I have generally looked at watercolour painting as something children and professionals do, but nobody in between. Children do it with lousy tools and the results aren’t great, whereas professionals pay a lot of money for amazing tools and can make beautiful pictures.

Turns out you can have some fun even with lousy tools. Whenever I bring out the cheap ikea watercolour paint and worn-out brushes for our children, I’ve made a point of trying to enjoy myself too.

You don’t get to plan ahead much, and there’s no time to wait for the paper to dry out before you slob more colour on it, so it’s a fun challenge. I try to alternate between two pictures so one at least gets a tiny bit of drying while I work on the other one.

And then there’s time management. The bottom picture I didn’t get to finish because the children got tired of painting and wanted to do something else. That’s life!