I just finished my 6th time teaching “Watercolor Fundamentals” at Maude Kerns Art Center in Eugene, Oregon. I have so enjoyed teaching this class, and have had wonderful students each time. Some students have repeated the class several times, and that is always fun as well. i love seeing their confidence grow as their painting skills improve.

This winter the weather played havoc on the class a bit. During week 7, the rain turned a bit icy, and since the class is in the evenings from 6-9 pm, several students decided to go home early in case the roads got icy. Then the next week, the snow hit…and hit big, so the final class was postponed until the following week (March 6). By then, though several students had other plans…travel, events, etc. So we had low attendance at the final class.

The last class always includes a sharing time where we look at the 6 paintings created during the class.a It is always fun to see how much work the students have done in 8 weeks. So although we had a small group, it was still a really good class. We talked about how we would have liked to have seen the work from those who weren’t there. So I decided to email everyone and ask them to send me photos of at least their last 2 paintings.

So below is what I received along with the students work from the last class. I didn’t hear from everyone, but it’s a good sampling of the work that was done during this winter.

Thanks to all my students throughout my time at Maude Kerns. You have been inspirational to me, and I have so enjoyed working with each on of you! Happy painting!

The following grid of paintings is from a two week project where we paint a value study (light & dark) using black paint and water. The second week we paint the same composition again using a limited palette of colors, trying to keep our values the same.

The next grid includes a variety of paintings. Some of them are from our complementary (opposite colors on the color wheel) painting, some from our triad (3 colors) painting, and some are from the last week, in which they painted using at least one texture. Enjoy this sampling!