Teaching an Art Course Offered Me Valuable Insight and Deeper Self-Awareness as an Artist

A few years back, I introduced my online art course, 'Vibrant Layers with Acrylics & Mediums,' designed for aspiring artists wanting to glean from my experience. In this blog post, I'm excited to recount the path that led me to this venture and the valuable self-discoveries I've made along the way.

Several years back I had been receiving many questions in the years prior about my technique, materials, and how I layer colors (whether I wait for layers to dry, or not), and how the colors can appear translucent etc. Among those questions were also inquiries about whether I was offering a painting class, workshop, or if I planned to have one soon. While I said that I was not teaching at the time, eventually I thought, why not? Because I realized I already had something to offer. I just needed to figure out how to deliver it as the thought of teaching my approach or technique wasn’t feeling simple to me at first. I mean I knew how to do it myself, but how could I explain some fundamental things in a structured and simple manner to others, and do it in a way that was not prescriptive and allowed creative freedom too. And on top of that I had to research the tools and online teaching platforms I would use to host and deliver the course. It took me some months to contemplate how I would assemble my knowledge into a class. I also researched the topic of creating online courses and took some paid courses myself to learn best practices of online teaching, which gave me much needed insight on what would work best for my needs.

Eventually, I started to officially sit down and plan, outline, and build the course back in 2019 (which did take many more months than I initially thought). I kept thinking about all those questions I had been receiving from other artists. I wanted to find an approach to answer the most common questions. But I also wanted to answer questions that people weren’t thinking of asking me (or asking me rather rarely), but that I found were even more important than style and technique - things like choosing your color combinations (how to get guidance from "color theory"), developing composition, focal point, contrast, and just the principles of how we decide to place things together the way we do in a painting, especially in the way we create layered abstract paintings.

And lastly, I wanted it to all to be in a way that was relaxing and encouraging for the participant to explore freely and allow their own creativity, their unique approaches and expressions to show up, and for them to remember that art is a continuous journey, where there are no mistakes, but only possibilities to discover, evolve, and find what works best for each of us in a way that brings us joy as we create. Because eventually each of us are on our own journey, to find our personal artistic voice.

As a teaching platform I opted to use Kajabi* as it offered great flexibility to build individual modules and lessons while offering a really pleasant learning journey for the student. I had many students comment on the quality of content and how the lessons were structured and so easy to navigate.  I am really pleased to have picked Kajabi* as a platform to deliver the course.

After having had over 1200 students so far, I feel really grateful and humbled today for all the feedback, and the outcomes and results I have witnessed from many. I love sharing some of the examples of what my students create (you check out the student art library here).

The key thing I learned from the teaching experience

Before offering the course, I never realized that this experience would also be an incredible journey for me in which I too would learn so much through interaction with my students; Their challenges, accomplishment, joys or concerns, questions and reflections during the journey have expanded my very own reflection about my own art and why I do certain things the way I do, and how I can keep exploring and learning in my own artistic path, and how I can continue to help others.

And as I tell others “keep exploring and experimenting”, I know I also need to keep exploring. As I tell my class participants to be open and not expect a certain outcome, I have to remind myself the same in my practice day after day. 

I found that a lot of the challenges creatives face (including myself) have rather to do a lot with one's way of thinking and feeling (I want to write more about this in future posts as I continue to contemplate the many mental and emotional barriers we can face as we create).

 I realized that teaching is allowing to being taught at the same time. At least this has been my personal reflection and experience (and I think it obviously requires one to be open to continue learning).

In the end, this is all pretty amazing and as I always say: I never want to stop learning.

And so, I feel thankful to all of those who put the trust in me so far to guide them, and in return helped me to reflect deeper and grow as well.

*If you are an upcoming course creator and wanting to give the Kajabi online teaching platform a free try you can use my link to receive a 30 day trial promo.