This week was one of the busiest of my whole year.
Our Christmas painting challenge began, and just getting it started took so much time and energy. At the same time, the Black Friday preparations were waiting on my table.
Yesterday was my birthday. I closed my laptop at eight in the evening, at the end of a hard Friday and a very long week.
And yet, when I finally sat down, I felt happy.
Happy with what my small team and I have built. Happy that you are here: the people I create for, and the people who inspire me back. Having a community like this to make things for fills me up more than I can say.
Looking back at the path
On birthdays I always look back a little. And what I see is not one big leap. It's thousands of small steps.
Some of them were beautiful. Some were awkward, full of disappointment, sometimes even anger. So many emotions along the way. But I kept taking them, again and again. And slowly those small, repeated steps filled up with joy, gratitude and a quiet kind of happiness.
That's honestly how I learned to paint. Not with some special talent. The path was sometimes hard, sometimes dark. I just kept repeating.
Where I started
Let me show you something.
This is my very first watercolor painting. I made it in the summer of 2016, on a family trip around Europe. Oil paints were impossible to travel with, so I bought a small watercolor set, just to try. Everything about watercolor was new to me then.
My very first watercolor, summer 2016.
After the trip I simply kept going. A few online classes. A botanical master class. Then the Society of Botanical Artists diploma course in London: two and a half years of practice, many of the steps clumsy, some of them frustrating. I finished with Distinction.
Paintings from my diploma years.
And this is how I paint today.
Apple blossom: ten years and thousands of small steps later.
None of this came from talent. It came from coming back to the table, again and again.
The breakfast story
Some time ago I was very tired of the everyday home routine. Every day felt like Groundhog Day.
One evening I sat at the table with my husband and told him honestly how I felt. I wished that sometimes someone would take care of me too. Make me breakfast. Book tickets to a concert.
It wasn't easy for him. He had never cooked in his life. His first breakfasts were awkward and heavy, and you could see how much effort they took.
But he kept going.
And now? He cooks wonderful breakfasts for our family most days of the week. I still smile every time.
He isn't a born chef. He just didn't stop after the first try.
Alex, our home chef, and one of his breakfasts.
Don't be afraid of the first steps
That's what I want to tell you today. Don't be afraid of your first steps: the clumsy ones, the "wrong" ones, the heavy ones.
- Know your direction, and why you're going there.
- Then stop looking at the whole mountain. Look only at the one small step in front of you.
- If you're not happy with it, take it again. And again. A little better every time.
I promise you: sooner than you think, you won't recognize your own steps. What once felt clumsy will be filled with confidence, skill and joy. One day someone will look at your work and call it talent.
Science agrees that repetition matters more than perfection. When psychologists at University College London followed people building a new daily habit, it took about 66 days on average for it to feel automatic. And missing a single day didn't undo the progress. What mattered was coming back.
One small step for this week
Here's a tiny color-mixing step you can repeat all week. It takes about ten minutes.
- Choose two colors you love, for example a yellow and a blue.
- Paint a small square of each, with some space between them.
- Mix three colors in between: mostly yellow, half and half, mostly blue. Paint a square of each.
- Look at your five little squares. That's your first color ladder.
- Tomorrow, make another one with two different colors.
There's no need to make it beautiful. Just notice what happens when two colors meet. After a few weeks of small ladders, mixing the colors you see around you starts to feel natural.
The notebook I wish I'd had
Color mixing was one of the hardest parts of painting for me, and I hear the same from so many of you. But once you understand it, something changes: you feel free. You can improvise. You stop searching for the "right" tube of paint and start creating the color you see.
That's why I created the Watercolor Mixing Notebook: a place to take these small steps in color mixing, one page at a time, and watch your progress grow. The right tool won't take the steps for you, but it helps you get where you want to go much faster. I've been there, and I know how good it feels to arrive.
Wherever you are on your path right now, at the very beginning, in the middle, or in a hard and dark stretch, take one small step this week.
Then another.
With warmth from the studio,
Kristine
P.S. What's one small step you've repeated until it became truly yours, in painting or in life? I'd love to hear. Just reply to Sunday's letter.
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