I haven’t painted with watercolor in years. Not because I stopped loving it, but because life happened. Work took over, responsibilities piled up, and somewhere along the way, painting became something I used to do. Past tense.
But lately, something shifted. I found myself thinking about watercolor again – the way pigment blooms in water, how colors blend and flow in ways you can’t fully control. Something that is not a screen, a pixel, and a stylus, a digital image, but paper, water, and pigments, a traditional art form. A painting where you cannot go back and delete a layer, a painting that you can hang on the wall, and a process that can be therapeutic in these stressful times.
So there was the moment when I stood in front of the shelf where my art supplies stared at me every day and silently begged me to use them. That murmur I did not hear for years. By itself, it was thrilling to rediscover the art supplies I had hoarded over the years.
Another form of Artist’s Block
When people talk about artist’s block, they usually mean not knowing what to create. They are staring at the blank canvas, ready to create something.
But there’s another kind of block when life makes creating feel impossible. When so many bad things happen that you are in some form of grief or exhaustion, where art is the last thing you want to think about. Feeling guilty of giving yourself a bit of me time.
I won’t go into all the details, but life has been heavy on me lately. There have been losses, responsibilities, exhaustion, and accidents. Creating felt like something that belonged to a lighter version of life – one I wasn’t living anymore.
But creativity doesn’t actually die. It just goes quiet for a while.
Permission to Be Rusty
I knew I needed some structure to get started — just staring at my paints wasn’t going to work. So I did what I do when I want to learn something or refresh my skills: I went to Skillshare. I’ve been a member for a while, and there are genuinely hundreds of watercolor classes to get lost in. I spent some time browsing and found Zaneena Nabeel’s 15 Days of 15-Minute Watercolor Practice class — and something about the concept immediately felt right. Fifteen minutes. That’s it. No pressure to produce a masterpiece, just a short, structured practice session every day.
It made me want to grab my paints immediately. And so I did.
The First Try Was Catastrophic (Kind Of)
I won’t romanticize this part. My first tiny landscape was, in my own assessment, a disaster. The paint-to-water ratio I used to know instinctively? Gone. The confident brushstrokes? Hesitant and overworked. I put too much water in places that needed control and not enough where I needed flow. A little water accident right in the middle…
But here’s the thing — I finished it. I didn’t give up halfway through, and I didn’t tear up the paper. I looked at it, winced a little, and started the next one.
And the next one was slightly better. And the one after that, better again.
That’s when I remembered what I’d forgotten: watercolor is a practice. It rewards repetition. The muscle memory is still in there somewhere, it just needs reminding. By the fourth or fifth tiny painting I started to feel the familiar flow coming back — that quiet, focused state where you stop thinking and just paint. I had missed that feeling more than I realized.
Why I Love These Tiny Paintings
The format of the class — small paintings, short sessions — turns out to be perfect for getting back in shape. Working at 10×12 cm means every painting is finished relatively quickly, which means you get a lot of repetitions in a short time. There’s no room for overcomplicating things at that scale.
Landscapes especially reward this approach. A few strokes for a sky, a wash for water or fields, some loose marks for trees. The tiny format forces you to let go of perfectionism, which is exactly what a rusty painter needs.
I’m not done with the class yet, and I’m enjoying every session. My paintings are still imperfect — some are better than others — but all of them feel like progress, and that’s what matters right now.
My Honest Recommendation
If you’re returning to watercolor after time away, or even if you’re a complete beginner, I genuinely recommend Zaneena Nabeel’s 15 Days of 15-Minute Watercolor Practice class. The structure takes the paralysis out of starting. You don’t have to decide what to paint — you just follow along, and before you know it, you’ve finished something. That sense of completion, even with a tiny, imperfect painting, is what keeps you coming back the next day.
Fifteen minutes really is enough to rebuild the habit. And the habit is everything.
The Joy Is Still There
The most important thing I’ve rediscovered in these first sessions is that the joy didn’t go anywhere. That feeling of watching pigment bloom across wet paper, the quiet focus, the small thrill when something works — it was just waiting for me to come back.
My hands are getting steadier. My instincts are returning. And I’m remembering why I loved this in the first place.
This blog will document the journey — the paintings I’m proud of and the ones that humbled me. If you’re also trying to return to a creative practice after time away, know this: the gap doesn’t mean you’ve lost your ability. It just means you get the gift of rediscovering it.
Are you returning to art after a break? Or trying watercolor for the first time? I’d love to hear where you are in the comments.
