Art Class Photo-Progression

One of my early sketches

 When I walked into the first art class at Tucson Parks and Rec, I wasn't sure what to expect. I wasn't expecting the teacher to tell me to "just draw" for three hours with the still-lifes she had set up. But that's what I did for the first two weeks. I think I expected her to give some sort of mini-lecture and then give us the opportunity to practice it. Instead, she wandered around the room, commenting on people's drawings or works in progress that they'd brought. When she got to my table, she said, "Oh you're a very good drawer..." and meandered away, leaving my alone for the rest of the class. 

I stuck with it though and by the third week, I was doing watercolor! I ended up sticking with water color through the end of the six-week class. The first one was another still-life from her selection, an aloe vera plant with windy tentacles that stuck out every which way.

She helped me with each layer saying, "Watercolors show everything" over and over and occasionally, "You're doing very well!" Well, that's great because I don't know what I'm doing in the first place!

Week 2 of the Aloe Plant

Once I finished filling in the background and foreground, I asked her, "Am I done now?"
"Nope, now it's time to add in the shadows and make it really pop!" I sighed and wished she would give me more instruction than that so I didn't have to fumble around with the shadows. In the end though, things turned out okay:

I guess the shadows really do make a difference.

For weeks 5 and 6, I brought in a picture from our trip to the East Coast of the shore in Baltimore:

Though it seems a little silly, the little birds sitting on the posts is my favorite thing about this picture. The watercolor I did turned out a lot lighter than the picture of course, but I don't think it detracts from the overall feel.

Day 1

By the time I got to session two for this painting, there really wasn't a lot to do except to add in some more shadows and blending in the water. The teacher walked over and declared, "it's done!" 

"Really?" I asked, a bit perplexed. It didn't look exactly like the picture... Still she insisted that it was finished, so I signed my name and took it home. I ended up framing it and giving it to Jake since the colors didn't match any of the decor in our house.

On the last night of class, it didn't make a lot of sense to start a whole new painting, so the teacher gave me a few flower pictures to play around with. "I think your watercolor lends itself really well to Botanicals. Are you coming back next semester?"

"No, unfortunately, I can't due to my schedule."

"Well that's too bad, because I really wanted to teach you botanicals."

"Yeah." I said lamely, hiding my annoyance.

For the rest of the evening though, I happily painted vibrant pink tiger lilies and tried to learn as much information as I could from her in the last hour or two. I am most proud of these lilies. Sadly, a few splashes of water spilled on the painting so some of the colors have smudged, but I went on to finish shading in the leaves and before the spill, it was stunning!

Finished flowers, but not leaves

In the end, I didn't feel like I learned a lot from the class. She helped me create a few pieces, but I didn't really learn any principles that I could apply to future works. Since I'd already taken a pretty in-depth sketching class in high school, I was already gifted at drawing. It seemed that because of that, she kind of glossed over me in order to help other people who were floundering more than I was. I'm a teacher, and I get that, but I still paid money to be there. If anything, I think she pulled out the talent that was already there and showed me what I was capable of by creating a more stimulating environment, and for that, I must be grateful.