EP 132 -- Steve Mitchell (The Mind of Watercolor) & How to Learn Watercolour

It can be a maddening, frustrating medium. You just don't let it be. Try to find that next little key. Beginners should watch advanced content too, because they'll see what they're aiming for. And you can wonder how you get there. And usually you'll, you'll figure it out. Usually you will. Steve Mitchell, widely known as the mind of watercolor is back on our podcast after three years. A professional artist and teacher with over 40 years of experience, Steve is a well of knowledge. Last time we got to hear about Steve's story, since he first fell in love with art, up to being who he is, why you should not listen to Bob Ross, different ways to monetize your art and how painting is similar to cooking. Oh, and we did rant a lot about digital versus traditional art. Today, Steve and I were able to cover what happened since we last chatted. Join us today to learn why Steve loves watercolor and landscapes, what mediums are great to compliment watercolor, why you should learn from content that is more advanced than your current level, the best way to learn how to use watercolor, and inside information on Steve's upcoming landscape painting course with us at Etcher. It's perfect for intermediate level artists, and you are going to explore various painting techniques for creating depth, texture, and atmosphere from composition, color theory, brushwork, and ways to create a sense of light and shadow in your work. At the end of the course, you'll have the confidence and skills to create your original landscape painting. All right. So Steve's course starts on November 11th. It includes about eight hours of content, which are divided into four classes and one live feedback session. At the very end, everything is live. Steve will be there for you the whole time. And as a free gift, Steve is doing a live demo on our YouTube channel on November 4th, 12 PM Eastern time. Links for this, links for the course. Everything is linked on the blog post associated with this episode at etcherlab.com forward slash Mitchell too. That's M I T C H E double L and the number two. All right, Steve. So we talked roughly three years ago. Wow. I covered, I know when the pandemic started. Yeah, that long. I know time just flies. Uh, pandemic was starting and we thought we were in the middle of it. That's hilarious. Like, Oh, right. We covered your background, uh, why you started art and the role that your mother played into that. We talked about your journey to YouTube, how it all started and your passion for outdoors. Um, and I have follow-up questions because a lot happened since then. But before I go straight to those questions, can you give us a little bit of a recap of what happened? Uh, since three years ago and now, you know, uh, I have to be honest, not a whole lot's changed. Um, maybe I've gotten a little older and slowed down a little more, but other than that, uh, I still try to put out a video a week, um, for a little while I was on Skillshare. I took those down. Um, but I still do the same things. I, I focus a lot on trees and, uh, you know, Patreon is growing, but I, in terms of how I do and what I do, it hasn't changed much, still loving it. Still doing it. Yeah. More of a master. Now that you were then, uh, keep on climbing the never ending. Uh, mountain never, they're never reaching summit. I think I, one thing I will say is I think I noticed how much more I enjoy sketchbooking than doing finished frame of a painting. I do not know why that is, but, uh, maybe it's, you know, I love James Gurney. Maybe just watching him. I love that he's like, Hey, he does everything in the sketchbook. I know he does more than that, but. Uh, now when I sit down to paint, I think, am I going to do a painting or I'm going to do a sketch or full painting that goes in a sketchbook? However you want to characterize it. So maybe that has, hasn't changed, but it's solidified. I've got a lot less loose paintings than I used to. And a lot more sketchbook work. Well, that's actually a good segue into some things I had here to ask you. So between full paintings and sketchbook work, I know your main medium is watercolor, but you've explored, and you also practice with several other mediums, right? Does the medium you choose have an impact on which canvas or surface you apply it on? Not really. Um, you know, because everything that I choose, all the mixed media that I do is usually still revolves around watercolor. So colored pencil, which is a great companion to watercolor, uh, gouache, of course, which is a form of watercolor. Um, what else? Uh, just, uh, usually drawing mediums are what I typically pair with watercolor, like pen and ink. You know, regular graphite. I've been experimenting with some charcoal. I haven't gotten into, I thought I might, but I haven't gotten into acrylic. Uh, but you can actually pair that with watercolor. Um, and I wouldn't have any hesitation putting that in a sketchbook. So I've got a lot of sketchbooks. Maybe that's what it is. I need to fill them. Or, or just stages of life as well, because we just sometimes feel like having it all contained. Just feel it somehow. Yes. You know what I think it is? Uh, I think the, the feeling of discovery is more alive in a sketchbook than it is on a page that you think might be a finished painting, because you just feel a little bit freer. And after all the years of doing illustration for, and design for clients, you know, and trying to meet their demands, I love the freedom. And I love just learning things that I didn't learn before. I, I love that much more than putting something on a page or on a piece of paper that's going to get framed. And that is no disrespect to gallery artists, because I have the greatest respect for them. They work hard and they, I know a number of them that are friends and do great work. But I think that may explain a little bit more what I'm enjoying so much about sketchbooks. I didn't have a lot of time through the years, through my career to do art for myself. Um, and when I did have the time, I was too burned out to do it. Uh, because most of my art was commercial. So, you know, I'm, and you, time is money. So you're trying to get from point A to point B as fast as you can. You know, I felt like I did quality work, but you don't spend time exploring and so it is something very much that I had to learn and something that, that I've tried to nurture since I started my YouTube channel. And that's probably been the most fun thing for me. Interesting. Yeah. All right. Let's talk a little bit about, I know we kind of covered this in the first interview, but I, I, I think we can take it further. Okay. Why watercolor? Just, let's go back to the beginning. The first medium I really painted with was acrylic. Uh, my parents gave me a nice acrylic set for Christmas. And so I've played around with that, but I'd say the first medium that really just clicked in place that I understood was watercolor, uh, took a course from a really great watercolorist, um, who did some demonstrations and it's just like, ah, you know, light bulb moments all over the place. And from then on, I just, I just kept playing with it, experimenting with it. Um, as I got further into my illustration career, I used a lot of other mediums just because watercolor was not used commercially a lot. Um, so I had to, and it kind of got back burner, but, uh, watercolor just has an immediacy that's wonderful, you know, and you can sit down and immediately start painting, you know, you don't have to do any palette prep, you don't have to do a lot of things, you know, to, to get ready. It's just easy. It's easy to clean up. Um, it doesn't make a big mess, just water, right? So that's an advantage, but I love the, the clean look of it. I mean, uh, I don't know, it does make sense. Even yeah. There's all the water out of Templeton. It gets, you know, it is especially when you were talking about how burned out you were when you were doing art commercially and you did a lot of digital back then as well, and you were too exhausted. You didn't put it in these words. I'm kind of, you know, to make art for yourself. So it does make sense that watercolor was the go-to medium and it stayed there for a while because it just needed something easy. I just find it very interesting how it's stuck because so many artists start with something, then they find out about something else. And that's, I mean, you started with acrylics. It's not like it was the first thing you ever started with was watercolor, but you took it so far and you were just saying a while ago that every other medium that you use kind of goes back to compliment watercolor. So I find it so fascinating that the pillar around everything, everything for you revolves around watercolor. And I just love how it's so you, how, how, I mean, even your, even your YouTube handle, it's all about watercolor. So I don't, I don't, I don't know. We're talking about acrylics the other day. I don't see you stepping away for a watercolor for a long time. And interestingly enough, you can use, and it's my favorite way to, to use acrylic to your point is you can use acrylic very, very similarly watercolor. And it's my favorite way to use acrylic. You can get out a piece of watercolor paper. You don't have to paint acrylic on a canvas. You can thin it down. So it's watery. You can use inks, acrylic inks, water them down, and you can get watercolor effects. And then similar to the way you might use gouache with watercolor, you can build up opacity in places if you want it. I, my plan was if I ever got into using acrylic on my channel, that's the direction I would go. I don't see a lot of people doing that and it's a beautiful way to go. So back to your point. Yeah. It all seems to come back to watercolor. I just think it's, it's a great fast paced way to experiment with images and drawing and art and I don't know, it's in your blood, you know? It does. And now let's look at the subject of your choices. So we did talk about how much you love outdoors in the first part of this interview a few years ago. And you even talked a little bit about how you were thinking of becoming a ranger and all of that and your connection to nature. And you do portray a wide variety of subjects, though your focus is heavily on landscapes. So can you explain a little bit about the, is there a connection or am I just making things up in my brain? So why landscapes and how heavy is landscape in your subject choice? Yeah, why landscape? That is a good question. I, you know, actually, I found it just when I was first starting out, you know, the easiest thing for my mind to grasp. I mean, there was everything you say. I love being outdoors. I love capturing scenery and that sort of thing. I think I found the greatest variety in landscape. There are so many ways you can approach it, so many focuses you can have. Mine's been steering closer and closer to unique tree structures. But, you know, things just happen. Sometimes it's hard to put into words. I have grown a great love for doing portraiture. I don't do a lot of that on my channel. For some reason, people don't prefer that I do that, but I still love to do it. And that was a love that grew much later in my career because I wasn't very good at it, you know, when I was younger. It takes a lot of practice and time. So, years ago when I wanted to take my watercolor skills back to zero because I felt like I was in some rut, a lot of that because of my career, that's when I started coming up with the spontaneous painting thing because it was a way to learn. Let me see what this medium will do that I didn't realize it will do, that I sort of wrote off or didn't know. Landscape fits best into that zone, you know, this free, loose, spontaneous expression. Yeah, it's all just kind of been an interest that I can't pull away from. I can't really attribute it to any other outside influence other than that. So, you were talking about portraits, how much you love it, but you really don't have it in your channel, on your channel. Did I infer correctly that it's mainly due to your audience preference? Is that it? Some. I mean, I'll never stop doing landscape because I do love it. I don't do that because that's just what people want. It's probably my first love is landscape. You know, if I had the time and the energy, I would probably do a whole separate channel just on portraiture. I don't have the time or the energy. But, um, yeah, maybe because I could could bring along a second audience. What I've found on my channel is they don't seem to cross much whenever it's, if there's a dichotomy here, whenever I do a portrait, I get a lot of comments to say, oh, please do more of that. And I think, oh, I would like to. And then the analytics and the statistics don't match up. They just go. And yet I know there's an audience for it. So I think you have to develop a different audience and I don't want to move away from landscape. So, uh, because that'll always be first for me. Your first portraits, portraits take longer, you know, a little more planning, a little more drawing, all that. So I don't know. It's probably not going to happen. I think I am going to do some from time to time. I still do. Uh, but yeah, that's, yeah, you know, not enough hours in the day. Yeah. Well, and I think landscape is a good, uh, more of an entry gateway for a lot of, uh, beginning watercolors than something like portraiture. And since primarily my content's YouTube, uh, you get a lot of beginner. Right. So maybe that's it. And okay. So we talked about mediums. We talked about subjects. So when did you first become a teacher? It would have to be YouTube. When I started YouTube, what I'm teaching now was started with YouTube. Uh, I was an art director of an ad agency. Maybe we talked about this. And so every year there were local colleges that would ask us if they could send over interns for part of their coursework. So there's a form of teaching there, but it had nothing to do with watercolor. It was commercial design and you know, we're, we're into the nineties now. So you're talking about digital is really starting to come and, but there is that, that teaching, you know, passing on your knowledge to the younger artists that probably started then. But what I'm doing now, that started in 2014 when I started this channel. So you are, when you started the channel, you are already creating content with the goal to help other artists grow it while you are ready. Approaching it with the teaching mindset. Is this correct? Yes. And specifically, uh, I, I was looking to move away from long form instruction. Uh, YouTube changed a lot now, but, uh, the artists that were there and I was watching YouTube for a couple of years before I started my channel, just to see what artists like me were doing. And almost everything we saw was, were artists that were usually workshop gallery type artists. You know, the, the typical, uh, career path for a full-time fine artist was usually paint, uh, put your work in galleries, uh, travel, do workshops, um, and this is before YouTube really became a big thing. And when they started to discover YouTube, they would take some of their workshops, at least the ones that I saw, the artists that I liked would take some of their content and put it on YouTube in a long form manner, an hour, hour and a half sometimes, or somebody recording their live workshop. And I thought, oh, there's a niche here. There is a possibility of doing something I don't see. And that's quick tips and techniques to focus and hone down in something specific. Uh, the way I, the way I put it, I think when I started my channel is sort of a water cooler conversation. You know, people hanging out in the studio discussing watercolor. It really hasn't quite gone that way. Yeah. So it started out as just having a conversation as if you dropped by the studio and we just sat, you know, and discuss things and you said, oh, how do you do that? And I'll say, oh, let me show you. And you know, we trade ideas and quick tips, techniques, a lot of YouTubers are doing that now, but not so much then. So I'm not saying I invented that. I'm just saying, yeah, this was a niche that I saw that could be filled and I didn't see a lot of, and it takes, it actually takes a lot of time because there's other artists were just taking content they already had or recorded and putting it up there. And then they, they do a video, you know, one year to a year and then skip a year or skip months, you know, they weren't doing like boom, boom, boom, regular content, YouTube creators that were, were doing regular content was not as prevalent in art. It was, there were some, but more in the pop art kind of thing, you know, like manga and cartoony or things that are a little less fine art related. Yes. I'm rambling a little bit. No, no, no, no. This is all true. And the result is there for everyone to see. You have outstanding videos, you have a loving audience, and you're an amazing teacher, not just through YouTube. You've taught in other platforms, ours included. We've worked together in the past. I've, I've had the joy and the honor of witnessing you firsthand. Uh, TJ, thank you. No, thank you. Thank you. Uh, and we are doing a course together and we just, uh, right before this call, we aligned in November, November, 2023. Some early thoughts. So what is this course about? Who is it for? The, my idea was, uh, and talk about teaching this whole, this came from, I did some live classes in 2019. Um, just before everything exploded before. Yeah. It was really my first experience, uh, delving into heavy duty on location in person teaching, and I did 24 weeks classes. So during that time, I developed a couple little, I guess you could call them curriculums. And that's, I probably will fall back to that because one of them that I really liked was called the elements of landscape. So it just kind of stopped little things that you might encounter when you do landscape and we went through, when we looked at trees, looked at the lay of the land, the landscape takes, you know, the rhythm, the, the way of, of designing and looking at that. We did, we spent a class on skies, water and reflection, and we ended by trying to put all those things together. So I thought maybe the class would kind of take that sort of a structure. I'm going to look over that material, see how I can freshen it up. Yeah. And for those of us, uh, those of you listeners who do not know how Etcher courses work and how they're structured. So this will be, um, a course divided into a few classes at the time of this recording, we don't know how many classes yet. It could be four, it could be five, it could be six. We're not sure yet. We're still developing the curriculum. Um, every class will be live and there will be one class per week. So it will be a weekly basis on a weekly basis. We will create homework for you. If you're interested, if you are a subscriber to the Etcher platform, you will have access to the course. If not, you can choose to purchase the course individually. So your choice. Um, and we'll be talking more about that when, when the time comes. So I won't bore you with details, but yeah, it launches in November. You will be done before the holiday crazy. That's, that's our plan. Uh, and yeah, it's Steve Mitchell teaching how to do landscapes. And, and for who is this course for? How, how much do you have to know to enroll in this course? Um, it, it's not a beginner course, um, but it's also not, you don't have to be advanced either. Uh, we won't get into, uh, the rank beginner things of here's your watercolor, here's the brush, here's how you make a wash, you know, here's how you do all that. There should be a familiarity, at least enough to put watercolor on paper with confidence and know your supplies to that degree. So, uh, it's not going to be, uh, that kind of a beginner course, but we will get fairly basic in terms of, of painting a landscape and it'll be very much like what I do on my channel in terms of that, you know, there will be some advanced elements to it. And that's something I'd like to talk about because, uh, I think beginners need to watch advanced content. I see a lot of beginners shy away from it. No, for sure. There will be not a doubt in my mind. So yeah, if you are, uh, still very beginner or if you're not sure you can do Steve's course, we have Jean-Pierre Chivasawa's course, Introduction to Watercolor. It's a great place to start. If you just go through that course, if you feel confident after doing it, you'll be ready for Steve's course. So that would be my take, um, from what we've discussed about the course at least Steve. So, um, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. We are publishing this interview with enough time in advance for you to get ready for Steve's course. Uh, and I'm talking like we are in the moment of this recording. We are revamping June's course. We're launching it in June, but when this interview is out, it's already done and ready for you to watch. So go ahead and watch it. Yeah. So you can, you can make the most out of Steve's course in November. Okay. So Steve, uh, just to close our conversation on teaching and what is a good teacher, I mean, I've been asking this question to my guests lately, and I've been enjoying the answers very much. What's your take on that question? Yeah, that's a really, that's a really good question. Um, and it probably is different for every teacher, which is fine. I think to me, it's to, uh, turn on lights. At least that was the goal I had to make the light come on. Maybe it's because that's what I enjoyed seeing in terms of feedback, like people, you know, the light bulb moment. And so I like to, I like to pull those out of people. I don't like to teach in a way that's like, do this just like this, just like this, the whole reason I named my channel, the mind of watercolors, because it has characteristics that you need to get familiar with. And you become a partner with the medium. It's probably the only medium with one of the only mediums. It's like that. This watercolor has a mind of its own and those weird things sometimes that you don't expect. So you got to kind of come alongside it and say, okay, let's coach it this way and that way. And here's the condition. I want you to learn how to set the conditions for watercolor. The thrive and for you to be able to use it in ways that can produce stuff that you enjoy and can learn how to manipulate. And just to see those light bulb moments, it's like, you know, Oh, thank you. Thank you. That's what I think a great teacher does, you know, and coming away from the course going, you know, I want to do it again. You know, that's, that's what I strive. That's wonderful. Thank you, Steve, for that. Any last words of advice to any watercolor artists out there? No, don't give up. Don't get frustrated. It's very easy to do. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Just have fun. Just have fun with it. And you're talking from experience, which is something we covered in the first episode, but it's so easy to just get down and feel down feeling like just don't have the energy to keep on painting anymore. Uh, so yeah. And it, it can be a maddening, frustrating medium. You just don't let it be, you know, try to find that next little key. And that's, that's where I say, uh, beginners should watch advanced content too, because they'll see what they're aiming for. And you can wonder how you get there. And usually you'll, you'll figure it out. Usually you will. And this concludes today's episode. Remember as a special surprise, we do have a free live demo with Steve on our YouTube channel on November 4th, check the link for that and everything else we mentioned on the blog post associated with the episode at etrelive.com forward slash Mitchell too. That's M I T C H E double L in the number two. And until next time, make more art.