re-use and re-purpose and teachable moments

I teach a lot of classes and workshops for beginning painters and in many of them I paint along with students and explain process as we go. It makes it a communal creative experience instead of a lecture, and it is not an approach a lot of people use in teaching art, but more should.

I remember one particularly obnoxious class at the art center that I looked in on where students were forced to stand for the duration, and the "instructor" walked around like a drill sergeant. Talk about learning from a bad example - the arrogance of this person who is not even a working artist, needing to dominate. He was proud of the fact that he forced students to stand and told me so. You have to know HOW to teach, in order to teach. There were a lot of complaints about that class and people did not come back. Disgruntled students asked me for other class options and I pointed them in the right direction to find better instructors.

In my classes people stand or sit and do whatever makes them most comfortable, and wonderful inspirational conversation flows. I am happy to say that people enjoy my classes and workshops and laughter abounds, while wonderful creative learning moments are had. It could not be better for these students just beginning to delve into painting and mixed media.

Watercolor studies have been piling up from these classes.... some finished and some incomplete.... and I have wondered what to "do" with them as I do not like anything to go to waste. I realized recently that these studies can be broken up into fragments that can be added to - to create wonderful mail art postcards to send to all sorts of people.

Waste not - Want not.