking of trying something different in your own life, I hope you enjoy this post!
I’ve decided to focus on some of my paintings of birds, because a bird is the first thing I opted to paint just for fun. This little chickadee was done on February 4, 2021, a stylized version of a photo I’d taken of one in my backyard. Then I painted a few owls, for one of my aunts in Vancouver who adores these gorgeous birds as much as I do. Finally, the woodpecker was painted from a photograph taken by one of my friends – a professional photographer – as a surprise for her birthday (you can find her photos for sale at DoreenMiller.com):
Photo & painting ©Sandra Woods 
Watercolour painting & photo ©Sandra Woods 
Painting by Sandra Woods; Photo by Doreen Miller (www.doreenmiller.com)
Hopefully you can see a bit of a progression in these bird paintings, from the chickadee in February through to the owl and woodpecker in March. As always, thanks so much for stopping by. Keep well, stay safe, and take care of yourself.
References
(1) Canadian Art Therapy Association. What Is Art Therapy? Canadian Art Therapy Association website. Updated 2020. Accessed 21 Jun 2021. Online:
https://www.canadianarttherapy.org/what-is-art-therapy
(2) Art Safari Ltd. UK Workshops. Webpage. Woodbridge, Suffolk. Accessed 21 Jun 2021. Online:
(3) Visual Arts Centre. History. Webpage. Montreal, Canada. Accessed 21 Jun 2021. Online:
https://www.visualartscentre.ca/visual-arts-centre/history/