Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Merry Painting

This is another painting we did in an art class I taught a few weeks ago. Other than the fact that the junk Wal-Mart paints were either thin like water or thick like toothpaste, everyone's paintings came out fantastically well.

Acrylics are fantastic. Make a mistake? Wait a minute and viola! you can paint right over it. Except maybe here in the desert when you only need to wait 5.4 seconds before it dries. It does make blending a bit of a challenge.

One thing the art class participants have trouble with is using enough paint. I tell them to scoop the paint onto their brushes and lay down the first base layer of color in a very thick coat. Then they can pick up their lights for highlights and dark for lowlights and blend the colors right there on the canvas. Make the paint do the work for you! But it only works with super-duper globs of paint. Especially here in the desert. And new artists are hesitant to do anything super-duper in fear of making a super-duper mistake.

The repeat participants are getting it. This painting only took us 3 hours were the first two took us almost 4. As I said, there really are no mistakes with acrylics.

I have been asked to teach a painting class at our local on-base housing center as a community craft class. And then the director of our local art council has asked me to teach this type of class at the town's art center, The Firehouse. I'm honored!

In January I plan on hosting a family painting class for our homeschool co-op. We have 28474 girls between the ages of 5-15 that want to paint like their mom's have been, so I figured it was time to put together a family art class. Boys are welcome, too!

See you in a future art class!