Teaching How To Paint My Red Fox

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
                                                                       ~William Arthur Ward

I volunteered almost two months ago to teach a class in the Watercolor Sharing class that I go to.  I know I shared my red fox a few weeks ago with everyone, but here he is again, Ever Watchful...

I'm not one to procrastinate, so I had all copies made and items packed up well ahead of time.  Yesterday morning after I awoke, I heard we were under a tornado watch and there was a good chance of storms in the afternoon.  Gee, maybe only a few will show up and we'll have a nice small, intimate class and I won't feel too intimidated.  There are some excellent artists in our class, and even though I taught middle school and high school for a living, it's another thing to try and teach painting methods of something I just recently learned myself.  But I seriously wasn't nervous at all.  I arrived early to get everything set up and as I was doing so, the students kept pouring in.  The class was full!  I printed off 20 copies and had only one left.  But I was really shocked to see Ce Ce, who was the first person I learned to paint with.  I really felt honored for her to attend this class.  Later, as I walked around, I found out that she had never painted animals and this is why she was here, as well as many of the other people.

When I painted Ever Watchful, I kept taking photos of the various stages and writing notes to myself.  I made a copy of these and hung them in the front of the classroom for the students to see.  Here's a few of them...

This is still in the early stage...

And this one is probably halfway or just a tad further...

I didn't share with any of them, until much later, that the eyes took me a good hour to paint and that the entire fox was done with many glazes of watercolors (glazing with watercolors means to layer one on top of the other, but to do so, each layer must be totally dry).  Needless to say, I have many hours of labored love into Ever Watchful.

I'm happy to say that the class went very well and I got lots of great feedback from most everyone.  I'm really anxious to take photos of some of the different red fox paintings that the students painted.  Many will bring back their finished painting to show to the class and it's truly amazing how everyone has their own style of painting and that there will not be any two alike.  I'll share these photos with you as soon as I can, but it will be at least another week or two.