Last month, the San Diego Watercolor Society (SDWS) did something that could shape the next generation of American painters: they took the art outside, and brought 70 fourth-graders with them.
In partnership with the San Diego Museum of Art and Oak Park Elementary School, SDWS launched a multi-week plein air watercolor program that introduced students to one of painting’s most demanding — and rewarding — traditions. No screens. No photos. Just brushes, water, and the real world.
The program didn’t just hand kids a palette and wish them luck. Students first received brief art history lessons grounding them in the plein air painting tradition, then watched live demonstrations by working artists before picking up brushes themselves for hands-on outdoor watercolor painting sessions. The series culminated in a docent-led visit to the San Diego Museum of Art followed by a student paint-out in Balboa Park — one of nature’s greatest plein air landscapes in Southern California.
It’s the kind of sequence that sticks. Learn the history. Watch an expert. Try it yourself. Then go somewhere beautiful and paint a watercolor landscape of your own.
The initiative was made possible by a grant from the Gerald T. & Inez Grant Parker Foundation, and reflects SDWS’s commitment to growing the plein air and watercolor painting community — the same organization that hosts an annual plein air show each summer.
Seventy kids painted outside this winter in San Diego. Some of them will keep going. That’s how it starts.
