I took just one painting class in college — oil painting. I loved it, but had more fun working in clay, and spent many semesters up to my elbows in “mud.”

Years after graduating, when I decided to paint again, I dug out my old oils. They still held magic.

Back then, I was working full time as Creative Services Director, and got up to paint before going to work. That gave me 20–45 min. of painting time about three times a week.

Each day I took a photo of my painting in progress. I liked seeing the painting develop, and knew that I could “blow it” with my next brush stroke. I figured if I had a record of what it looked like when I liked it, I could get back to that stage.

Opaque oil paints are “forgiving” because you can always paint over a passage you don’t like.

Watercolors are transparent, so there’s really “no going back”. Instead we continually move forward, adjusting our plans to make use of any perceived mistakes along the way.

I still take photos of my paintings in progress. I like to see the evolution of paintings — and so do my students.

I am both a “fast” and a “slow” painter. My motto is:
“Get in, Get Out, Step Back, Repeat…”

Basically this means that each brush stroke is done quickly, decisively, courageously … and then I STOP, step back, and look to see what’s happening with the painting.

If I know what to do next, I continue on with this “Get in, Get Out, Step Back, Repeat…” method.

Sometimes there’s a long pause between brush strokes. Sometimes it’s because I don’t know what to do next. Sometimes it’s because there is something else that must be done (dinner anyone?).

Most of my paintings take weeks to complete. Even when I think a painting is finished, I put it away for a day or two so that the next time I look at it I have “fresh eyes”.

This is one reason I like to have many paintings in progress at one time. I can easily switch from one to another if I get stuck.

My students long to see me finish a painting in class. Sigh. They want to know how to know when a painting is finished.

Alas, this is a subjective matter.

Robert Genn, a revered master painter from Canada once wrote: “it is better to under paint by 10% than to over paint by 1%.”

Keep painting. The more you do it, the better you get, and the easier it will be to know when your painting is finished.

It’s an unsatisfying answer, yet true.

A few weeks ago I taught a really fun class at the Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House Campus: Pored Paintings.

Students love this class because it gives them a chance to completely lose control of the painting process right from the start.

Pat San Souci taught me the process about ten years ago. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to learn the process because I wasn’t interested in losing control (I can be a bit of a “control freak”). 

Then I found out just how much fun being out of control can be!

Pat’s class was the most fun I had ever had painting up until then.

The gist of the process is to pour watercolor paint through a filter paper onto wet watercolor paper.

If you’ve ever painted wet-into-wet (wet paint on wet paper) you know the paint spreads and moves F•A•S•T!    

Tongue-in-cheek, I began to demonstrate the technique to my class by telling them that I would be painting two yellow hibiscus flowers.

I poured the paint within 60 seconds, and quickly took the wet painting outside to dry in the sun.

For the next 30 min, each student poured 2–4 painting starts and took them outside to dry.

30 minutes later, we brought all of the paintings inside. One by one we set them on the easel at the front of the class to see what we had created.

At this point all of the paintings were quite abstract. Yet as we turned them around and around, we could begin to see that we might coax something representative out of them to create our paintings.

I put my painting on the easel to demonstrate the next step and reminded the class that I would be painting yellow hibiscus.

The joke was on me! Everyone laughed and Sandy said, “I think you have a parrot there.”

Sure enough, a very Sassy Parrot dared me to turn him into a yellow hibiscus.

Rather than argue with him, I surrendered and began the very slow process of painting my first parrot. 

A week later, I discovered another parrot on the page, along with some hibiscus.

Yes, it can be nice to feel like we have control, and a painting turns out just as we’ve planned.

But honestly, it’s way more fun when we get out of the way, and let the painting tell us what to paint.

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.

Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.

One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.

The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.

All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.

When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source

and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young

what adults believe is important.

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

Please permit me to add that the Arts teach these things to ALL of us at ALL ages. We are never too old to learn new tricks.

Join me every Tuesday morning at 11AM when I teach a FREE 30-minute Speed Watercolor Painting Class at Kuloko Arts Gallery at the Outrigger Reef on the Beach in Waikiki.

Using five bright watercolor paints from Cheap Joes and 90# Arches watercolor paper we paint our masterpieces. Each turtle (honu in the Hawaiian language) is as unique as we all are.

This is a great fun way to spend 30 minutes creating a memory to last a lifetime. Plus you have your own art to take home to grace your walls.

While at the gallery, check out hundreds of creations made by 35 artists living in Hawai`i. Watch art take shape before your eyes as a different artist paints, draws, or makes jewelry in the gallery every day.

Other FREE30-minute classes at Kuloko include an acrylic painting class at 4 PM on Mondays with artist Rebecca Snow, and a colored pencil class at 7:30 PM on Wednesdays with artist Teri Inouye.