My First Painting Class

Carefree colour play
with brush, palette knife and my
fingers, fun for all!

~ carliewired

Learning to paint has been on my bucket list for some time. (My mother was a watercolour painter and so was one of her aunts.) I had to wait until I retired to finally get to it.

When I arrived back in Yuma last fall, I joined the Mountain Shadows Artists Association which meets in the Foothills Library near my house. They are a friendly group, mostly women and mostly painters.

I signed up for the first available acrylic painting class. Today was the first of the two-day workshop. Linda C., our instructor, made it a tremendous experience. She has so many ways to make it 'painless' and fun.

1. Linda demonstrated how she does it. Here she's looking at a table with items set up for still life. She'd selected a toucan with flowers as her focus.

2. Linda showed us how to paint out a canvas before beginning a painting. This one was done with a brush. We used any colours we wanted to pick. Linda encouraged us to spread the paint on generously using bold and varied brush strokes. It was set aside to dry before going on. For me, this got me past dealing with a big white canvas.

3. I focused on the blue glass pitcher with the hydrangeas as the still life I wanted to paint.

4. Here's my first painting. Needs a bit more work on the background and also on the place under the pitcher, but generally I am pleased with the results.

I'm looking forward to day 2!