Teaching Watercolor

I've been teaching painting with watercolor for six years in Mill Valley. There I teach adults. I've also taught adults at Falkirk Cultural Center in San Rafael. I taught at Diablo Valley College in a summer program for kids in 2016, 2018 and 2019. I have also taught different graphic design courses (typography and corporate identity) for more than eight years at two different universities...the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and the University of Québec at Montréal.

As part of my work on the board of directors with the California Watercolor Association, I volunteer teaching watercolor with the director of our Community Outreach group. We teach Vietnam veterans at the VA in Oakland. I have also taught high school students with Outreach at two high schools in the East Bay. With those groups, we do paint-along type sessions where I talk with the students about a finished painting that I bring and then walk them through doing the painting step by step. While we paint, I talk to the students about the fundamentals of painting, composition, color and the importance of values. In a two to three hour session, I try to include as much information as I can, while still 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 groups 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 enjoying painting throughout their lives, I'm very happy to have passed that along...as it was passed to me many years ago.

In 2018, I was accepted into the Yosemite Conservancy Artists in Residency Program. I taught there in the Fall of 2018 and 2019, teaching plein air watercolor. Teaching there (just being there) has been an absolutely wonderful experience...I LOVE everything about being in that incredible place, 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 somewhere until mid-afternoon. I look forward to being back this Fall in early September.