The Artistic Journey

When I started painting about a year ago, I was looking for tips and tricks to help me paint my illustrations. I got a back run in one of my illustrations and I didn't understand why. Googling led me to Louise's YouTube page and a lot of instructive and informative videos on painting techniques. Her style of teaching and her beautiful paintings immediately caught my attention, I just love botanical and animal art. After a little snooping around I discovered she had a Patreon and immediately signed up for her tutorials.

In the beginning there was so much to learn; paper quality, water control, understanding paper wetness, different painting techniques,...
After doing all of the beginner tutorials I felt a little more confident about doing paintings by myself, and I am very pleased to say I am happy with how my paintings turn out right now. Even though I have a whole lot to learn, I know Louise can guide me in the right direction to be able to create beautiful paintings myself. Each and every lesson has been valuable and I am sure there is much more to come and learn.

I'm mostly active in the Discord community, which is full of kind and supportive people. In there we can chat about tutorials, things we struggle with, support each other and talk about everyday things. It is nice to have a community of like minded people who all have the same goal; getting better at painting in watercolour.

I am in love with African animals, and after Louise released her lioness tutorial I really wanted to try that one. Although it was classed as 'advanced' I still decided to follow along with the tutorial, see what I was capable of and what I have learned along the way. This one turned out to be my favourite, and gave me the confidence to tackle some more difficult tutorials!

Thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge with us, Louise. You are an amazing painter AND teacher. You have the ability to make something as difficult as painting with watercolours into something stress free and enjoyable. Your lessons make me feel like I can do this.

Again, thank you so much.

Love,
Kimberly

I love Louise De Masi's Patreon tutorials because I never believed I could start learning to paint as a senior citizen at age 61. When Covid 19 happened and I was able to telework from home saving hours of commute time, I decided to try watercolor painting anticipating my retirement and wanting a hobby. Since finding Louise De Masi four years ago, my hobby has turned into a passion for painting. From the first tutorial, and as someone who never painted in watercolor before, I was hooked by Louise's style. From the quality, and the detail of her tutorials, I was able to produce a good painting on my first try.

Louise is patient and her tutorials show, in detail, how to plan and paint a picture from start to finish. The tutorial video's quality is professional and I can see exactly how she used the techniques. Louise gets the right camera angle for a close up to see the amount of water and paint she is using.

I love her new style of using a limited palette and have been learning to mix colors and paint a cohesive picture. It helps so much that she reminds me to wait for my sections to dry, how to charge in colors to make my painting interesting, and to remember to leave contrasting areas of light and dark. I love her crisp, vibrant painting style and learned how to avoid muddy paint by understanding color theory. I use her "gray mix" of French Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna for every painting and it rarely looks dull from using a "tube black".

Since 2020, I have painted over 75 tutorials and still learn new skills. The techniques are easier now after so many paintings but there is always something new to try. The tutorials are so diverse with options from birds, flowers and animals, etc to choose from. I have learned so many skills and can transfer them to my own paintings too. I highly recommend Louise De Masi as a watercolor teacher and her classes on Patreon.

Mari Anne

I can’t share many works from the tutorials here… Louise seems a bit different to me, but with great intensity!

I have been following Louise for many years, before Patreon, on YouTube …desperate, desperate because after many years of self-taught experience, painting watercolour with great enthusiasm and dedication I suddenly stopped working, no more love to the water, no more feelings about my paper, no more buying supplies, no more flowers pictures, no more seeing colours in shadows an object….nothing, …nothing, .. a complete emptiness…I was desperate because I couldn’t understand how this could happen to me!

Following Louise‘s videos on YouTube made me feel I was painting, the magic of watercolour was still tangible but I couldn’t feel my brush myself ,… emptiness … a parallel world … connected to my passion in thread : Louise‘s work!!!

So, after a long time I wrote Louise on Facebook, and unexpectedly got an answer! OMG, I couldn’t believe it! A gift! She invites me to enjoy Discord, which I did with skepticism… on online “gamer“ group…how can that have an effect on ME???

But ok, I did it, I registered, introduced myself very shy, read comments, enjoyed the wonderful discussion about colors, papers, supplies, I meet beautiful enthusiastic painters and felt his passion…at some point it clicked ! My heart was full of joy!
Now, Susi, paint!

So, I followed a tutorial , painting, for the first time in my painting life!

OJ, on Discord, suggested me to paint a Seal … she motivated me, she accompanied me, she gave me stability…I bought some paper, took a deep breath, lit my scent stick, turned my Neil Diamond playlist and painted! The seal, my “Franz“. He is not perfect, but my new beginning, after a too long time

Thank you all to make my life complete again, specially on Louise!

You can make magic happen!!!

Forever grateful,
Susi

I love your calm, gentle manner and approach of using voice-overs after you’ve painted. The voice-overs give detailed how-to information at a steady, manageable pace. You are very good at explaining the why behind something you do, which is so crucial for true understanding rather than just mimicking. I’m a former teacher, too, and recognize your methodical approach to breaking down each part of the painting you do and not skipping steps. I can watch a portion and take in the information, then rewind and do it myself while following along. They are special because they make me feel successful and that I can do things I never imagined myself capable of!

The line drawings, supplies lists, and photo guides included in each tutorial, in the same consistent format, are also especially helpful. When those sorts of things – colors used or options for substitutions, brush size and type, initial drawing – are not intuitive, having them spelled out makes it all seem possible to take on. It’s like having a peek at the lesson plan. 😊 I have never seen another tutorial that lays everything out so clearly and easily and it shows how much you do to help your students succeed.

#1 most helpful – How the amount of water used effects a painting and how to try to manage it (i.e. via the amount of water on paper, in the paint mix and/or on the brush). All the moments you explain in tutorials about when you dip your brush back into water or purposely don’t dip it back in and why that matters or when you are drying it on your towel, for example, make everything so much clearer about why something happens on my paper. I have never seen anyone go into that kind of detail to explain how they are getting specific results. It takes the maddening guesswork out of trying to replicate someone’s results but not having any idea how they do it. So invaluable!

Other skills and knowledge I found especially helpful:
• blending
• hard vs. soft edges and how to achieve each of them
• blooms
• stretching paper
• brush control and how it takes time and repetition to achieve (video with Dom painting for the first time was a really cool idea)
• paint consistency (a big one!)
• keeping separate water containers so one of them always stays clean
• limiting the color palette for harmony

I started with the “11 Easy Ideas for Beginners” from your blog posts. They were perfectly structured to ease me into various skills I needed to learn and feel I was improving bit by bit. I had my breakthrough, "aha" moment with the petunia flower. On my first attempt, I did well on the first wash but struggled mightily with the dark shadow in the main area. I put on really dark pigment, thinking it’s what I needed to do to get the shadow effect. But it was muddy and messy and I just kept fussing with it - trying to get it to look like yours. Instead, it looked a hot mess. I did the same thing with the daffodil shadow. Then somehow with the petunia, the lightbulb went off and I realized the true nature of the second, third, and multiple washes. Hello, glazing! I knew the word, but I so did not understand what it really was.

So, it hit me that the glazes can create increased value by virtue of being a second layer. If I treated the additional layers as I did the first wash and use a “normal” mix of pigment and water, let the colors do their thing and don’t fuss with it, it’s much more beautiful. It still carries the transparency that is so special to watercolor but achieves the desired effect of different values and depth.

I also realized that I needed to truly understand what was happening with the object I was painting in my mind’s eye. In this case, it was the folds of the flower petals. Without understanding what it was doing in 3D, I was lost with how to paint various components. Originally, it was like I was trying to “fill in the blank” between pencil lines, ala paint by numbers or something. But when I stepped back, made a better line drawing and knew what those pencil lines represented (ex: the fold of a flower petal), it was like magic! I could see why I needed to paint an area that way with the second layer or third layer and my technique became much more effective and the flower looked much more realistic.

I love the positive atmosphere and the emphasis on learning (i.e. process and not product). All skill levels are present and welcome and it’s okay to be vulnerable and show mistakes, as modelled by Louise herself in some YouTube videos. The Patreon site is amazing - so much in one place and all incredibly well organized to find tutorials. I love how the tutorials are grouped by difficulty level, so we can find something that suits where we are in our growth progression.

My first visibility to watercolor painting was from Instagram, where the artists I encountered did free form loose flowers on blank paper. I tried doing this and had some enjoyment, but it didn’t spark anything in me. It just felt like something was missing. It sounds silly now, but I didn’t know there was another way to paint in watercolor. When I found Louise and the LDM community, I thought, “Now we’re talking! These are my people.” I went from staring at blank pieces of paper wondering what to do and how to use all these supplies I had gathered, to being excited and eager to get to my watercolor space each day.

Kathy H

I love Louise De Masi's classes because regardless of your experience level, there are painting tutorials that are achievable for everyone and can make you feel successful. I am a relatively new beginner, have been painting for about 1 1/2 years (no natural talent), and started watching Louise's YouTube videos about a year ago. I loved her painting style and the way she taught, but I thought it would be a few years before I could even attempt one of the paintings and join her Patreon. Then I found the free seal tutorial and thought I would give it a try. The painting is not perfect, but I was so pleased with how it turned out. This was a special moment because I was getting frustrated that none of my paintings were very good and this experience gave me the motivation not only to continue but to paint more.

Louise is so good at teaching, I've been able to become more proficient at the wet-in-wet technique that I could not master no matter how many tutorials I watched from other artists. It is helpful that Louise shows her palette, how she mixes the paints, the consistency, how to apply the water, and how to paint the various techniques.

Paintings like the seal and ducks have helped me progress as an artist because Louise instructs in great detail and at a doable pace. I'm still working on getting the details of bird feathers, but I enjoy doing the bird paintings, especially because they're different than the birds we have in Texas. When I'm not painting, I find a wealth of information in the newsletters and frequent blogs that Louise posts. It's wonderful to be able to get art instruction from such a great teacher far across the world from me!

Elly T