For the past five years Yvette Woods, above, whom you've met on these pages in previous posts here and here, has been teaching drawing classes in a third floor studio space at 4814 Washington Avenue. Yvette retired from Meramec Community College where she taught art for thirty years. When she found an opportunity to open her own studio within walking distance of her CWE home, she took the plunge and has been teaching both children and adult classes there ever since.
For the past three years I have been taking a drawing class with a group of six to eight women on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. We each started at different times and with varying degrees of drawing experience–from absolutely none in my case, to an innate ability and/or previous art classes on the part of others. Cindy Miller was introduced to Yvette (both shown above) through a college-level class offered by Forest Park Community College held at Studio W, and has remained with Yvette ever since. I signed up with the hope that I could eventually communicate what I envisioned for our garden for instance, without someone wondering what in the world I had sketched.
Each of us works at our own pace and on our own subject matter in pastel, prisma color pencils (see Connie McPheeters pastel drawing above), and watercolor.
Yvette had been telling us all along that we were eventually going to have an exhibition of our work and the public would be invited. We brushed off our teacher's suggestion (which you can do when you are older and taking a class just for fun), as no one in our daytime class was enthused about it at all. The adult evening class was more than willing to set a date however, and we, the reluctant exhibitionistas, eventually ran out of excuses.
On a Sunday evening just before Thanksgiving, the families of both adult sessions came to see samples of our work. On one wall there were drawings of a simple ball, which is what everyone, no matter how much experience, starts Yvette's classes learning to draw.
This wall shows some of Cindy Miller's fabulous work.
My photograph doesn't capture the detail on Joseph Randolph's amazingly life-like drawing, above.
I am bowled over that I have the chutzpah to even post my work, above, which shows a preliminary, right, and the finished drawing drawn in both prisma color pencils and pastels. I had as much fun styling the subject matter as I did drawing it, and it took me forever and a day to complete.
I just love fellow classmate Linn Wells cloud drawing, above.
And Connie McPheeters drew this charming piece in pastel using a 4" tall "poupee" as her model.
After the exhibition ended we all concluded that it was actually exciting to show our work. There was no one judging it and the audience was complimentary. The key we decided, to putting your drawings out there for people to see, is a confidence imparted by our excellent teacher, Yvette, and frankly, just doing it.
Yvette also teaches children's classes twice a week. Her young students have learned so much from her that they have exhibited at The Sheldon Art Galleries for each of the past two years. She has classes starting now for ages 8 to 16 on Mondays and Wednesdays from 4 to 6 p.m. For more information about both the children's and adult classes, call Yvette Woods, (314) 324-5847, or email: [email protected]. And to learn more about her life as an artist, visit this website.
Yvette Woods, Studio W, 4814 Washington Ave., (314) 324-5847.
A comment from you putting “amazing artists” in the sentence is the icing on the cake, ME! Thank you so much.
I had no idea you and Connie were such amazing artists! I like showing my drawings because it seems that having somebody see them is the last step of the whole process.
Yvette’s an amazing teacher!