John Bramblitt of Denton led a workshop Friday at Kilgore’s Region 7 Education Service Center teaching East Texas students with visual impairments how to use their other senses to create art.

KILGORE — East Texas students with visual impairments recently got a chance to learn art techniques from a Texan who overcame the challenges of blindness to become an in-demand painter and muralist.

Artist John Bramblitt, who lives in Denton, led a workshop Friday at Kilgore’s Region 7 Education Service Center. Dozens of students learned some of his techniques for creating art without relying on sight.

“One of the main things for the kids coming today is that most of them have a visual impairment and, a lot of times, if you have that, it can mean you have other disabilities as well,” he said. “This event is very much about telling them, ‘You can do it.’ Art is a great way to do that because art is such a wonderful, positive force. We are introducing some different ways to do art and different ways to think about art.”

Bramblitt led the students and their teachers through techniques for creating art that use senses other than vision. One exercise had students reaching into a box to feel an object inside and then using their sense of touch to get an idea of the object’s shape and size, which then helped them represent the object in a drawing or painting.

Another technique had the students chow down on jelly beans and then try to draw or paint how the taste made them feel, while another had them smell a jarred scent and then try to represent the aroma in art.

In the last exercise, students attempted a painting while blindfolded.

Bramblitt, who began hosting similar workshops at the Dallas Museum of Art in 2005 and led a similar event at the Region 7 ESC this past year, said he hopes teaching some of these techniques will uplift others dealing with vision loss and show them new ways of flourishing despite a challenging diagnosis.

“Whenever you face vision loss, a lot of times, you’re depressed or you’re angry. You feel like your life is over and there is no future. Nothing could be further from the truth, but people need to know what is out there,” he said, adding that modern techniques, therapies and software exist to help the visually impaired.

Bramblitt said the opportunity to teach and help others is a big source of happiness for him, his wife, Jacqi, and his guide dog, Zuke.

Zuke has only been working with Bramblitt for about six weeks but already was wowing the children at Friday’s workshop with his ability to find objects in the room at his master’s request.

“My real job is as a studio artist and that’s what I do for a living, but this is really the icing on the cake,” Bramblitt said.

Clayton Robertson, 10, of Henderson ISD reached into a box to get a feel of the object inside and attempted to draw his best guess with a pencil.

“I’m drawing Spiderman and also a spider,” he said, carefully adding eight legs to his creation.

Rider Bell, 11, of Troup ISD combined several of the activities, from the taste of a jellybean to the jarred scent, into a complete design with a backstory.

“My object was a rubber duck, so I drew a duck with a boring office job. He lost his job to his arch-nemesis,” Rider said. “The smell I got was a minty smell, which made me think of the night sky, so I drew that here, and the jellybean tasted sweet, so I drew the arch-nemesis saying ‘Sweet!’ because he was able to get the duck to lose his job.”

Bramblitt also explained to the children how he used his sense of touch to create paintings by mixing a special ingredient into his paints that gives them a certain thickness and weight that he can identify by touch. He also uses Braille on his paint bottles to distinguish them from one another.

He explained that his sense of touch helps him to create intricate shapes, from objects to faces and animals, in his paintings and murals.

Bramblitt was born in El Paso and lives in Denton. He studied at the University of North Texas.

He lost his vision in 2001 after complications from epilepsy and Lyme disease.

He has completed murals in several major cities, including Dallas, and he will soon begin work on another mural for the city of Garland.

His book, “Shouting in the Dark,” is available on Amazon.

Learn more at bramblitt.com .