Short take: Love the idea (a lot); wish the book had been printed on watercolor paper.

Courtney Cerruti’s One Color a Day is a watercolor sketchbook designed to be used daily for one year. The time commitment and instructions are minimal: Cerruti gives a few suggestions at the beginning for how one might use the book—the different options for mixing—and then, for the most part, leaves the user to their task. Mixing one color a day, or swatching two or more colors in a single, circular mark, takes very little time and can be an interesting way to let mood play out on the page. It’s so quick that I’ve managed to do it daily since the birth of my second child, despite sleeplessness, endless breastfeeding, and my very energetic three-year-old. 

As I said above, I love this idea. But a problem in its realization made itself known as soon as I started using the book: the paper. It appears to be thick printer paper, rather than a paper made specifically for use with water-based media. 

For a book designed to be used every day for a year, this might be a deal-breaker. If achieving swatches like those on the book’s cover is really important to you, then you may be better off buying a quality sketchbook or watercolor pad and adding the grid yourself, probably at an altered scale (maybe one grid per month?), since most watercolor paper doesn’t come in great enough quantity to accommodate the number of entries (two pages per week) that this book does. There are lots of different watercolor papers out there, but Strathmore Series 400 is a good place to start if you’re just beginning to explore this medium.

The watercolor paints I’ve been using to swatch, from left: My Beam Paints 8-color palette, my custom palette (filled with Winsor & Newton Cotman and Professional watercolors, as well as a few Daniel Smith colors and a couple of samples), and my beloved Art of Soil 25-color palette.

Another solution would be to buy the book and use a different medium, but this would lead to a different result than what is pictured (attractively) on the cover. 

If you would like to go ahead and try the book out (it’s not very expensive), I’ve found that I most enjoyed using my number eight round brush to create the circles, and that I liked the shape I could achieve with my non-dominant hand best. Done with my left hand, the edges of the circles turned out more organic. 

To make the swatches, you can either paint a circle of clear water on the page and then drop in a color (or colors), or you can start with a color and drop in another (or two, or three). I like to work with a color base rather than a water base, since the water base quickly soaked through the page. This wouldn’t happen with a quality watercolor paper, so if you’ve taken the route of replicating Cerruti’s idea in a blank sketchbook, your options for how you make the swatches will be greater. 

My tube watercolors, which I store in an upcycled honey jar to help them keep moist and last longer.

The binder (what holds the paint ingredients together) and status (dried in a pan or not) seems to matter for how much the paint will spread, though even only five weeks in, I’ve found exceptions to this. My Beam Paints watercolors had to be physically prompted (by manipulating the brush) to move around in another (traditional gum-based) watercolor—maybe because they contain maple sap? The paints that moved the most were watercolors out of a tube, which makes sense. They haven’t spent a lot of time already dry in a pan. Daniel Smith watercolors moved immediately when dropped into other paint. 

It’s a fun book. If you have the money to try it out, and think you can tolerate the frustrations caused by the paper, I’d say give it a try. You might also forego buying this pre-setup book and instead set yourself a similar daily task in another medium for a designated time of your choice. For example, it might be just as instructive to draw a simple shape in colored pencil, or mix two different oil pastels on the page, every day for a month. 

These kinds of challenges are great because they keep your hands moving and force you to innovate if you get bored. You might, as a result, try a different way of holding your tool, only work standing up, or try working with your eyes closed. Regardless of what you try, you will be learning about the medium and about what you like. That’s the point, for me. Best of all, you’ll be expressing something that might have otherwise stayed hidden, and doing it in a no-stress, low-stakes way. 

We all need that.

My drawing time since my second child’s birth has happened in quick moments between feeds and household tasks (like bagging and labeling milk for storage, and washing equipment—below is just one day’s worth). 

One day’s worth of gathered milk. Not pumped! If you’re breast/chestfeeding, get thee a Haakaa (or six - the shells are my favorite).

Yesterday, I went out with my spouse to get coffee, and he held our baby the whole time while I set up my art stuff and drew. I’ve passed many a moment over the last weeks, yearning to spend longer than five minutes making something — anything! Getting this chance yesterday affirmed for me (again) how much it is the process that makes me happy, not necessarily the product, though that can be fun too, of course. 

Still, though I didn’t ask my spouse to hold our baby—he’s always game to hold them—and even having noted said longing, I felt guilty for not being the one doing the holding. Really, I felt guilty for taking the time for myself. That is what equitable parenting looks like, for me, for now: my spouse being an equal partner and parent and me feeling guilt because of the care-work I’ve surrendered as a result. 

Luckily, the guilt is fleeting, since it is only old instincts imposing it, and not the person I made the child with. And, very quickly yesterday, the enjoyment overtook the guilt. My brain kept noticing— Oh, wow, I’m sitting somewhere—not in the house!—with my person and our little person, looking around closely enough to be able to play with shapes and expressions on the page.

Drawing in public used to take a lot of overcoming. I would bring *way *too many supplies, be very aware of however much time I had (usually not much), and so only draw stiffly, not letting myself loosen into the process or enjoy my materials. It can also be hard to create if it feels like people are watching, but having drawn in public settings so often, now, I realize very few people care what I’m doing, and those who might stop will likely be friendly and curious. In short: I no longer worry much about others. 

The last hindrance to overcome is the one of too many options, and I do still do this to myself sometimes. There are days—especially when I haven’t been able to make anything lately—when I think: ooh, oil pastels! oh, but crayons! and water-soluble crayons! and markers! and pencils! I bring a bit of everything and then usually use one or two things, max. That’s ok. As long as I don’t let the plethora of choices keep me from starting, and as long as my kit isn’t so heavy I give myself a neck-ache, there’s been no harm done by my enthusiasm. It’s even kind of funny and child-like in a nice way, if I think about it. 

I have made things easier on myself somewhat by getting a very small bag (this one, which hasn’t let me down once) that can only fit so much. I love the assemblage I’ve created for these on-the-go sketch sessions, including the best white pencil I’ve found, my watercolor palette from The Art of Soil (they have sales on slightly damaged products, and that was how I afforded this one), and two mini pads of my favorite papers, which fit perfectly in one of the bag’s three pockets!

Everything I fit in this tiny (fanny-pack sized) bag, plus the bag itself. I’d love to see your kit, even if it’s just your favorite pencil, and hear about your own experiences creating in public settings and sharing care-work. 

Most of what I’m doing these days is taking in, observing, trying to notice as much as possible so that, when I get the opportunity, I can summon all I’ve stored up and apply it to my process. I’m also just smelling my baby’s head a lot and listening to this playlist I made for our birth. There is so much to be grateful for, and so much about which I feel hopeful. This, itself, is a gift.

I wanted to draw everything, but I didn’t want to draw anything poorly, so I often didn’t draw at all, or I drew very tentatively, afraid to mess up.

My first postpartum sketchbooks.

Now that I do have a drawing practice that I love — one that isn’t fear-based — I can see that even forming the habits of always being ready to draw and always thinking about how to depict what surrounded me — even if I didn’t put anything on paper in that moment — served me as I stumbled my way through the infant period with my first child. 

It was more difficult to focus on the likelihood of my own shattering or agonize about my child’s mortality when I was obsessing about pencils or thinking about how an artist had managed to clearly differentiate between their foreground and background, using color or line or scale. 

Still, I did want to learn to draw well, so rather than continue to stare at my sadly empty sketchbook, or draw little bits of life without any real intention, I bought Claire Watson Garcia’s Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner (one of the books I’d perused earlier through my library), picked up the supplies recommended in its first pages, and got started. 

My copy of Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner, by Claire Watson Garcia.

Watson Garcia takes her students from assignments based on simple wire shapes, to upside-down drawings and exercises in contour practice. The work detailed in the book grew progressively more challenging, and soon I found myself drawing my spouse’s side profile (pretty well) and practicing the angles of indoor spaces. 

Around this time, I also started taking a bunch of London Drawing Group’s classes, which are wonderfully accessible, taught by a group made up mostly of women, offered online, and pay-what-you-can. It was through LDG that I found some of my favorite teachers — Jo Blaker, Josh Armitage, Luisa-Maria MacCormack, and Frances Stanfield — and through them that I’ve been exposed to so many artists, and ideas about art.

An early postpartum drawing (2022).

I often still felt my own tentativeness when I sat down to draw, even with all this practice. But by going back to this pursuit again and again, despite my discomfort and lack of confidence, I was showing myself so much. I could learn a whole set of new skills, despite being in my thirties. I could do something just because I wanted to. I could free myself through habit. 

Another early postpartum drawing (2023).

This was the most important insight — and applicable to postpartum healing and parenting, too. By showing my child that I was capable of self-discovery, I hope I was showing them that change and exploration were ways of coping with what might feel unresolvable in life.

I didn’t have to come to the page perfectly, or know what I was doing in every case. I just had to keep coming back — showing I cared about my pursuit by the time I took and the emotion I was willing to convey — and continuing to try to learn.

Have you undergone similar changes? What have you worked hard - through discomfort and fear - to learn?

In June 2021, I gave birth to my first child and found myself, after the blur of the newborn weeks had passed, thrown into postpartum depression and the worst anxiety I had ever experienced. 

This emotional upheaval is not at all uncommon. According to experts at Massachusetts General Hospital, ten to fifteen percent of birthing people will develop a postpartum psychiatric disorder. These periods of mental change can be deeply disorienting, and it’s not just the birthing person’s emotional state that’s in flux.

Researcher Cat Bohannon has written about the fact that pregnant people’s brains go through physical changes as well, starting in the third trimester and continuing after birth.

In her acclaimed book, Eve, Bohannon writes that a pregnant person’s brain will, "quite reliably, shrink in volume by as much as 5 percent” during this period, “followed by a steady rebuilding during the first few months after giving birth.” Bohannon notes that researchers believe human birthing people may "have evolved to be capable of an extra phase of brain development…a deep pruning that precedes a massive period of social learning.” 

Of course, when this was all happening to me, in my brain and body, Bohannon’s book hadn’t yet been published. I wasn’t aware of postpartum depression beyond the term itself. What I was going through felt not like a hormonal condition, but like a fundamental shift in my awareness of mortality, in my ability to sync up emotionally with another being.

Sleep deprived, pulled in a way I’d never experienced before to understand every single thing about my tiny child, the anxiety worsened. I cried. A lot. Worse still, I didn’t know what to do about how I felt. I couldn’t turn to the things that had helped me through difficulty in the past: I didn’t have time to rest or even eat uninterrupted, much less spend long hours talking to friends or writing. I couldn’t run without worrying about disrupting my body’s ability to heal from my unexpected C-section.

As I breastfed all day and was up with my child much of the night, I began checking out art books from my digital library and reading about oil and watercolor painting, plein air pastel work, urban sketching, and so much else. 

At first, I just read a lot, and with my body occupied in the many tasks of care that filled my days, tried to look differently at my surroundings. As I observed, I tried to figure out technique. How would I paint or draw that slant of light or the way shadows made up the visual structure of a tree? What was it about any particular object or scene that had captured my attention? How would I, in turn, emphasize that aspect for a viewer?

This limited practice couldn’t last. I had to actually try putting what I was seeing down on a surface. Soon, I was seeking out the nearest art shop whenever I was out with my family, spending every spare penny so that I could discover my own would-be favorite materials. I wanted to draw all the time, and not limit myself to that—but try gouache and watercolor and oils and pastels, too.

This obsession focused my attention on my hands and what they could do, rather than on the blooming chaos of new parenthood. It taught me that looking outside of myself and looking hard—so that I could replicate observed details on the page—could help unstick the internal jams that had left me weepy and floundering for months.

As my child grew, I began to notice the phenomena inside my daily life that recurred, that could anchor me in our ever-changing reality. The locales of our relationship—the couch where I held them during colds and fevers, the floor where I urged them into their first steps, the bed where we lazed and read and nursed—these places became a first canvas, of sorts.  

Watching the lights from outside pass over the bedroom walls, I wanted to capture them—the movement, the sense of how quickly both the light itself and the patterns it created, changed. The piece accompanying this post is a representation of that movement. Created using cut paper, oil pastel, and cyanotype preparation fluid, it is an attempt to capture both the brightness and the blues of postpartum.

It is also, now, an emblem of having made it through.

In this newsletter, I have been tracking my making as I go, again, through the newborn, infant, and toddler phases with my second child, through the sleeplessness and wonder of new parenthood. I’ve already stockpiled some arts resources to help me through. I’ll be sharing those, too. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

This is a new platform, for me. I hope you'll pardon me as I figure out how it works.