From cute cats to plants and flowers to scenes of Chattanooga, the drawings found in Konstantin Chinkov’s “Wondering Watercolor” books are the kinds of drawings that make you want to be able to draw.
As someone who lacks artistic abilities, I was excited to try my hand at watercolor painting on Chinkov’s charming prints using his easy-to-follow video tutorials. While I can’t say that my first attempts were worthy of anyone’s eyes but my own, after a few pages, I started to get the hang of it and took pride in the noticeable improvement in my technique that resulted from simply following his instructions and sticking with it.
The books were inspired by Chinkov’s nephew, who, when he was around 6 years old, would ask Chinkov to draw things that he could paint on because he — similar to my adult self — wanted to paint something drawn by someone with skill in order to produce a more satisfying and presentable finished product.
“He kept asking me to draw stuff, and eventually, I just made him a little book and gave it to him,” he says. “But then his friends and classmates wanted the book, so it was kind of a lightbulb moment, and I thought, ‘I think I could make something out of this.'”
Since his nephew lives in Alabama, Chinkov started making videos so he could paint with him when they weren’t together. Other people saw and liked the videos, encouraging him to create video tutorials for the people who buy his books.