Christian Cox-Elander hunched over his masterpiece with squinting eyes and a blending pencil. The budding 9-year-old artist was smoothing the sand on his beach and putting the final touches on his seascape.

Christian is the youngest of the four regulars who attend the all-ages Sparks School of Art at the Sparks Music and Learning Center.

“I would love to become an artist one day and then teach other people,” Christian said. “It’s pretty fun doing art.”

The Saturday morning course is taught by Dianne Aguirre, a local artist whose brush strokes appear on murals by the Truckee River and across the nation.

“I want to teach them to really enjoy what they get out of art,” Aguirre said. “Each of them is unique in how they present their work and put things on paper.”

As the morning sun crept into the 9 a.m. class, Christian and Lydia Reid, an adult student, opened their sketchbooks.

A charcoal-colored tree with a sharp lighting bolt crashing into its side occupies the first page in Christian’s sketchbook. The same image, with Reid’s own style, is drawn in pencil on the first page of her sketchbook. The students' first lesson was on lines and texture.

“With nature everything is so random,” Aguirre said as she looked over her student’s trees. “The lines are never straight.”

From lines, Aguirre teaches the other basic elements of art: shape, color, value, texture, form and space.

Since the students started in November, each has filled their sketchbook with a color wheel, a shading value scale, a few still-life sketches and landscapes.

“I love expressing myself in different ways,” Reid said.

Aguirre started her career as an artist at 11 years old when she sold her prize-winning pencil sketch at the Churchill County fair in Fallon. The sketch of two raccoons climbing a tree won first place and afterwards graced the walls of the local drugstore owner’s home. Her second painting sold for $250.

Since her debut, Aguirre has painted deep green forests and tumbling waterfalls as backgrounds for the Cabela's in Philadelphia, Penn. She is also the artist who created the grassy commons that fill the walls of the Promenade on the Truckee River. For three months, she stood on a ladder, brush in hand, carefully adding depth and color to the scene.

Since she fell from a ladder working on that mural, Aguirre has slowed down painting murals.

“I really enjoy painting,” Aguirre said. “But I really love teaching. My students teach me so much.”

Christian started shading an ant’s head as the class wound down.

“I want to learn values and texture and do them well,” Christian said. “I love art because you can make whatever you want and in reality you can’t do that.”

“My goal is to just enjoy doing art,” Reid said. “Now I have something to keep me busy.”

The class meets every Saturday at 9 a.m. at the Sparks School of Art, 2975 Vista Blvd. Suite 102.