ARTS FOR AMATEURS : A Class for Painters Who Want to Get in Touch With Nature

Donald C. Blaisdell surveyed his art class and warned his students not to sit in the poison oak.

It was not the typical teacher’s admonition. But this was not the typical classroom setting. The teacher’s lectern was a picnic table under an old oak tree surrounded by a dozen students shivering in the morning air. Half a dozen more advanced students had already fanned out across Topanga Canyon State Park, watercolors and brushes in their backpacks, in search of nature scenes to paint.

The students are getting a triple exposure to art, exercise and the great outdoors by taking “Watercolor Painting: Nature Field Trips in the Santa Monica Mountains,” a 12-week course offered on a recurring basis by UCLA Extension.

Blaisdell has been teaching the class for nearly 14 years to amateur artists who want to get in touch with nature and learn watercolor techniques at the same time.

It was nearly 20 years ago that Blaisdell started exploring the Santa Monica Mountains, an area he calls “one of the most beautiful places in the world.”

Before that, he was a “seacoast painter,” he said. For his master’s thesis at Cal State Long Beach, he walked from Huntington Beach to Big Sur, painting the coastline.

“Then one day in Malibu, I turned to look at the mountains,” Blaisdell said. Now “I’m in love with the Santa Monicas. I’ve hiked and painted every canyon from Santa Monica to Ventura and from Pacific Coast Highway to the Ventura Freeway, and no two canyons are alike. Each one is unique in color, feeling, plant growth and geology.”

Blaisdell, whose students include doctors, lawyers, secretaries, actors and pilots, tells students to “just sit and let nature come to you” before beginning a painting. “When you’re painting out in nature, it’s always a surprise. It’s always giving you a new mood.”

He tells students to brush clear water across the paper where they want a soft effect and keep the paper dry for a crisper edge.

“You’ve got to let drying time take place. That’s the critical factor,” Blaisdell said, demonstrating the gray that results when magenta is dabbed next to wet green paint.

The amount of time it takes the paint to dry depends on the temperature and humidity, he said.

“Today, it’s known as a slow-drying day because it’s cool and damp,” he said. “On a 90-degree day, it dries faster--sometimes almost too fast.”

Watercolors dry 25% lighter than when they are first applied, so Blaisdell teaches students to lay down successive coats of paint to saturate the multiple layers of paper.

If the student doesn’t like his work, it can be erased by immediately flooding the paper with clear water, Blaisdell said.

Quite a bit of erasing was being done one recent Saturday by retired kindergarten teacher Fleurette Halpern, 80, who came all the way from Culver City to attend the class, chauffeured by her husband, Leon, 83, because she was squeamish about driving the twisting canyon roads to the park.

A retired composer, Leon Halpern sat in a sunny clearing reading a book while his wife painted--and then erased--a group of trees.

“Today is frustrating. I didn’t like the way my trunk was, and I didn’t like the branches, so I’m going to start over again,” said Halpern, as she wiped purple and blue paint off the tree trunks with a wet sponge.

She didn’t take up painting until the age of 70 because her fourth-grade teacher soundly criticized her school painting of a still-life with flowers. The teacher said the colors were unnaturally bright.

“She just gave me hell, told me I was terrible,” she said. “I was a very sensitive child, so I cried and said, ‘Never again will I ever do any painting or drawing!’ I didn’t hold a brush in my hand until 10 years ago. Then I said to myself, ‘This is stupid. I think I’ll try to take a painting class.’ ”

Halpern took a few other classes before enrolling in the outdoor painting course, as much because she loves Topanga Canyon as to learn technique.

Actor-comedian Dan Frischman enrolled in the course after suddenly finding himself with a lot of spare time on his hands when the television show “Head of the Class” was canceled. He played the character Arvid on the series.

“After five years of doing one job, I wanted to do something completely different from what I had done,” Frischman said as he sat sketching the park’s visitors center, the trees--and the Halperns, after they wandered into the picture.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” he confessed, dipping his paintbrush in dark gray and stroking it on the paper. “I feel like a kid. It brings me back to second-grade art class.”

He explained his choice of this particular class. “Life seems to be about buildings. I’ve been indoors on a stage, auditioning in buildings. . . . I go from one building to another. I just wanted to be outdoors and do something that forced me to look at nature.”

Frischman planned to keep at it long after the three-hour class ended. “I’m going to stay here most of the day,” he said.

Bernie Rotondo, 51, of West Los Angeles enrolled not only to learn the technique but as an antidote to his fast-paced job as new projects director for Bon Appetit magazine.

“It’s frantic in the publishing business,” he said as he quietly sat painting a small pond filled with ducks and tadpoles. “But this is very tranquil and very stimulating at the same time. Your subject matter speaks back to you. After a while, it starts almost dictating how it should be painted. You kind of lose yourself in it.”

The tradition of plein-air, or “open air” painting, dates to the French impressionists, Blaisdell said. It thrived until the 1930s, succumbing to the modern art craze.

“Everybody went back to the studio and lost touch with nature,” Blaisdell said. “Now, people who can’t get out into nature” want to look at outdoor paintings. “It helps people in their work environment to look at nature.”

The outdoor painting course costs $290, and enrollment is limited. Next class begins Saturday. For information, call (818) 784-7006 or (213) 825-9971 or write P.O. Box 24901, Department K, UCLA Extension, Los Angeles 90024-0901.