Steve Mitchell, passionate about watercolours

Steve Mitchell has been drawing since he was a child. When he was six, his mother gave him a “step-by-step” drawing book – and a passion for drawing was born. When he was about ten, he started to try out different media like graphite and charcoal, and gradually started to perfect his technique. He would draw do drawings for his friends, and they were so good that one day his teacher accused him of lying when he said a drawing was his. But his mother, an artist herself, stood up for him and confirmed that her son had a talent for art. She was taking drawing lessons and when she had tasks to do at home, Steve would do them too, just for fun. At high school, he continued to draw, learned to paint with acrylics and took an art diploma. It was at university that he first discovered watercolours, and the technique really appealed to him.

After starting a family, he began to work as a freelance designer and illustrator. He was particularly inspired by famous illustrators like Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parish, Howard Pyle, NC Wyeth and JC Leyendecker. He then took a job as artistic director for a marketing company, where he worked for six years before starting his own business. Later he returned to his first artistic loves, watercolour and mixed media techniques. In 2014, he started his own YouTube channel, The Mind of Watercolor, to help aspiring artists to get to know the watercolour technique and its full potential.

“Watercolour offers a great luminosity and a deceptive simplicity that can help you achieve so many complex things. It combines nicely with other techniques such as pen and ink or coloured pencil. For me watercolour is the ideal medium.”