Getting away from it all at a watercolor class

Banks and investment firms are collapsing around us.

Rain recently soaked us for three days, flooding basements and drenching the crops in the fields.

I haven't put a full tank of gas in my Escape in months. I just can't face putting any more than $40 in the tank at a time.

So, in a quest to get away from the worries of the world, I've spent the last two Tuesday afternoons at the Messenger Public Library in North Aurora taking "Watercolor for Dummies" by transparent watercolor artist Ann Schuster of Campton Hills.

Schuster, who teaches more in-depth watercolor classes at The Fine Line in St. Charles, quickly filled up two watercolor classes this summer and I jumped at the chance when the library phoned me to say that I was picked from the waiting list to join the free class in September.

For two hours all I had to worry about was the critical eye of Daily Herald photographer Rick West who informed me that I was "too literal" in my painting and that I needed to "loosen up."

"You're not doing a pretty picture today," Schuster told the class. "This is just an exercise in letting the paper do the mixing; allow the paper to mix the colors."

The library's back conference room was filled with ten women and two men trying their hands at painting flowers and butterflies in the two-hour class.

Schuster spent the first session teaching us about watercolor equipment and strategies and then let us paint from templates for the remaining two class sessions.

Since she had us painting with templates, we didn't have to concern ourselves with our artistic skills. We could just concentrate on mixing colors.

"What's fun is watching what the colors do. Let the paper do the mixing," Schuster kept telling us.

We each held up an outline of a flower or a butterfly to the window and traced the design on our watercolor paper. Then we drew over the pencil marks with silver markers and used our palettes consisting of only red, blue and yellow pigment to fill in the design.

My first attempt to paint the flower I carefully traced on my watercolor paper ended with an unintended result.

Schuster instructed us to avoid going from light to dark with our watercolors. But I ignored that instruction and painted one of my flowers yellow and then tried to "blend" red on top of the dried yellow color.

That attempt to make an orange flower turned into a bright red rose.

I wasn't too happy with my attempts at mixing my yellow and blue to make the green leaves either.

I felt better when I heard Schuster share a bit of her wisdom with another fellow student who admitted that she has never painted before.

"There's no short cut to the mountain top," Schuster told the student.

Indeed, I thought.

I got out another piece of watercolor paper and carefully traced the butterfly pattern on with the black pencil point.

I made some better choices in color selection for my purple and yellow butterfly and I think that Rick would have approved had he seen my second attempt at water coloring.

Schuster said we'll be painting apples in our final class. As long as they're red apples, I should do well.