Watercolor Wizard

This St. Charles artist brings photos to life with her brush.

Watercolor artist Jan Helton always starts with the eyes.

When Jan, who specializes in painting portraits and birds, knows that she has the eyes mastered, her confidence grows in her art piece and her passion for painting is fueled.

In 2009, Jan took a watercolor class in a basement taught by a retired art teacher in St. Charles, which then sparked her painting pursuits.

“It was like my watercolor world exploded,” Jan says. “I found out how much more there is out there to learn.”

Now, Jan has her own studio, which her husband built, in St. Charles. It’s there that she teaches hands-on watercolor workshops.

While Jan has dabbled in other media, none of them spoke to her the way watercolor does.

“I just love the transparency, the mystery, the fun things you can do, the watermarks that happen, the accidents, the surprises,” Jan says.

Jan takes her own reference photos of her subjects and uses the photos as inspiration as she begins painting. She keeps a camera stationed on her kitchen table to take pictures of the birds that visit her wildflower garden. Her favorite bird is whichever visits most.

“At the moment,” Jan says, “I’m doing the goldfinches, so they’re my current favorite, but that’ll change.”

When painting, she lets the water and the watercolor paint work together. Jan allows the paint to move freely without forcing a specific result.

“I like the water to flow and sometimes I allow it to make blooms (spots where the water causes the paint to spread, often resembling a flower bloom) at the bottom,” Jan says. “It dries from top to bottom, so I work in layers.”

Layers are essential to Jan’s watercolor method. Jan uses as many as 10 or 12 layers in some spots to allow the colors to build onto each other. Transparency, which allows for shadows and highlights to show through, is also key when trying to ensure that the final images look realistic.

Depending on the day, Jan finds herself working on several different paintings. Until inspiration strikes, they reside half-painted in her studio. Right now, she has five unfinished large portraits.

“One day I’ll be reading an article in a watercolor magazine or I’ll see a painting and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that’s what I need to do on this painting,’ ” Jan says.

Jan has won many awards in the watercolor world. Her painting, “Sunshine and Lemons,” (above) received the Alla Jablokow Memorial Award in the 2025 Transparent Watercolor Society of America 49th Annual Exhibition.

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For more information on Jan’s paintings or her watercolor classes, visit JanHeltonArtWorks.com. For updates on her latest work, find Jan on Facebook at Jan Helton Artworks.

All photos by Jan Helton.

This article was originally published in the November/December issue of Missouri Life.