I have had the wonderful opportunity to teach an 8 week watercolor workshop for people 55 and over. The program was funded by a grant geared toward helping people as they age not only get out and learn something new, but get out of the house and rub shoulders with people of similar age while sharing the experience of learning, to help connect the classmates in a shared experience. Studies have found that social connection not only reduces loneliness, but helps decrease the risk of alzheimer’s and dementia.

The program was sponsored by several organizations: Willow Library Association, Willow Library, MatSu Health Foundation, and the MatSu Council on Aging. Many of the libraries in our Borough participated in this program this year with many different types of classes. In Willow we had 2 sessions, one this spring which was an art journaling class, and one this fall, which is the one I taught about watercolor.

We had 15 original participants and ended the class with 13. This class was geared toward a beginner painting audience although some had done watercolor or other forms of painting previous, one had even taken my 6 week workshop prior to taking this class.

We began the class with 3 weeks of mostly technique. These 3 days (4.5 hours) gave the students a base of ability to then build upon as we went along. It also helped them learn the terminology I would be using as we proceeded forward.

The 4th week we began painting a bigger piece using only 1 color to see and understand layering and contrast that makes a picture look like it has dimension vs a flat image. We didn’t finish this piece in class but many took them home and brought back a finished piece that was beautiful.

Week’s 5, 6, and 7 were done based upon class interest. In all my workshops I like to use the last half of the workshop to paint what the students want to paint as they learn faster and work harder on something that interests them. I found that to be especially true teaching piano and it has carried over as true in painting.

Week 5 we painted a chicken. We had 2 chickens to paint, and I shared the first black chicken here already. I painted the black chicken ahead of time for a reference for the students, and then gave them the black or brown one to paint in class, I painted the brown one for my demonstration.

Week 6 was all about birch trees. I had a number of requests for trees, wooded areas, forests, all that type of subject, so we did a painters tape resist to create our trees and then painted in a quick background before moving on to spend the remaining time working on the birch trees.

This past Monday, week 7, we painted northern lights. This is almost always one of the requested paintings in any class and it was a fun one to demonstrate and paint. We had a bit of time left as they were supposed to fill out a survey as part of the grant funding, but the survey’s hadn’t shown up yet.

We had plenty of extra paper so there was a request to learn to paint flowers. The last 45 minutes were taken up in class by members either painting thank you cards for the sponsors or learning to paint some simple red flowers.

Week 8 is a celebration, which will happen next week. Each participant is to bring between 1 and 5 paintings they’ve done during the past 8 weeks (painted in class or at home), and share with those who attend. It’s open to the public to come and look, and we’ve asked participants to invite family and friends.

This has been such a wonderful opportunity for me to meet new people, share something I love, and see others progress through a painting program that I know many of them found a bit daunting, harder than than anticipated, and at times frustrating. But they have all progressed, they have all learned, and it was fun to sit back and watch them have fun and share their experiences with their classmates. We had a good group of people and it was a joy to paint with each one of them.

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