I've been teaching painting with watercolor for more than nine years. I also taught design for eight years at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and L' Université du Québec à Montréal when I worked as a designer (now retired).
As part of my work on the board of directors with the California Watercolor Association, I volunteer teaching watercolor with our Community Outreach group. We teach Vietnam veterans at the VA in Oakland. On occasion, we're asked to visit a high school and do a demonstration paint-along for the students. While we paint, I talk to the students about the fundamentals of painting; drawing, color, composition and the importance of values. In a several hour session, I try to include as much information as I can, while allowing them time to complete the painting. My main responsibility on the board is producing our National Exhibition.
If these visits to high schools or the veteran's group can plant the seeds of how much fun and how rewarding it is to paint with watercolor (or any medium) and give someone the springboard to enjoy painting throughout their lives, I'm very happy to have passed that along...as it was passed to me many years ago.
Since 2018, I teach (plein air watercolor) in Yosemite National Park for a week or two each summer through their Artists in Residency Program. Teaching there (just being there) is an absolutely wonderful experience...I love everything about being in that incredible park, the people I work with as well as meeting new people every day, taking them out to paint and helping them with their paintings. In the mornings, we start with a classroom lesson for about forty five minutes and then head out to paint until mid-afternoon. I look forward to going back each year. Yosemite is the only one the 63 national parks whose artist in residency program, requires that the visiting artists teach!
In the summer of 2023, I taught a ten day workshop at La Romita School of Art in Umbria, Italy. Every morning, after breakfast, we'd get on the school's bus to be taken to a different medieval hill town in the area to paint and just marvel at the incredible, enchanting towns. It was a wonderful experience...I'm going back to teach another workshop in 2025, we're currently working out scheduling.
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You can download an article in pdf format about the class I taught in Mill Valley...