Okay, I know I’m a post behind on my learning project, but I have a good reason: I made an eleventh hour change to the focus of my project and had to rethink my timeline and the ways I would go about documenting my progress.

I initially planned to improve on my ukulele skills. I play a bit already, but not well and it’s a useful skill to have in the classroom as an arts ed teacher (or any teacher, really). But every time I sat down to play my ukulele, or write a blog post about it, I didn’t want to. Not that ukulele is bad, but it’s just not what my brain is interested in right now. Lately I’ve been wanting to mostly work on my watercolour painting, in part due to my annual valentine making tradition.

Backstory: In 2021, I started making homemade valentines and sending them to friends and family around the world. It was a hit – turns out people still love getting physical mail. I’ve kept up the tradition since, there are a few examples below.

Anyways, this tradition usually involves watercolour painting of some kind. As Valentine’s Day is coming up, I decided to stop fighting my intuition and just transition my learning project to improving on my watercolour skills rather than my ukulele playing.

My baseline for watercolour is mixed. I’ve dabbled in the medium for the last ten years or so, but I wouldn’t say I’m proficient. I’ve utilized it to do some university assignments and in the classroom as an arts ed teacher. See examples below, from my ESCI 310 final project last year.

For my first week, I’ve been working mainly from tutorials posted by artists on Instagram. My mom also likes watercolour, so she’s been sending me tons of cool things to try out. I’ve tried this one from Mary Wu (@mamapandapainter on Instagram), and one or two of my own based on images.