It’s a cold, hard reality that it is impossible to improve your art skills when you don’t “do” art.

I know this, and yet I let it happen again–it’s been months since I tried to create anything.

Then, after recently visiting a cemetery filled with Civil War soldiers (one of them being the first husband of my great-times-four Aunt Hester), I decided that I wanted to try to paint from one of the photos I took while there.

I decided to use watercolors because that’s my latest medium–I’ve already tried my hand at oils, acrylics, color pencils and soft pastels. I’m trying to figure out which medium I’m most comfortable with.

Regular practice would probably help, I know.

I used Daler-Rowney watercolors on a 4 1/2 X 6-inch piece of mixed media paper. That was probably a mistake–I have watercolor paper that I thought was too good to mess up, in case the painting attempt went really bad. It went, at best, not so good. The aforementioned lack of practice combined with paper that didn’t work all that well with watercolors helped to make what is seen below.

I also used, for the first time, masking fluid. It worked better than I expected–I just painted it on the sketched headstones, let it dry, painted the green grass, let it dry, then rubbed off the masking fluid to reveal bright white areas. The edges were a little jagged, sure, but it was way better than trying to paint around each one.

But I didn’t like the painting–it was blotchy and, well, blah. I had a sudden inspiration, and pulled out my Prismacolor pencils. I thought I’d just work on the grass, but I went on and created shadows on the tree trunks, shadows and lighter colors in the foliage, and added color to the wall.

I still thought it lacked something, so I reached for a 03 Pigma Micron pen and lightly sketched over the edges in the painting, especially around the headstones. Below is the final result:

That mixed media paper came in handy after all. Is it a great painting? Nah. But giving myself permission to experiment with different mediums (“what’s the worst that can happen” was my motto) allowed me to improve it to the point that I’m happier with the result.

And maybe more likely to pick up a brush again sometime soon.