# Conquer Your Fear of the Blank Page: 4 Watercolor Exercises I Swear By - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/conquer-your-fear-of-the-blank-page-4-watercolor-exercises-i-swear-by/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Illustration & Drawing · Quick win · Rated 6 /10 # Conquer Your Fear of the Blank Page: 4 Watercolor Exercises I Swear By Updated August 2026 Peggy Dean · Top Teacher | The Pigeon Letters Beginner · 52 min Four quick watercolor warm-up exercises meant to dissolve blank-page paralysis, wrapped in a lot of ritual talk before any paint hits paper. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fconquer-your-fear-of-the-blank-page-4-watercolor-exercises-i-swear-by%2F1821769427) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. Peggy Dean's "Conquer Your Fear of the Blank Page" is less a technique class than a warm-up ritual dressed in watercolor. Across eight short lessons and 52 minutes, it promises to dissolve the intimidation of a blank sheet of paper, and it delivers on that narrow promise rather than on any broader painting education. ## Structure and pacing The course opens with two lessons that have nothing to do with brushwork at all: a mission-statement style introduction about creative pressure and racing thoughts, followed by a full lesson on building a "creative ritual" out of candles, tea, and found natural objects. Only in lesson three does the class name its materials, a round 8 and round 4 or 6 brush, watercolor paper, and two jars of water for warm and cool tones. For a 52-minute class, spending nearly a fifth of the runtime on mood-setting before a single stroke is a real structural imbalance, and beginners hoping to get their hands wet quickly will feel the delay. Once the exercises start, the pacing improves. Break the Ice has students drag two wet colors into contact and let them bleed, a genuinely useful way to learn how a specific pigment behaves and how much water it wants. Abstract Mark Making scales that idea down into nine controlled ovals per page, introducing the idea of reading a paper's sheen to judge whether a new mark will bloom or stay isolated. Less Can Be More shrinks the scale further, working with dots, scribbles, and single strokes inside small shapes rather than a full wash, and it is here the course starts to feel like it is teaching judgment rather than just permission. ## Where it earns its keep, and where it doesn't Layered Cascading Leaves is the strongest lesson by a wide margin. It takes the same bleed-and-bloom logic from the earlier exercises and applies it toward an actual recognizable subject: translucent background leaves built first, then a second pass of sharper, more pigmented leaves layered on top to create real depth. It is the one section where the loose, intuitive approach produces something that looks finished rather than merely exploratory, and it functions as a mini standalone project in its own right. The final class project, a trio of three pages united by a shared color palette or mark-making idea, is appropriately open-ended for a class about releasing expectations, but it also offers almost no critique framework or example of what a strong versus weak trio looks like. Students are largely left to judge their own results. The core weakness is that this class teaches a mindset and a handful of loosening exercises, not painting fundamentals. There is no real color theory, no brush-control drilling, no discussion of composition beyond a few passing remarks during the leaf lesson. Viewers already comfortable with paint-to-water ratios and wet-on-wet blending will find little new information here, just a permission structure and a ritual around returning to the page. For a true beginner who has never opened a watercolor set, the class also assumes a working familiarity with terms like "wet on wet" and "sheen" that it never fully defines. As a short reset tool for an intermediate painter stuck at a blank page, it works well and takes under an hour. As a foundational watercolor course, it is thin. The standout The layered cascading leaves lesson, which turns the bloom-and-bleed swatching technique into an actual finished, sellable-looking piece rather than an abstract exercise. ## What you will learn - · How to build a wet-into-wet color swatch by dragging fresh strokes into still-wet paint - · How to work in small isolated ovals with analogous or monochromatic palettes instead of a full page wash - · How to control paint blooms by reading the sheen level of your paper before adding pigment - · How to layer translucent background leaves first, then build sharper, more pigmented leaves on top - · How to set up a personal creative ritual (light, scent, sound) before starting a painting session - · How to compose a final three-piece trio project tied together by a shared color or mark-making thread Best for: Beginner to early-intermediate watercolorists who already own basic supplies and want low-stakes warm-up rituals to break through blank-page hesitation. Skip it if: Anyone wanting structured technical instruction in color theory, brush control, or realistic subject matter, since this class stays almost entirely in loose abstract territory. Engaging Teacher Organization of Lessons Clarity of Instruction Helpful Examples [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fconquer-your-fear-of-the-blank-page-4-watercolor-exercises-i-swear-by%2F1821769427)