Part of the fun of traveling is to try and immerse yourself in the customs and culture of where you are. That’s probably impossible to do thoroughly unless you spend a significant amount of time in a place and have day-to-day interactions with locals about living matters.

The alternative for us passerbys, is to go to small little restaurants, take walks away from the main roads, go to the market, go fishing or take some classes. I’m sure there much more to do, but at least, that’s what we’ve been doing.

And so I took a traditional Balinese painting class. It was a one-on-one, 3-hour course where I learned how to sketch and paint with watercolors a traditional (and simple) flower design.

This is my teacher and I. Everytime I would do something right, he would say “ahhhhhhhh, good.” Or he would correct a curve somewhere and when it was shaped to his liking, he’d go “ahhhhhhhh, yes.”

There were lots of “ahhhhh” in these 3 hours.

I started with sketching the flowers. First with a pencil, then with a felt pen.

Then I painted the base colors for the flowers, stems and leaves.

Then I worked on the flower accents.

And finally the stem and leaves accents, along with a light background wash. Voilà!