Art Class

Today I attended my first art class in Santa Barbara at the adult education center. I had no trouble finding it and no trouble parking. The classroom was full of people when I arrived and there was the teacher. He was having to sign us in, give us cards to fill out, and check our names against his list.
I am sure this wasn't his favorite part of the whole thing.
He is an older man with bright blue eyes and kept his cool pretty well.
At first I was lost. I went out into the sunlit parking lot and called my daughter. Just to let her know I was in town and that I might be visiting soon. At that moment I wasn't so sure about fitting into this gaggle of artists, all of whom looked like they belonged there.
She said that would be three strikes for adult education as she didn't like her knitting class the other night and my brother and sister-in-law were signed up for tai chi and the teacher fell over a chair and had to be rushed to the emergency room by one of the students!
But when I saw my friend and fellow Ojai Artisan Kristie I was fine. She showed me around and was encouraging.
It really is more of an open studio than a class. The teacher never addressed the class and we just set up wherever we could with whatever we brought and started painting. He just walked around and gave everyone a minute or two of critique and moved on.
And almost everyone is doing a -scape. Beach scenes, forest scenes, lakes, trees, signs, cities...and one portrait. Furthermore almost everyone uses oil paints and pastels. I haven't graduated to oil painting yet but look forward to doing so. I brought my tubes of acrylic paint. I had a canvas but no photographs so I just continued with one of my abstracts from the imagination. He came by and gave me a few words about not being too rigid and blending more and adding some blue here and leaving the pink but taking out the sharp line. My painting did improve!
I think I will like this.