I never thought 10 years ago that I’d probably still be painting in the future, or that I’d even want to do that as my career someday, but here I am. It’s pretty cool to look back on these years and see where I started. I’d like to briefly share my journey with you, as it’s quite interesting to see where I’ve recently ended up given my beginnings.

2009 - 2011 - Watercolors (Mostly)

I started painting while in my second year of college during a Color & Composition class. We had an assignment where we had to create multiple pieces with each one being done in a different medium. I chose to do Acrylic for one and Watercolor for the other one. I had no experience using either one before doing this assignment and to my surprise, I very much enjoyed using watercolors. But I was quite terrible at color mixing, to be honest. That’s something I had to work on over the next few years.

I used watercolors for just about a solid year while going to school but I had no intention of becoming a ‘painter’ or making a career out of these watercolors or even painting at all. It was just for fun and something I enjoyed but I wasn’t sure where my future was headed at the time. I thought I wanted to be an illustrator of some kind but that didn’t pan out at all. Below are some of my best watercolors from that time. There were way more bad than good during this time, these were the ‘lucky’ ones for me, haha.

2011 - 2015 - Acrylics

Late 2011 is when I became serious about my painting and also when I started using and understanding Acrylic paint. I painted a lot from my imagination and began to develop my sense of color, composition, and edges to create more realistic paintings. I spent around 4 years with exclusively using acrylics. Eventually I started experimenting more with Golden OPEN Acrylics and OPEN Medium, which allowed me to keep the paint wet for up to 24 hours and this also helped me to improve the quality of my work.

Over the years, I had a lot of people recommend that I try using oil paints to see if I like them or not, and at the time I was very opposed to using them. I wanted to “master” the medium I was using as best as I could but eventually I grew weary of the struggle acrylics gave me. After going to San Francisco in the Spring of 2015 to see a show of great paintings, I saw some Monet’s and a Sargent painting of Lady Agnew and was completely inspired to paint portraits. I went home and tried with my acrylics and it was a disaster. So, then I decided to give oils a try. (Some acrylic paintings below).

2015 - 2019 - Oils

This was the point of no return. Mid-2015, I started painting with Oils and was blown away by how they felt and what I was able to achieve with them so easily. In comparison, I struggled so much with acrylics - I painted quite fast in order to blend, I struggled to get soft edges - but with oils, all of this was so easy to achieve.

Even more so, my art began to improve in quality and I painted on location quite a few times with oils. But once I began traveling once or twice a year, I realized it would be a cool experience to document and paint the places I went. This was difficult because with oils, there’s so many materials and paints and solvents, etc.. and I didn’t want to bother with figuring out how to travel and store all of this stuff. I’m quite a minimalist while traveling and wanted a painting setup to suit my needs in that manner. (Oil paintings below).

2018 - Present - Watercolors

This is when I thought of J. S. Sargent and all of the watercolors I’ve seen of his from his travels over the years in books I own of his work, and also came across an artist on Youtube named Marco Bucci - before I took a trip to Alaska. He used watercolors and gouache with a minimalist setup and I was hooked. I had seen other artists before using similar setups on location but his made the most sense for my needs. So I tweaked a few things and adapted it for my travels. And thus, I’ve come full-circle - back to using watercolors once again. Not something I ever thought I’d enjoy doing again.

And just recently in late 2019, I began doing some watercolors in the studio using my plein air sketches and photographs from travels as references. Before this, I was only doing small watercolor sketches on location for painting. I haven’t used oils since early 2019. And at this point, I’m not sure if I’m going to return to oils or not. I’m kind of just going with the flow and seeing where my art takes me. I’m becoming more and more minimalist in my life and watercolor seems to suit those needs really well. If I do return to oils, I might try to minimize them in some way and probably only paint on Oil Paper of some kind and paint small to conserve space.

New Decade

I’m starting out strong with watercolors in this new decade. For almost all of December 2019, I did one painting a day with watercolors, and I’m hoping I can keep up some sort of similar schedule moving forward. I don’t know what I’ll be doing or where my art will be at the end of another 10 years but I’m hoping to enjoy the journey and stay true to myself. Looking forward to sharing with you. (Watercolors below.)

Be sure to leave me a comment or share it if you found it helpful!