Student Stories : Susan Johnson

Student Stories

Feb 13

Featuring the artwork of Trailbound Sketches student Susan Johnson!

We met Susan through our 24 Day Watercolor Series that was designed to be a fun take on an advent calendar. But instead of a counting down to Christmas with a daily dose of candy, we thought it would be fun to sketch and paint small paintings that would fit together to become a bigger painting by Christmas. This paint-a-long virtual event welcomed over 1,500 watercolor enthusiasts. Some with experience and others learning to paint for the first time. It also included artists from all across the globe!

There were and continue to be so many outstanding students who show up in my feed and inbox, but of all of them Susan stood out because she not only stuck it out, she helped encourage everyone else who was sharing their work on Instagram, too. If you have the joy of following Susan on Instagram @squinj — be sure to cheer her on too! Furthermore, make sure you read her captions! They are full of witty humorous antidotes of her experience with each sketch!

Susan is playful and colorful with her sketching practice. A lot of fun to see her write her own script, create her own characters and in the end illustrate her own story over the course of 24-sketches!

In Susan’s own words:

I absolutely love how they [24 Day Series paintings] turned out. I can see how I progressed as I went and I remember struggling with certain days and then dealing a day or two later it has clicked for me. I loved everything about these lessons. Max explained stuff so well and encouraged personalizing stuff. He was super soothing to listen to and had some good life lessons during the lessons. I think he would be allowed to rename the water colors. Grilled cheese makes way more sense. I have absolutely loved getting to see everybody else’s artwork as this went along. We all have different styles and I absolutely love getting to see that and peoples progress they made. I still am following some of the people I followed during the advent and encouraging their work and they are encouraging mine and I just love it.

As much as I loved my water color class in college cuz it was me and a bunch of old folks and they were always telling stories - I didn’t LEARN how to do watercolor in college. This has taught me so much more!

“I have absolutely loved getting to see everybody else’s artwork as this went along. We all have different styles and I absolutely love getting to see that and peoples progress they made. I still am following some of the people I followed during the advent and encouraging their work and they are encouraging mine and I just love it. ”

— Susan Johnson