While I was teaching in France I learned a lot of lessons the hard way and it triggered a revelation moment where I realized how important learning a lesson the hard way, turns out to be the best way to learn a lesson. Let me explain...you may think that as a teacher I should know everything there is to know about watercolor but I too am always learning about how to teach my students watercolor. These last 2 weeks I learned a lot of lessons the hard way about teaching a plein-air class, which is a class I don't teach very often. From this point on when I teach a plein-air class, I will have a lot of lessons, I can now teach a student because of my new experiences that were not as good as they could have been. I hadn't learned those hard lessons because of my lack of teaching many plein-air classes. I feel my workshop in France was a success but I too am always learning and will do better now that I know it is best to learn my lessons the hard way.

Many years ago when I was teaching my watercolor classes I could never get across to students how to apply their watercolor correctly and I was never getting my point across to them correctly, nothing I was saying was getting them to properly apply the pigment to the paper. After years of trying different ways of teaching my students, it was at a Dillman's workshop where I was really getting frustrated with myself and I could see one of my students was also getting frustrated with how I was teaching them. It was at that moment I said to that one student, "float your pigment into the puddle of water on your paper in a way where you can see the pigment actually floating and then control the amount of pigment to either let it dissolve with a little amount pigment or use a large amount of pigment to control an edge" It took years of teaching and learning the hard way that Those 3 words Float-Your-Pigment made her totally understand what I was trying to say to my students to correctly teach them how to control their watercolor. In that class after I told that one student to float her pigment, everyone in the class had heard it and they all were starting to understand what I was teaching. It was one of those revelation moments where I learned how to teach students to control their watercolors.

 

Learning the hard way is true not only with learning about painting in watercolor but with most everything one tries to learn. For instance, the one non-artists thing I learned the hard way from this trip to France is to not use a service like Expedia or Travelocity to book flights to Europe, instead, use a good travel agent or book your flight directly with an airline. I learned the hard way and had the worst flights the last 2 times I have flown using those online travel websites. Many of my students used the travel agent I suggested for the France trip and if they had a problem the travel agent helped them when something went wrong. When something goes wrong with travel and you try to resolve things with services like Expedia, take it from me, they are no help. Learned my lesson the hard way, but I now will always use a travel agent, lesson learned!

 

When painting plain-air I learned the hard way that you should try a new plein-air tripod setup before you go to the workshop, this way you know what and what won't work when setting up in the field the first time. I didn't set up my tripod before the trip and I soon realized on my France workshop that I had no place for a water container for my setup, which is a really important item when painting plein-air in watercolor, water being the main ingredient.  

 

Now when I hear students complain about their work it will bring joy to me because I now know they are learning a lesson, it may be learning a lesson the hard way but I know they are learning something. It is great to do a painting that is beautiful where there is nothing wrong with it, but if you are in a class or workshop and you are there to learn, making mistakes and trying new things is the best way of learning. When I teach a class and I see everyone doing a great job I am now torn between I am good at teaching students to become good at painting but at other times I feel like they did a great job but now I am not teaching them anything. To my veteran students, I say this, every now and then try new things and make mistakes on a few paintings, it will make me feel like I am still teaching you something:).