Painting a Path to Learning: My Watercolor Alphabet Collaboration w/ Young Learning
Photo Courtesy: Young Learning
It’s a funny thing when you put yourself out there. You feel so vulnerable. Especially when you start sharing a new skill you are working on. I slowly started to share my watercolor journey on Instagram. Little hints here and there that I was trying something new. Before you know it, I was making full watercolor videos. Because, why not!? It’s fun to see who responds to what and who it inspires. I have countless friends now excited to try watercolor simply because I shared my journey.
Photo Courtesy: Young Learning
Another cool thing happens when you share your work. People come to you with amazing ideas and often they want to work with YOU on them. That’s how my collaboration with Young Learning came about.
My incredibly talented friend Tavia Young does some very special work with her company Young Learning. Her superpower is teaching kids how to read and making it fun. I admire her and her work very much. So you can imagine my excitement when she approached me about helping her create a very specific alphabet for her community and the children she works with.
She explained that children learn their letters best when they know three things about each letter: letter name, letter sound, and letter shape. Because she needed very specific images to go with the letters and she couldn’t find an alphabet anywhere that had the proper images and sounds, she created her own and asked me to do the watercolor images for her.
I was extremely honored and humbled that she would even consider me for something like this. My first reaction was, “Can I really do this?”
Turns out I can and I did!
I poured myself into all of my watercolor resource books that I have collected over time. I mean, I had never painted an iguana, or narwhal, or human face. The list goes on. Fortunately, with the help of these books, my library, and my boys’ book and stuffed animal collection, I had just what I needed to help her create this alphabet.
It was actually so much fun. I looked forward to each new letter, even though some were more of a struggle than others.
Her Watercolor Alphabet Cards are now being shipped around the world to help children with their ABC’s and I am thrilled to play a small part in her vision.