Welcome to Mark Watson Art!

Ever since I was a child, I've dabbled with art. I would draw in the car on trips, randomly sketch things I saw, and draw during downtime at school. In middle school, I took an art class that walked us through several different mediums I had not tried before. The main one that stuck out to me was pen and ink. We had to use a crow quill pen and bottle of ink to draw using several different techniques (hatching, cross-hatching, stippling, etc.). For some reason, this medium really clicked with me, despite the difficulty of carrying around a dip pen and bottle of ink. The resulting artwork worked out well in my opinion, but I didn't really try pen and ink with any seriousness again for several years. I did occasionally produce some new pen and ink artwork, including some gifts for family. I produced a drawing of our Rhodesian Ridgeback, Rook (see below - now available as a fine art print!), that was the first pen and ink drawing where I felt like I'd turned the corner into doing serious work. 

I finally decided to get serious about art and signed up for the Evolve Artist program, hoping to learn how to paint in oils. At the time I signed up, the first block of study (Evolve divides the curriculum into multiple numbered blocks) was in charcoal, which I completed.

It took me a while to complete Block 1 and by the time I was done, Evolve had changed their program so that the first block was in grayscale oil paints. I then completed the new Block 1 program in oil paints.

By the time I completed Evolve Artist Block 1, I was growing a little disenchanted with Evolve Artist and the way color and value matching was done. The program itself was excellent, but I noticed aspects of student artwork that appeared in later blocks of study that did not match up with what I wanted my style to be. I also knew how long it was taking me to go through the program and was impatient to push ahead faster. So, I discontinued the program, bought a bunch of M. Graham oil paints, and launched off on my own.

Since that time, I have been pushing to learn and improve as fast as I can. Sometimes this results in paintings that other people may actually like (and that end up on this site). Sometimes the paintings get abandoned and relegated to what my wife and I affectionately call the "stinker pile." It's a little heart breaking to give up on a painting after a lot of time has been put into it, but it's also a bit of a relief. I don't have to try to figure out how to make that one weird color that never looked right. I don't have to solve that proportion problem. Maybe I'll eventually go back and revisit some of these paintings. Maybe not. But you have to keep moving forward!

This website is my attempt to be serious at art - to produce quality work that has value to me and others. I intend to post original paintings and drawings for sale as well as fine art prints and various other reproductions (such as greeting cards). Ultimately, serving other people serves God, and that is every person's role on this earth (Matthew 22:37-39).

Thanks for checking out the site. See you back here soon with new art!