GRAVETTE — When Susan Edgmon took her first painting class in 1996, it was because her mother signed them both up.

Edgmon was still recovering from a car accident that had left her unable to work and had just started back to school without a clear idea of what she would study.

She didn’t want to take a class just for fun, but she agreed to go along to Arts Center of the Ozarks in Springdale with her mother.

Before the class was over, she knew she had a new career.

Since then, she has produced hundreds of pieces using all mediums. She hosts workshops at her Gravette studio and does custom framing. She also developed an art supply business and sells her patented easel boxes.

This fall she’s teachingtwo classes at Northwest Arkansas Community College’s Bella Vista Center.

“Learning New Techniques with Watercolor” is a class she’s taught many times. The second class, “Exploring Pastels,” is a little different.

Students buy their own watercolors for the first class. Pastels, on the other hand, can be expensive, and not all her students will want to continue, so Edgmon puts together a kit of her own pastels that students can use in class.

All skill levels are welcome, Edgmon said. The watercolor classes are usually split according to experience, allowing part of the class to work on a more advanced project. She has a whole book of projects for the less advanced students.

She knows what kind of project is best for a beginner.

“The key to watercolors is how much paint to use and how much water,” she explained. The beginning projects can be divided into small portions where the artist can experiment.

The pastel class will be a little different since all the students will be working on the same project. They’ll probably each complete two paintings, a group of red tulips and a cardinal. They’ll all learn her technique for pastels, which begin as a watercolor that is covered by the pastel. It’s done on a kind of archival paper that feels almost asrough as sand paper.

“There’s an artist in all of us,” Edgmon said. All of her students produce something they can be proud of. Their first project builds confidence, so the later projects are even easier.

If she finds a student who says he can’t draw, she shows him how to create a graph and copy a photograph one little square at a time. Sometimes, she’ll show them how to trace a picture, to begin.

Edgmon started painting in 1996, and by 1998, she had her first solo show at Sager Creek Arts Center in Siloam Springs. The title of the show was appropriate: “The Development of a New Artist.” It wasat that first show that people started asking her to teach.

Edgmon has lived in Arkansas since the 1960s and married a Gravette native. She has lived on the family land for years but recently built a new home and studio. She hosts workshops in the studio, attracting teachers who enjoy the rural setting. Sometimes her students stay on site as well, in a dormitory she has set up in her basement.

She has also organized trips for fellow artists to France, Italy and, most recently, Ireland.

For more information about Edgmon Art, call 787-0333 or visit her website at www.susanedgmon.com.

News, Pages 8 on 09/05/2012