How I started to paint and why I continued to do it

Hi all. This is my first blog post in my site. Actually, this is my first online blog post ever, so I politely ask you to bear with me. I thought it would be proper to explain my personal history with painting and the reason why I am continuing to paint in the first post. So, let's begin.

When I was in elementary school, I never liked painting lessons so much so that I almost always did not do painting homework myself (thanks mom!). As a teenager, I started to develop an interest in art and painting thanks to a weekly art magazine. I started to draw things with charcoal pencils and then I tried to reproduce some famous paintings of van Gogh with oil painting. However, this drawing and painting attempts was on-and-off and lasted briefly. Then, because of my lectures and endless exams in high school and college, I could rarely paint. This was the case until 2017. In 2017, I began to draw again. This time I tried ink pens and watercolor pencils, which I liked greatly to work with. Again, this period of drawing lasted short - about 4 or 5 months - because of my bachelor's thesis.

As you can see, my relationship with painting has had its ups and downs. This was the case till early 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, almost everything including lectures and working became online and suddenly I had enough time to paint on a regular basis. So, I bought some brushes, student grade watercolors and cheap watercolor paper and began to paint. At first, working with watercolor was hard for me since controlling the flow of the paint and adjusting the amount of water is not so easy. I tried to improve my watercolor skills by watching a lot of online tutorials of skilled watercolor artists on YouTube and Instagram (and I still do). At first, I gave it a shot to reproduce the paintings on the tutorials, which in turn, helped me to understand some basics of watercolors.

One of my first watercolor paintings. As you can see, it is somewhat simple and has some mistakes.

Over time, I had begun to create my own paintings, either with my imagination or reference photos. I believe I have improved my watercolor skills to some extent over one and a half year, although I still have a lot to learn. Currently, I concentrate on acrylic painting, though I still paint with watercolor from time to time (it is so much fun and relaxing; I strongly recommend anyone to paint with watercolor).

Painting of planets with watercolor. Much better than the first attempts I guess. Practicing is important.

In late 2020, I started to think to give it a try with acrylic pouring because of the inspiration from some artworks I had seen on an exhibition. I began to buy necessary items and acrylics and to watch online tutorials again. At first glance, it seemed relatively easy to me. Never I had been so wrong about a painting technique. In a short time, I realized there were many nuances (like consistency, amount of paints, use of additives for cells etc.) I should pay attention to.

My first acrylic pouring. It was a total mess and had so many mistakes.

At my first trials, the end results were kind of messy and not good, as expected. In time, I had improved my pouring skills gradually and the pourings had resulted better. I tried many different pouring techniques (such as ring pour, Dutch pour, flip cup pour etc.) on both canvas and MDF and I really liked it. Again, I would recommend you try it out.

This was a much better pouring compared to the first one. Again, practice a lot!

In early 2020, I have begun to paint with regular acrylic technique on both paper and canvas, mostly in abstract style. I soon realized that this painting style is the most fitting one for me. Recently, I have started to paint on MDF panels along with on paper and canvas. So, I am currently painting with acrylics in abstract style most of the time.

Let me finish this long entry explaining why I chose to continue painting when I started in early 2020. At first, I was thinking this was another short-time painting attempt as previous ones. Soon after I began to paint, I realized that I really love painting; also it had a positive effect on my daily mood and my mental health (which is another matter for me for many years but let me discuss it in another post). So, I kept try to paint regularly since then and I can say that I have achieved this up to now. I hope that I will be continue painting and creating artworks.

Thank you for your time! I hope you like reading this post.