In the second semester of this year’s art class at the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) Gore campus, tutor Julie Duncan said the class was in high demand.
Enrolment was strong and Mrs Duncan said her role was just giving out advice and teaching the basics.
For the majority of her students the class was about being among like-minded people, she said.
Mrs Duncan has her own home studio for painting and after 25 years of teaching art, she has a knowledge of watercolours, acrylics, oils, realism and more, she said.
She has to know all different styles to accommodate the broad artistic range of her students.
"I’ve got to be a jack-of-all-trades," she said.
She said not all people can do an arts degree, so they needed to learn at least the basics before they carried out their artistic practice. There were some first-timers, but most of the students had been teaching themselves for years, she said.
The class is usually about 15-strong. The class has had workshops with visiting artists, including, most recently, one with Tuatapere landscape painter Wayne Edgerton.
Helen Affleck, 81, had a collection of various styles of painting in a photo album on her phone, which her grandchildren helped to make.
She had a landscape painted after Mr Edgerton’s visit, as well as ink pen works and a portrait of her neighbour’s dog.
Susan Stevenson was midway through a moody painting of mushrooms. While some in the class were doing still-lifes, Mrs Stevenson preferred mushrooms to flowers, and if she did paint flowers, she would rather they were dead for that "crispy look".
The group was looking forward to the class’s end-of-year exhibition and art sale in December.
Allan Thompson, another student of Mrs Duncan’s, will be having an exhibition of his oil paintings at the Croydon Aviation Centre, in Mandeville, next month.
