I do not sit still very well. Formal meditation — eyes closed, following the breath, trying to quiet the mind — is something I have attempted many times and abandoned just as often. The thoughts do not stop. They speed up. My leg starts bouncing. I start wondering if I have left the kettle on.
What I discovered — and this feels obvious in retrospect — is that painting gives me everything formal meditation is supposed to give me, but with something for my hands to do and a concrete outcome to move towards. For people whose minds work the way mine does, that changes everything.
This is a guide for anyone who is curious about using painting as a contemplative or meditative practice, whether or not you have any experience of either art or formal meditation.
What meditation actually does (and why painting can do it too)
When people talk about the benefits of meditation — reduced anxiety, improved focus, a sense of calm, lower cortisol — what they are really describing is the effect of sustained, non-judgmental attention on a single thing. The breath is just a convenient anchor. It happens to be always available, always happening.
But the breath is not the only anchor. Making something with your hands — especially something repetitive, absorbing, and forgiving of imperfection — can produce the same state. Flow states in art, described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, involve exactly the conditions of meditation: complete absorption, suspension of self-monitoring, loss of the sense of time.
The difference is that painting gives you a visible, tangible result. For minds that struggle with the formlessness of pure attention practice, that concrete reward changes the whole calculus.
Why watercolour specifically
I am obviously partial here, but watercolour has particular qualities that make it well-suited to contemplative practice:
- It resists control. Wet paint on wet paper moves. Pigment blooms. Edges soften. You cannot micromanage watercolour, which means you have to learn to work with what happens rather than against it. This is, quietly, a practice in acceptance.
- It rewards slowness. Rushing watercolour makes it muddy. Waiting — watching how a wet wash dries, how colours settle, when to add the next layer — requires and builds patience.
- It is forgiving at the beginning. A single wash requires only a brush, water, and one colour. There is no elaborate technique required to make a start.
- The process is sensory. The sound of a brush on paper. The smell of water and pigment. The texture of the paper under your hand. These sensory anchors help keep attention in the present moment.
How to begin: a session structure
If you want to use painting as a contemplative practice, some structure helps — especially at the beginning, when the mind naturally tries to wander into evaluation and comparison.
Before you start (5 minutes):
- Set up your materials slowly and intentionally. Fill your water jar. Lay out your colours. Choose one or two.
- Look at what you are going to paint — whether that is a view from the window, a simple object, or just a piece of paper — for two full minutes without picking up your brush.
- Set an intention: not "paint something good" but "stay present with the process for the next hour."
While painting:
- Work slowly. Mix more water than you think you need.
- When you notice your mind wandering into judgement ("this looks wrong," "I am ruining it"), note it as you would a thought in meditation, and return to the physical act of painting. What does the brush feel like? What colour is actually in front of you?
- Resist the impulse to fix mistakes immediately. Wet watercolour does not respond well to fussing. Watch and wait.
After the session:
- Before evaluating the work, sit with it for a few minutes. How do you feel compared to when you started?
- If you want to evaluate: look for things that worked before looking for things that did not.
Exercises for developing meditative attention
The single-colour wash. Choose one colour. Wet your paper completely. Drop in the colour and then do nothing. Watch it move. Notice the patterns it makes as it dries. Repeat with a different colour. The goal is observation, not composition.
Blind contour drawing. Look at an object — your hand, a mug, a plant — and draw it without looking at the paper. Keep your pen or pencil moving continuously. This forces you into pure observation and is surprisingly meditative.
Timed sessions. Set a timer for 20 minutes. Paint continuously until it goes off. No stopping to evaluate, no starting again. The constraint removes the decision-fatigue of "should I keep going?"
Painting from memory. Spend five minutes looking at something, then put it away. Paint what you remember. This exercise works memory and observation simultaneously and completely removes the pressure of accuracy.
What happens over time
The first few sessions are often frustrating. The mind is loud. The hand feels clumsy. The painting looks nothing like what you imagined. This is exactly what happens in meditation too — the first experience of trying to sit still tends to reveal just how chaotic the mind already is, which is information, not failure.
With practice — two or three sessions a week, over several months — something shifts. The mind becomes quieter more quickly. The frustration with the gap between intention and result softens into curiosity. You start to notice things: the exact green of moss on a wall, the way morning light changes the colour of shadow, the way your breathing slows when you are really in it.
That noticing is the practice. The painting is what you have to show for it.
Workshops as a supported practice
One of the things I have found in running workshops is that having a structured environment — a time, a place, other people also engaged in the same quiet work — significantly lowers the barrier for people who struggle to practice alone. There is something about shared presence, without conversation, that is itself calming.
My Mindful Watercolour workshops in Carshalton are specifically designed with this in mind: slow-paced, guided, with no expectation of prior experience. They are as much about the quality of the hour as about the painting you take home.
If you are in Surrey and want to explore watercolour as a contemplative practice, I would be glad to have you. You can also read more about the philosophy behind slow painting here.
