A small group of artists has been gathering toward the back of
Country Rose Gallery and Frame Tuesday through Friday each week.
The group listens and watches intently as art teacher Darlene Boyd
demonstrates different techniques. Then they are let loose to try
it out on their own.
A small group of artists has been gathering toward the back of Country Rose Gallery and Frame Tuesday through Friday each week. The group listens and watches intently as art teacher Darlene Boyd demonstrates different techniques. Then they are let loose to try it out on their own.
“This is an idea I’ve been playing around with for a couple of years,” said Boyd, of starting the weekly art camps.
Country Rose offered the space and Boyd did a little advertising for her first week, June 8-10, right after school let out. Each week she focuses on a different topic, and students can sign up for individual weeks. Each four-day workshop is $80.
She is open to working with kids from third or fourth grade up to adults. Last week, three children and two adults were immersed in learning all about watercolor. Each student had their own watercolor paper, brushes, a small bowl of water and a palette of watercolor paints. Boyd gives the students a list of supplies they will need for class, many of which they can get at Country Rose.
“I’ve always enjoyed teaching,” she said. “I taught art lessons on and off since 1977. I’ve done several children’s camps, as art director of children’s camps and all kinds of things.”
Boyd also has a long history with art. She started art lessons as a child in Lodi and studied art at the Brooks Institute, School of Fine Arts and Santa Barbara Art Institute.
On the last day of class last week, Boyd showed the students how to use a piece of tag board, cut into different shapes on their canvas. She directed the artists to use saturated colors, so that the watercolor was darker than usual. They painted over the canvas, to the edge of the tag board shape. After they dried their paintings, with help from a blow dryer, they pulled up the tag board and there was a distinct edge where it had been.
She also showed the students how they could use drops of rubbing alcohol on their painted canvas to make the paint spread away and create lighter circles on the sheet.
“We are trying different techniques for watercolor,” she said. “Some of it is abstract.”
Boyd held out a canvas from earlier in the week and showed where the students had used salt or sugar to change the texture of the piece.
After the students completed the first canvas, they moved on to a different technique. Some used black ink, while others improvised with black water color. She put in a large blotch of wet black paint on the corner of a watercolor canvas, and then using a straw she blew the paint across the paper.
“You can blow it around to make branches,” she said.
She explained that those with waterproof ink could paint over their ink with other watercolors since it wouldn’t bleed. She also suggested that the students could paint the canvas first with watercolors and then use the straw technique.
Other classes this summer have included an introduction to drawing, illustrations and nature painting with acrylic and arts. Classes will continue through the first week in August.
