Sunday, February 7, 2010

Tif and Austin



Sometimes I forget to put on my blog whatever I've been working on. I did this as a lesson for someone who wanted to do a portrait of her daughter. So now, what do I do with it? Anyway, I finished it today, and can't decide if I want to crop it down or not.

Not cropped....?

Cropped....?

Friday, February 5, 2010

more kids abstracts




Abstracts from Taylor and Rowan.



Here are abstracts from Emily, Felicity and Aimee.

Kids class--abstract

Our kids class did a small and simple abstract idea that was a simplified version of what Sandy taught us about the "good white shape." I'd give credit to the artist who teaches this, I think his name is John Salminen, but I'm terrible with names.

We started with four items...a Coke glass, a kids curly straw, an egg beater, and a clothespin. We drew each on a 7 x 9 piece of paper, filling the whole space. Then we redrew each one onto a piece of watercolor paper, rearranging the shapes to our own design.

Next, we miskited out shapes we wanted to keep white and spattered with miskit. We tried to find a "path a mouse could take" that could begin or end on three sides of the paper; as if the mouse could walk a maze from one side of the paper to the other. After the miskit dried we applied a layer of light to midvalue colors that we liked.

After the first layer dried, we put in areas of darkest dark of different sizes, using our drawn shapes as guides. We don't want to overwhelm the picture with too much dark. Make sure some of the darkest darks are right next to the white areas. Then we painted in some of our shapes with more of a middle value.

We removed the miskit and made adjustments for the way we wanted our painting to look. See some of the kids' work in next post.

20 minute challenge week 3






Here are images of a 20-minute challenge that our class has taken. Sandy Maudlin challenged us to paint 3 20-minute paintings a week. (But she promises to up the ante later on) She got this from another artist that you can find on Sandy's blog. The rules are simple: set your timer for 20 minutes and paint FROM A 3-D OBJECT IN FRONT OF YOU , not a picture. Drawing is an option, but that has to be part of the 20-minutes. So most of these are not drawn first--the only one I drew a little on first is the candle and sconce. These are in the same order I did them. Note the basket is a bit torn...Katy's dog truly ate my homework!


I found some advantages. For one thing, anyone can commit to 20 minutes. Once you've done that 20 minutes, you're "in the zone" and want to paint more. Another is that you're freer to experiment with papers and paint--it's just a 20-minute investment. So some of these are on regular paper, some on yupo. (The ones that look really shiny are yupo). Some are watercolor, two are watercolor pencil.

So...if you're up to the challenge...Try it! (these are posted in the order that I painted them.)