I spent eight years teaching interior design at Queen Elizabeth College in Palmerston North.
They run adult night classes throughout the year attracting hundreds of people from all walks of life who want to further their education, either as a hobby or to get a taste of a career opportunity.
I would teach for one term of the year on a Wednesday night for two hours. My classes ranged from 15 to 20 students with an age group of 18 to 76 years.
I loved it, the input from students was great. Everyone was at different stages in their lives with some just starting out, others with young families, to teenagers leaving home and the semi-retired, but everyone had a common bond of wanting to renovate or build a home.
One of my oldest students joined the class because she was sick and tired of her husband going to sleep in front of the TV and she wanted conversation and to do something interesting with her evenings. She was 76, such a honey.
I would take the class through the steps of putting a colour scheme together, placement of furniture, lighting, fabrics and so on. At the end of the eight weeks hopefully they will have enough skills to look at their own homes and titivate a room to make it more appealing or just be a little more confident when discussing a product such as paint or wallpaper.
My main aim though, was to make people more aware of their surroundings.
How the light moved through their homes during the day. How a colour will change from wall to wall and room to room in a home during the day and the changes in light at night.
How one colour changes with different textures, for example cooler colours can become warmer because of the change in texture and also how the light affects our landscape or surroundings during the day and night.
We all have such busy lives and most of the time we don't take the time to look around us.
I would get the students to make a colour wheel in whatever items they had at home.
They could make it out of anything as long as it could be recognised as a colour wheel and they didn't just colour in the wheel with pencils. It was such an interesting exercise.
One year I had a student that couldn't wait to get out of class and get home. Before the night was through (classes were from 7pm to 9pm) she had pulled her kids toys apart and made her colour wheel before she went to bed. Bright shiny plastic toy pieces had been glued to her cardboard. I think a few of the others felt sorry for her kids for not having their toys to play with.
That same class another student had made up her colour wheel from her sewing stash. She had feathers, wool, sequence and fabric and had found it quite a challenge to find all the colours, but her wheel looked fantastic. Another year one of the girls produced a colour wheel of buttons. She had been collecting buttons for years and had this incredible array of shapes, sizes and colours, this particular colour wheel ended up being framed and became a feature on her wall.
There was always show and tell with the wheels so the class can see the difference in texture.
It is supposed to be fun not a chore and at the end of the day everyone could see (hopefully) what I meant about seeing colour and texture and how it changes.
I always asked who were morning people and night owls as I often found this made a difference in how people saw the changes in light.
It's quite different at the beginning and end of a day and I find that morning people often see the subtle changes during the day and night people don't.
I always asked why they liked the morning best and do they dream in black and white or colour. Some people haven't a clue on this because they can't remember their dreams.
One year I had one of my students describe why she was a morning person and her vision of the wakening of a new day was so clear we could all have been there.
She described how I often feel at the start of a new day, like a little kid on Christmas morning bursting to open my first present, the uncontrollable pure pleasure of the wakening of a new day.
So if at least half of my "night" students become more aware of light and colour like that morning student described then I felt like I had achieved what I set out to do.
On that note, I am running two workshops as part of the Whanganui Woman's Network La Fiesta on the March 9. One will cover the basics in colour for interior design and the other personal styling.
If you want to find out more about it or be involved in any of the other exciting things happening, drop into the Woman's Centre in St Hill St and pick up a programme.
If you want to enrol in my workshops you can contact me on 0276023298.
If you would like to make an appointment for a consultation or have a query about product discussed you can contact me on 027 602 3298 or terry@terrylobb.com
Terry Lobb is an interior/kitchen designer and personal colour and style consultant who takes a holistic approach to living with colour, texture and style - email: terry@terrylobb.com; website: http://terrylobb.co.nz/
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