July 22, 2026
Why do I keep copying watercolor tutorials instead of painting my own?
If you keep going back to watercolor tutorials, it is not because you lack talent or techniques, or because you are bad at watercolor. Most likely, the tasks you handle when you paint your own watercolors are too draining for you, and tutorials energize you. To get out of this, spot the task that drains you, ask yourself how to tweak it so it energizes you instead, and then test this new solution.
What happens when you paint without a watercolor trailer?
To paint my own watercolors, I use a method built around what I call a watercolor trailer. It is a mental movie of your watercolor painting: a way to plan your painting, but in the right way.
It all started with a reference photo from one of my students. The students I coach interpret each photo their own way, and I do exactly the same. With this photo, I ran into big issues. How am I going to create the trees? How am I going to paint the houses behind them? How am I going to manage the shadow in the foreground? It was very difficult for me to come up with a watercolor trailer, because I felt that something was wrong.
So I decided to go with vivid colors. I used to use muted colors, but for this one I wanted more vivid ones. The first wash went quite well. I loved the green with the yellow and the orange brown, and for the floor I wanted something more pinky. Only the floor did not work: I wanted a very blurry shadow in the foreground, and it did not turn out as I wanted.
How do you lose your focus in the middle of a painting?
After the first wash, I started painting the shadow under the roofs of the houses in the background. As I did, I realized the light just popped, and it was really beautiful. Then I lost my main focus, which was the tree and the shadow in the foreground. I told myself the light on the houses was so beautiful that I would stick to that.
I spent a lot of time on the light in the background. But it is just a background, and I should not have spent so much time on it. From that point, I was painting blindly. I did not know where to go: should I stick to my initial intention, the tree, or to the light in the background? Because I did not decide, painting this topic started to exhaust me. In the end, the painting was not bad, but it did not convey the story I wanted to tell.
Why do you go back to watercolor tutorials when you struggle?
When I don't have my watercolor trailer, painting is draining. It takes so much mental energy, so much mental load, that you have nothing left to execute what you have in mind.
And when you are exhausted, what do you do in your life, not only in watercolor? You go on Netflix, you turn on the television, you go eat something. You do anything that can distract you, because those activities are energizing.
This is exactly what happens with watercolor tutorials. You go back to them because they energize you, even though they don't make you feel you are creating something on your own.
What changed everything for me?
Everything shifted the day I created a workshop on how to paint gorgeous forests in watercolor. At one point, I explained to my students that if they wanted to create their own forests in watercolor, they needed to detach themselves from the reference photo. To do that, they just needed another way of painting a tree.
This is when it hit me, because I had painted the picture I just described before this workshop. When I saw how easy it was to turn one big photo into a beautiful little sketch, I wanted to do one thing: a live session with my students on that same photo, applying the technique I had shown them for the tree.
So I told them: this photo is too complicated, so let's just experiment with the small techniques I showed you for the tree, applied to this reference photo. I did it with the shadow and the tree, with colors, and also without color, only light and dark. The students I coach painted beautiful versions too, with the pigment fusing beautifully.
This little tweak completely changed a topic that was very difficult for me at first, simply because I saw that I don't need to paint everything. I left out the background at first. I painted it afterwards, when I was in a creative flow, because I was so happy painting live with my students. I told them: let's test how the painting would look if we only focus on the houses in the background. Then the tree is no longer there to take up all the space, it is only there to serve the background. That watercolor has nothing to do with my first one, and all of it was possible because I turned a draining task into an energizing task.
How do you stop copying tutorials and paint your own watercolors?
Here is the process I use:
- Spot the draining task that prevents you from succeeding. Is it choosing your topic? Planning your topic? Or executing the watercolor?
- Ask yourself how to tweak this task so that it is no longer draining but energizing instead.
- Test this new solution.
For me, choosing the topic was such a pain. I could spend 1 or 2 hours looking for a topic I found feasible, accessible, reachable. So I asked myself how I could turn it into something energizing.
You will have your own solution, but mine was to take photos directly from my students, the photos they take themselves. It helps them, because they can see how I interpret their topic. And it helps me, because I no longer go through the pain of selecting a photo, telling myself I don't have enough photos or that this one is too difficult. I just pick a photo from my students and interpret it. I don't have a choice, and it becomes so much easier.
FAQ
Does copying tutorials mean I have no talent for watercolor?
No. Struggling to paint your own work usually means some part of the process exhausts you. Find that part and change it, rather than doubting your ability.
What is a watercolor trailer?
It is a mental movie of your watercolor painting, a way to plan it in the right way. Without it, painting takes so much mental load that you have little energy left to execute your idea.
What if choosing a subject is what drains me?
That was my case. My tweak was to paint from photos my students take themselves, so I no longer spend time selecting a topic and only need to interpret it.
If you want to finally create on your own, with a proven system instead of copying tutorials, this is exactly what you'll find here 👇
Discover The Loose Watercolor System