How do you know if you are growing your creative skills in a particular area? One of the best ways would be to take a look back at some of your earlier work. Can you see areas where you have made improvements? Is your technique changing? Does your work seems to have more depth and life to it now compared to then? Remember you are comparing your work to your work — not your work to someone else’s work!

Almost two years ago, I did a watercolor tutorial from a book by Shirley Trevena, titled Taking Risks With Watercolor. I love texture in watercolor and her style intrigued me. I enjoyed following her instructions giving me a sneak peak into how she produces her works.

This was the painting I made from her tutorial in Sept 2018:

I was pretty proud of it and learned so much from Shirley. However the painting has been in a drawer all this time and I had not looked at it for a long time. Last week I thought about that tutorial and decided it would be fun and insightful to do that tutorial again to see how much I’ve improved. While painting, I was tempted many times to dig out the previous painting to see what I had done before, but I kept it hidden in the drawer so it would not in any way influence the current painting. I couldn’t even remember what size paper I had used the first time! (I did end up using larger paper for my current painting.) The tutorial was a bit easier to follow this time because I have used many of the techniques over the past couple years.

So this is my just completed painting from the tutorial:

I do feel that the second one was an improvement and can see so much that I’ve learned. Have you gone back to a tutorial or class you took a fews years ago to try it again? I encourage you to do so!