My pastel workshop journey

Pastel art has this way of revealing something beautiful that was hidden — not just on the paper, but in the artist too.💗and soon, every week at the same time, we would sit together and draw. One person turned into a few, and I realised how much joy teaching brought me. But over time, the fixed schedule became harder to manage. Life threw me a few personal challenges, and eventually, I had to stop. For two years, I didn’t teach at all — not only because of my circumstances, but also because I was going through a depression.

During that break, I missed the connection and the creative energy of sharing art. But I also knew I didn’t want to go back to the rigid weekly timetable. That’s when the idea for flexible workshops was born — sessions that are creative, personal, and completely tailored to you.

After stepping away from teaching for two years, I felt like a part of me had gone quiet. My days were filled, but my heart wasn’t. It wasn’t until my husband retired that something began to shift. With more time together and a new chapter in our lives, I slowly felt the spark returning — the desire to create, to share, and to do something meaningful again. That’s when I knew it was time to bring art — and teaching — back into my life, but in a way that worked for me.

That renewed energy soon found its way into my studio. I opened the doors to my new workshops, and before long, my first students arrived. Each one brought their own story, their own reasons for learning, and their own spark of creativity. Over the past few months, I’ve had the pleasure of guiding wonderful people — 

Take Walter, for example.

He walked into the workshop nervously, convinced he’d mess up😬 everything. He was clearly outside of his comfort zone, but open-minded enough to give it a go. To help ease the pressure, we started with my favorite trick: drawing upside down. It’s a simple exercise, but it works wonders — it confuses the analytical left brain and lets the creative, visual right brain take over.🧠 Walter looked at me like I was crazy (“Are you serious?”), but he played along.

And then — something clicked.✨

Stroke by stroke, shape by shape, the drawing came to life. He absolutely crushed it. By the end of the session, Walter was smiling, relaxed, and holding a drawing he never imagined he was capable of creating.☺️

It was one of those moments that reminds me why I love teaching: helping people surprise themselves.

Another memorable moment came during a session with Hellen, a lovely participant who joined one morning with zero experience and a lot of nerves.🙄 She hesitated at first, unsure if she belonged in a pastel workshop at all. But with a little encouragement, she took the plunge.💫

We used the same upside-down method to start — a reference photo of a cat this time. With the image flipped, she had no choice but to focus on colors, shapes, and relationships, instead of thinking “I’m drawing a cat.” First the eyes appeared, then the structure of the face — and when I showed her the drawing from a little distance, her reaction was priceless: pure disbelief. “Did I really do that?”🙂

Yes. She did.

The drawing wasn’t finished yet — the bottom still looked wild, just underlayers waiting for refinement. But it didn’t matter. The breakthrough had already happened. She had seen it. Felt it.