Jan 22

Jan 22 A New Watercolor Class Experience

Last week was the first meeting of the latest watercolor class I’m taking at our local Academy Center of the Arts. I walked into the studio classroom and most of the other eleven students were already there and getting ready for class. By “getting ready” I mean serious setups! Each one had some sort of portable, table-top easel, large collections of brushes, paper, and clearly knew what they were doing. Each one, also, seemed to have taken classes with this well known, local watercolor teacher before. Talk about feeling like an outsider! Now, to be fair, all, including the instructor, were very friendly and welcoming. No problem there. No one appeared to be a watercolor snob but by the end of the class, it was clear painting with watercolor was not new to these ladies (all eleven were female)!

I was taken aback by this scene because in other classes I’ve taken in this same room (watercolor, ink drawing, and pencil drawing) the instructor puts out all the materials and lays out paper for us to use. This was quite different it appeared. I went ahead and pulled out my kit: my 8 1/4” x 5” Moleskine sketchbook, my scratch paper, and my #6 DaVinci travel brush, just as I would do we’re I setting up on the street somewhere to start an urban sketch. No immediate directions were coming from the instructor but as I looked around, everyone was busy working on a painting. I figured, okay, I guess this is how this works. We paint and the instructor walks around and talks to us, offers suggestions, or answers questions.

No, it turns out, that’s not how it works. Soon, the instructor passed out a print of a photograph. She then set up an easel, got her materials out, and began to paint over a drawing she had done of the photo she had given us. Ah! Now I get it. She’s going to talk us through her painting of that photo. We listen, ask questions, and then draw and paint it ourselves. Got it! So that’s what happened. I got busy working on the “assignment” and, since she hadn’t offered any paper, I did mine in my sketchbook. I looked around and everyone was busy. It got close to the ending time so with no further direction, I started to clean up and put my things away.

I put on my coat and was about to leave when I noticed the instructor was gather paintings and displaying them in front of the room. Hmmm? Appears we’re going to share our work. OK, so I took out my sketchbook, opened it to my painting of the assigned photo, and handed it over. However, as I stood there looking at the others’ paintings, none was of the photo! Mine was the only one! And it was tiny compared to everyone else’s work. Hmmm? What don’t I understand? As we all stood looking at everyone’s work, the instructor started talking about one of the paintings. And so it went for them all, including my tiny - in comparison - painting of the vase with flowers in the photo. People commented, answered questions, asked questions and it was a nice experience. Then we all left.

So, I still don’t know why no one else painted the vase, but my take was, you don’t have to but can if you want to. Interesting.

For this week’s class, the instructor e-mailed us a photo of another scene with the instruction to only draw - not paint! - the scene. In class #2 yesterday, things were a bit different and more as I had originally expected. Everyone got set up and the instructor started her demo. Everyone gathered around to watch. Many of us asked questions as she painted and described what she was doing and why she was making the decisions she was making. Then we all got to work on our versions of the same scene. I was struck by how differently we each rendered the scene assigned to us. Class #2 was a lot of fun with some new information learned.