Day 1 – The Sea and the Self

I’m new to watercolour. I don’t yet know how much water is too much. I don’t yet know if I’m holding the brush wrong. I feel like an imposter at the shore, asking the tide to show me how to paint the waves.

But I showed up today, and that matters.

I painted the same face twice. Two winds, one silence.

The blue one:
“The wind is inside her now, and she drifts with it, unafraid of being carried anywhere.”

The Paynes grey one:
“There’s a storm behind her eyes, and she wears it like a crown of quiet.”

The Old Man and the Beginner's Brush - image 1 - student project

The Old Man and the Beginner's Brush - image 2 - student project

Day 2 – The Old Man and the Dark

Painted in Payne’s Grey. It fought me.

The face came slow and stubborn, like a man who’d seen too many winters to bother smiling anymore. I didn’t enjoy this one the way I hoped I would. The brush felt heavy. The water wouldn’t listen. The paper buckled like it had its own mind. I kept going.

He looks back at me now like he knows I struggled. Like maybe he did too.

Today’s line:
“The night pressed in around him, but he’d seen darker, and stood anyway.”

Not every painting needs to be beautiful. Some just need to be honest.

Tomorrow, I’ll come back to the paper. Maybe it’ll be a little easier. Maybe it won’t. I’ll paint anyway.

The Old Man and the Beginner's Brush - image 3 - student project

Day 3 – The One That Stayed

I thought I was going backwards, but when I looked at her face - really looked - I saw something new emerge. Maybe that’s the lesson.

Today’s line:
“She said nothing, but the silence felt full, like a room where someone used to sing.”

The Old Man and the Beginner's Brush - image 4 - student project

Day 4 – The Hat That Remembers

There was a steadiness in this one. A rhythm in the brush, and the brown of the earth in my hand. I didn’t have the lunar violet colour, so I used what I had - burnt umber, warm and honest. It worked.

I liked her company. She stayed with me through the afternoon without saying a word. Clearly the boss!

Today’s line:
“Her eyes held stories, but her hat remembered the sun.”

The Old Man and the Beginner's Brush - image 5 - student project

Day 5 – The One Who Watched

I remembered this time to photo the value drawing. It matters. I decided her cold stare hid a tender warm inner life, so I picked French Ultramarine. A blue with heat in its bones.

She was cold at first. Distant. Like someone asking, "What are you looking at?" But I kept going. The blue pooled like memory, darker in places where truth gathers.

She softened, eventually. Not in her gaze, but in the hush around it. And maybe that’s what makes a portrait human. Not perfection. But presence.

Today’s line:
“I painted her as she watched me, both of us pretending not to care.”

The Old Man and the Beginner's Brush - image 6 - student project

The Old Man and the Beginner's Brush - image 7 - student project

Day 6 – “The World is Noisy Enough”

Enjoyed this one to my surprise. I looked at him and imagined he was at the train station, very noisy, and like me he sometimes just closes his eyes to stop visual noise too. I imagine: the trains rattled on behind him. Voices rose, announcements barked, metal screeched metal. He didn’t flinch. He just sat there, still as a stone warmed by years, eyes closed not in sleep but in choice.

The world is noisy enough, he thought, without the seeing too.

The Old Man and the Beginner's Brush - image 8 - student project

The Old Man and the Beginner's Brush - image 9 - student project

Need to take more care with white hair it's too high and top of the head not right.

Day 7 – “She Stood Beaming”

This one gave me trouble. All angles and wild hair and that upward gaze that won’t quite settle. I didn’t enjoy it at first — felt like I was chasing something that kept turning away. I imagined her standing in the wind, not fighting it, just beaming in beauty.

And I finished the course with her looking up. Like me hopeful that I continue to improve.

The Old Man and the Beginner's Brush - image 10 - student project

Course Reflection

I didn’t know what to expect when I began - just that I hadn’t painted in years, had never touched portraits, and watercolour seemed like a thing that would run away if you weren’t gentle. Years ago (like fourty or so) I tried once with watercolour and it was like herding waves with a chopstick...

Each day taught me something: about restraint, about structure, about light and where not to put it. I fought the brush a few times, and sometimes it won. But I found my footing. I found a rhythm. And by Day 5, I’d stopped thinking of them as paintings and started seeing them as people.

Thank you to Jane, for creating this course and showing the way with your calm voice, clear steps, and steady encouragement. It helped tremendously.

- Spencer

The Old Man and the Beginner's Brush - image 11 - student project

Spencer Barriball

Creator at the Edge of Craft & Spirit

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