Learning Watercolour After a Lifetime in Business : Part 1

Introduction

What if, after decades of crisis meetings, airport lounges and boardrooms, the bravest thing you ever did was pick up a paintbrush you hadn’t touched since junior school?

Several years ago I retired from business and finally gave myself permission to chase a long‑held promise: to turn my home office into an art studio and actually learn to paint, rather than spend my retirement wondering what to do with myself. My career had taken me around the world – almost every country in Europe, plus South Africa, Australia, Singapore, the Middle East and the USA – but mostly via hotel lobbies, airport gates and meeting rooms. Looking back, life was never quite as glamorous as it appeared from the outside, and I rarely had time to sit and see the places I was visiting. So I set myself a new objective for this next chapter: to revisit those countries in watercolour and paint the journeys I never had time to appreciate before and test myself in different ways to find out if I had still got it..

The First Problem: I Hadn’t Painted Since School

There was one rather obvious snag. I hadn’t painted anything since junior school. Supposedly, art lives in the opposite side of the brain to science, and I had spent most of my working life on the commercial and scientific side of things, ending up as a business consultant in corporate business continuity and crisis management. The general consensus from many of my colleagues was that scientists, on the whole, cannot produce art – which did not exactly fill me with confidence. Always competitive and considering myself to be able to turn my hand to most things, this was the challenge I needed.

A Few Hurdles (and a Bit of Churchill) while learning watercolour painting

I’ve always considered myself fairly handy. Over the years I’ve installed central heating in several of our homes, built walls and barbecues, and laid bricks like one of my heroes, Winston Churchill. If Churchill could pick up a brush and paint, why couldn’t I at least have a go?

Yes, I realise arrogance and self‑confidence are not the most endearing traits, but when you’ve worked for yourself since the age of 40, you quickly learn that without self‑belief and the determination to get things done, you come a cropper very fast. I knew I would need that same stubborn streak to learn to paint.

I Needed a Plan

So, I did what any ex‑consultant would do: I made a plan.

• Do I go to night‑school art classes? (I was already at night school learning Spanish, so that was a non‑starter.)

• Do I join an online art group and sign up for a teaching holiday?

• Do I teach myself with Google, YouTube and art books?

In the end, I did a bit of option two and mostly option three. I joined an art group which, although enjoyable and enlightening, ultimately wasn’t quite the right fit for me. To those from that group who might read this one day, I genuinely wish you well. I learned a lot from you, and your suggestions and comments helped shape much of my current watercolour style, even if I couldn’t agree with some of the site’s policies and eventually moved on.

A Shady Lane 2024 after John Middleton by Art-Marco

From First Washes to Selling Work

Those early days were all about overcoming fear and learning the absolute basics: composition, creating depth, choosing colour palettes and simply understanding how watercolour behaves. The medium has a reputation for being one of the most difficult to learn, and in some respects that’s true, but like any skill it responds to practice – an awful lot of practice.

I’ve spent almost three years now studying, experimenting and painting, and only recently have I felt my work reached a standard where I could offer it for sale. That journey led to launching my own site and, later, to helping other artists find an online home for their work as well.

The picture above, is my version of John Middleton's "A Shady Lane" is an example of what can be achieved. Who was John Middleton?

John Middleton

John Middleton (9 January 1827 – 11 November 1856) was an English artist known for his accomplished watercolour paintings. He was the youngest and the last important member of the Norwich School of painters, which was the first provincial art movement in Britain. As well as being a talented etcher, he produced oil paintings and was an enthusiastic amateur photographer.

Middleton's father, also named John, was a Norwich glass stainer. His mother painted plants and twice exhibited her work with the Norwich Society of Artists. Middleton was educated in Norwich and studied art under the landscape painters John Berney Ladbrooke and Henry Bright. He first exhibited his paintings before the age of twenty and went on to show paintings at both the Royal Academy and the British Institution. Many of his works have been acclaimed by art historians for their masterly tonal values, confidence and freshness, which gives them a more modern appearance in comparison with the sometimes over-detailed works of other Victorian painters.

Coming up in Part 2: why I believe you absolutely should copy the masters – and how one 19th‑century watercolour of a shady lane changed the way I paint forever.