Put your art and soul into watercolours

"Frighten yourself - don't be afraid," he tells the room of attentive men and women, "Frighten yourself."

Yet the subject is not in any way ghostly or ghoulish. Jeremy is arts co-ordinator at Shipley College, and his class is watercolour painting.

It is taking place in one of the hall's elegant rooms, a stone's throw from Salt's Mill, where David Hockney's masterpieces are displayed in the 1853 Gallery. If that's not inspiration for would-be artists, I don't know what is.

Natural light pours in from the lofty windows - perfect for the job in hand - and the view towards Baildon Moor, with blue sky and scudding clouds beyond, is inspiring too, particularly as we are painting a landscape.

The scene which Jeremy has chosen is the magnificent Scottish mountain Ben Loyal, rising dramatically from the Kyle of Tongue in the far North of Scotland. In the foreground is a sweeping white sand beach, behind which sits a lone cottage on low-lying hills, with the dark, rugged peak beyond.

Jeremy, who has been teaching art for 20 years and worked as a professional artist for longer, asks the class to sketch the view. I won't pretend I did mine. In true Blue Peter-style, he kindly produces one he'd prepared earlier.

He has placed copies - all originals - of the painting around the room so that everyone can see. Each member of the class has brought their own materials, including paper, brushes, paints and a palette.

"Start with the line of the distant shore, then drop down and put the building in," Jeremy says, before going on to ask the group what colours they can see.

A number of voices pipe up, identifying cobalt blue, yellow ochre, and cerulean blue. "Good," says Jeremy, adding green and Payne's grey to the list.

I'm glad I don't blurt out plain old "yellow and blue", which I worked with often with my children at playgroup. I have to remind myself, this is a few notches above potato prints on the ladder to artistic prowess.

We started with a wash, brushing water on to the special watercolour paper. "You want lots of water on the paper but keep off the cottage," Jeremy says. The sky is to be cobalt blue, lightly done, with a touch of Payne's grey.

"If it looks too blue you will end up painting Mauritius," says Jeremy, who also teaches at Bradford College, "We don't want golden sands. The lightest bit of sand should be at the top."

Painting under the watchful eye of an expert spurs you on to do well, to try hard. It also makes me think about the things I'm missing in life. I hadn't attempted to paint properly in my life, art classes at school - well, my school anyway - were seen an excuse to mess about.

A class like this, I realise, is not only fun, but it could be a passport to fortune, if not fame. The group holds exhibitions locally, where some members experience the thrill of selling their paintings. "It is great seeing them exhibited," says Anne Wakefield, of Baildon, who joined the class in September. In summer, the class sometimes ventures outside to paint a scene from real life.

I prepared to paint the brooding mountain. "Frighten yourself," says Jeremy, adding that the quicker you do it, the better it looks.

Paintbrush in hand, I'm gearing up to scare the living daylights out of myself, when the T&A photographer arrives, letting me off the hook, albeit temporarily.

Marie Lingley, 77, of Baildon, and Alison Brewster, 56, of Bramley, Leeds, have been coming to the class for four years.

"I came hoping to improve," says Marie. "I'd done a fair bit of painting but I felt I needed guidance. I enjoy it and it's really friendly."

Adds Alison, who was a "complete beginner" when she joined: "You like to think you are getting better over time. Often, when I get home, I look at my picture and think, That's rubbish', but when I step back and look at it from a distance it looks better. We have learned a lot, and there is always more to learn."

In common with many other class members, when they are out and about, retired deputy head Alison takes photographs of scenes she wants to paint, while former music teacher Marie prefers to whip out her pad and do a quick sketch.

Both admit that it is not easy. "You have to concentrate and I'm tired when I get home," says Marie.

Adds Alison: "You imagine it will be simple. When you watch artists at work on TV it looks so easy, but when you try it yourself it is very different, and easy to get wrong."

Jeremy points out that art students are extremely critical of their own work. "You are never satisfied. You always see other people's work as being better."

He adds: "I would say that most people come to relax but it is not a particularly relaxing thing to do.

"One of my students, who has a very demanding job, calls it a different sort of stress.'"

A philosophy graduate from the University of East Anglia, Jeremy's first taste of art was as a pupil at Salts Grammar School. Much later, he began painting for fun, but when he began selling his work, he gradually turned his pastime into a career.

His first love is landscapes, particularly the moors around Bradford, but he paints a wide range of subjects. "As soon as you start selling paintings you become swayed by the market, by whatever sells best, so you end up doing flowers, figures, all sorts."

Of all the mediums, his passion is watercolour. "It is much more exciting than oil painting, oil is relatively predictable," he says.

Struggling to get my mountain right, it doesn't take me long to realise that, with watercolour, you can't paint over and over like you can with oil or acrylic.

"I think watercolour is about as difficult as painting gets," says Robert Smith, who has been coming to the class for two years. "It is very much about technique.

"You have to get the get the combination right - how you mix the paints in terms of density, how much water you use, and how you put it on the paper, whereas with oil you just mix it up and plaster it on."

He thoroughly enjoys the two-and-a-quarter-hour-long class. "I used to paint many years ago and studied at Bradford's College of Art not long after after David Hockney," he says. "In those days watercolour was looked down upon."

A former primary school teacher specialising in art, he later went into business management before retraining as a chiropodist. Now retired, he's returned to his first love.

The class members are also keen to tell me how friendly everyone is. "We all get to know one another - it's wonderful," says Rita Towler, 66, of Shipley, who is in her third year with Jeremy.

We move on to the hills, painting around the cottage. Jeremy advises me to add a little brown to the mountain. "To make a large mass of rock look warmer, and nearer."

I step back a few paces to look at my effort. To my surprise, it doesn't look too bad. Jeremy holds a mount over the top, and it looks even better.

With a few tweaks here and there, it might even be good enough to frame. Whether or not I've missed my vocation, I'm not sure, but I've learned a lot in a very short time, and loved it.

• Helen visited a Beginners and Improvers class. For more details of Jeremy's classes and other Lifestyle and Leisure classes run by Shipley College ring (01274) 327222, visit shipley.ac.uk, or email enquiries@shipley.ac.uk