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I began watercolor in May 2021. My Mom shared some of her new paint supplies with me, then she gave them to me. And we began learning watercolor together.
- Pretty Excellent Paints
- 1/2 Inch Flat Taklon Nylon Brush
- Old Juice Plus Container as a Water Container
- Old Washcloth
- Mixed Media Spiral Notebook from Canson
I haven’t written with my dominate hand without it hurting since I was in 9th grade. I have POTS and wrist strength issues. I thought I physically couldn’t paint, but I discovered that I can watercolor (usually with a large flat brush). I absolutely love watercolor.
Occasionally my experimenting with what I can do hurts my wrist, but then it gets better and I learned something.
I would use all the same supplies if I started again. The only thing I might change, is I might use watercolor paper from canson instead of mixed media. The mixed media paper buckles badly with any water, but I managed just fine. I didn’t know any better and was just happy to be able to paint.
I then got a sennelier aqua mini for travel, and that got me into color theory I think. It had 8 colors. Mixing colors can be hard on your wrist, but once you learn about color you can just mix on paper.
Make sure you have good posture when painting, and don’t hurt yourself. You can look up good computer posture and apply that.
As for brushes, I would say flat brushes are the best thing to start on with wrist pain. I found I was trying to do too much tiny detail with a round brush, and that I held it differently.
Somehow the way I held and used a flat brush was much easier on my wrist. It took a few months for me to start using rounds, once I had the muscle memory of how to hold a paint brush without hurting my wrist.
Any brush that has a small handle, and has the ability to do detail work (a detail work brush is a small like size 6 round, or anything with a good fine point) is going to allow for tiny wrist movements and cause more problems for your wrist when you’re learning.
You want a brush that can’t do tiny details, that holds a lot of paint for you, that won’t allow you to do what’s bad for your wrist while you build up muscle memory.
When you learn more you will be able to do more details. I have a size 10 and even a size 8 round I can use a bit now. But I’ve painted a lot with a big round and flat before that to build up muscle memory.
And now I can watercolor,
and so can you.
Megan
Since this post, I’ve made a video on How to Begin Watercolor with Wrist Strength Issues.
Megan Eileen 