Art Class

I arrived early at the senior center for the first day of my Painting with Acrylics class.  The Materials List had instructed me to "dress comfortably" so I wore cropped sweatpants, old, dirty running shoes and a wrinkled HRC tee shirt.  I admit it; I hadn't had time to shower.  The teacher, dressed in a green floral blouse, dark slacks and sparkly earrings smiled when I entered the bright room.  With a slight accent, she introduced herself.  When I mispronounced her name, she patiently told me it was the same as the name 'Marvin' but with a different first letter.  Within seconds I forgot what letter her name began with and only knew that it rhymed with Marvin.

I put my white Michael's bag on the table in front of us and showed  ?arvin the brushes I had bought.  She slid the bristles back and forth across her her fingers.  "These brushes are for oil paint," she said.  "You need brushes for acrylics."  She said she had some brushes I could borrow.  "Did you bring something you wanted to paint?" she asked.  I told her I hadn't, so she brought a Costco envelope stuffed with photographs, as well as some brushes over to my table.

I browsed through the photos of postcards, posters and paintings from the Costco envelope.  I found a photo that I liked of several colorful leaves on a green and brown background.  ?arvin began mixing my paints to match one of the background colors, then she showed me how to paint the canvas (zig zag strokes, not horizontal).  She handed me the brush and I was on my way.

Later, ?arvin mixed the brown paint for the rest of my background and I finished covering the canvas.  ?arvin  returned and looked over my shoulder.  "Very good," she said.  Then she picked up the brush and said, "You can use water to blend the color like this."  She began brushing more paint over my canvas.  She continued to paint, mixing more green and then brown, pausing to slide my canvas closer to where she leaned.  By the time she was finished, ?arvin had repainted my entire canvas.  Every stroke was hers.

I spent the rest of the class time drawing and painting leaves.  ?arvin spent the rest of the class time painting over much of my work.  Initially, I felt confusion, frustration, and disappointment.  But by the end of class I was able to relax and even smile a little at her teaching technique.  I realized that even though I would end up with a painting that was hers instead of mine, I was learning how to mix, blend, and paint with acrylics on canvas.

When class was over ?arvin asked, "Do you have time to paint at home?"  I told her that I did.  "Good," she said.  "You work on it at home, then bring it in and we fix it."