Found a genius technique for the artistic impaired.
I'm always looking for techniques to compensate for my lack of artistic abilities. Stencils, for instance, are great aids. But today I found myself free-hand painting the markings of a goldfish and I came up with nuthin. I knew I wanted a black marking on a gold scaled fish, but nothing I did looked natural. My artistic sister once told me that my freehand was very anal and linear. I wouldn't pick the pencil up from the paper when I would draw, and the curves were not convincing. So, drawing a natural black marking on a goldfish proved challenging until I found a technique, quite by accident.
I had a wet paper towel wadded up in my left hand as I drew because I would pat the paper down when I made a mistake. If nothing else, my "impairment" has helped me see the usefulness of layering colors to create depth. But, then it happened. In one of those serendipitous moments, I held the wad above the drawing and the ceiling lights above helped cast a shadow over the goldfish in precisely the area that I was looking to put the black markings. It was so perfect. I just followed the outline with the paint brush and filled it in.
If I get good at this, I might paint a throw rug for the patio area and make it look like a koi pond.
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I can't draw a convincing stick figure... 
