Day 4 (Maine Watercolor Class)

Thursday we are at the beach. While David paints families arrive and kids and dogs and all show up right in his picture. He leaves them out. He never gets bothered by distractions, just says happily 'the sounds of summer'....This man can focus. He shows us how he does those wonderful skies and gets those colors to blend. We meet for critique at the lighthouse.

We take a group photo. Somewhere during the week 'verditer' has become the word. Stephan is French and when he says verditer it sounds really good. They joke about having a white t-shirt made for all of us with verditer written on it. Our little in joke. He says about my painting: I didn't see that much yellow in that sky. I say I didn't either I was just trying your technique. I'm thinking he has no concept of how little I understand what is going to happen when I apply paint to paper since he's been painting for 40 years and I have for 4 days. He talks about some artist that much yellow brings to his mind, and I don't say what I'm thinking ("who?") I assume everyone else knows of this artist. The old insecure me wants to whine that I didn't mean to do that, but he keeps talking and I don't care if I'm understood. It doesn't matter. I'm here to learn and I'm learning and I'm happy.

Thursday night we all go to Millers lobster pound, line up at the window and order. They bring it out to us at the picnic tables by the water. Now this is the lobster I have been waiting for. We have brought our own wines and I found one named Red Truck and had to buy it. David has been using a red truck metaphor all week. Someone takes my picture in my plastic bib with a picture of a lobster on it that says: Let's get crackin'. Now then I have not eaten whole lobster except with my Mainer son-in-law and I've forgotten what to eat first, so my tablemates help me. I squirt myself and my neighbor with my first crack. Oh dear. We are all laughing. On my right I find a lady from Indiana and I tell her I'm a Hoosier, too. She lives not far from me and tells me about a class she took that I could take too. She said it was good because it made her paint every week. We write email addresses on my paper bag from my Red Truck wine.