Watercolor Class--Any Better?

My friend Chris told me she was taking a one-time watercolor painting class, and when I said, "Oooh!", she asked me if I'd like to join her. I'd always wanted to take a watercolor class. It was just one night, two hours of our time. Perhaps this was the class I should have taken instead of Linguistics for the Linguistically Challenged. We got our supplies at the art store, and arrived in the basement of the library ready to learn.

There were five people in the class, including us. The teacher didn't introduce himself; he just pulled up a table and told us we could sit there. The three other people were already painting. It turned out that this was a two-part class, and we were at the second part. Perhaps these students had already been schooled for two hours?

We sat down and waited for instruction. And waited. Finally, the teacher told us to sketch the scene and then to paint it. I looked at the still life and groaned inside. It was so cliche--a wine bottle, a loaf of bread with one slice cut, and two brown eggs, all on a cloth, draped dramatically and taped to the wall. Look, it's France in the basement of a library in Boston!

Chris and I started sketching, and the teacher walked out of the room. Huh? He came back a few minutes later and looked at everyone's work. "Very nice shading", he said to the man next to Chris. "I like what you've done", he said to someone else. He came to me and said, "Why don't you erase all of this and turn the paper the other way?" I replied, "Check this out!" and I just flipped the paper to a new one. He sketched the whole scene for me, looked at Chris's work, and then left again.

We wondered why the teacher kept leaving, and why no one was talking. They were all so serious. The man painted one French scene after another, whipping them off his pad as if it was a new sport--Watercolor Racing, first one who uses his whole pad wins! I fell back into my comfort zone, and starting making wisecracks just loud enough for Chris to hear so that she'd laugh. We felt like the bad kids in school; I had to stop myself from passing her a note.

The teacher came back and announced that there was an art show upstairs and if we needed a break we could go get free refreshments. So that's where he'd been! Scarfing cookies and juice while we waited for some interaction. Technique? Tips? Answers to questions? He leaned over me and said, "How you doin', Kiddo?" He didn't know that one nickname I happen to hate is "Kiddo." I am forty years old, I am nobody's Kiddo. I told him I didn't know what I was doing. He told me that it was all about dark and light, the draping, the shadows. He told me where it was dark and where it was light, complimented Chris, and then left again. At least that time we knew where he was going.

I didn't see dark and light. I saw a vacant bottle of wine, probably emptied by our fearless non- leader, a loaf of stale bread, and eggs with samonella. I realized that I was not a watercolor artist, I was a photographer and an anthropologist. I liked watching the teacher interact with the different people in the room, and making assumptions about him based on the stories he told us about how people had seen his work and bought his paintings on the spot for lots of money.

I took a picture of the scene and compared it with my painting. My loaf of bread at first resembled a turkey, but once I added some shading, it turned out to be a hot dog. One of my eggs looked like a lemon, and the other one melted. My background just looked dirty. Chris's painting was much better than mine, but she kept blotting at it furiously in order to make it appear lighter. We agreed that what we both liked was watercolor outlined with black so that it was crisp and not flowy. We decided to look at children's books and admire what illustrators had done.

I gave up. I started sketching out the words for this blog post, I texted someone, and I went upstairs for free cookies and juice. I met a very nice artist and saw a book I wanted to borrow from the library.

At the end of the "space rented out so we could use the things we bought from the art store" session, because it turned out not to be a class after all, Chris and I met up with friends for dinner. Maybe she'll come to the "Dark Side of Boston" walk I signed up for at the end of the month. Whaddaya say, Chris?