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Chic ~~ Watercolor Class Meets Kindergarten

By Vintagefrenchchic

I have a passive interest in being an artist.  I love art–always have.  I love going to art museums.  I love observing art in nature.  And I do want to “create” art but I have never been driven to pursue anything specific.  Well, that has changed…or rather it is starting to change.

I signed up for a watercolor class.  I love it.  My instructor is very talented and patient.  Our group meets in an old, one-roomed school-house which sits rather prettily in the middle of nowhere.  So that in itself is totally vintage cool.   I am

sloooowly

learning the ropes of watercolor technique.  I say slowly because I feel like I am back in Kindergarten.  Being in a school doesn’t help.  But I really don’t mind because I was only in Kindergarten for 9 weeks before I was moved to first grade.  And even though that may make  me some kind of kid genius (not really), I have always felt like I really missed out on something BIG in childhood…I missed a first “rites of passage”.  I have no memories of going to school and eating graham crackers and taking naps.  I only have the full-throttled, grueling, FULL day school experience that we all endured for years.  No getting my little Kmart Trax shoes wet first.  Nope not for me.  But through this watercolor class I am living my Kindergarten dream.  How so?

So far I have painted a color wheel and experimented with pulling paints across the page.  I have done one simplistic picture (two green mounds representing hills and a blue sky), dumped coarse sea salt on it to see how the salt would create a speckled appearance.  That’s it.  I was just getting on a roll when my instructor decided she needed a trip to Ireland…where, of course, she will paint fabulous landscapes, no doubt.  She gave me “homework”  to do…which I promptly lost…with the orders to not worry about creating any pictures yet.

Come on!

So as the two weeks of her absence came to close, this kindergartener became restless.  I decided to pull out the paints and watercolor pencils the other day and just see what I could do.  I found a leaf on a walk so I painted that first (remember, I am at Kindergarten level):

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I wanted to try out my watercolor pencils next so I looked to my vinyl tablecloth for inspiration and painted this:

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Now that was fun!  I really like using the pencils.  At this point in my painting career, I feel they give me more control than just slopping paint on a page.  Which is why she had me start on a color wheel.  Yes, I get it now.

I really like Kindergarten.  I think I may take graham crackers and milk (spiked with espresso shots) to my next class.

Thank you for reading!

~~Heather~~

p.s.  please see my about page for my commenting policy


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