A Christmas Card

Emily wanted to do a poinsettia and had a general layout in mind: a poinsettia in the corner and a star over a snowy hill in the background. So we came up with this.

I think anyone would be happy to get this card!

Bubble Painting

 

I followed the recipe given by Sandy Maudlin to do bubble painting in my young student class. It was 2 oz acrylic paint, 3 oz dish soap, and 6 oz water. Mix thoroughly. I had thought you’d need a big bowl to blow bubbles, but we had to use smaller ones, like Cool Whip containers, and they worked fine. Blow bubbles through a straw, and when they get over the top of the container, gently lay the watercolor paper over them. Use several colors.

Here are two projects our class did with the bubble paints. First we did a painting of a bear in a bathtub and bubbled over it. In the other painting, we bubbled the paper first, then decided on a painting to put over it. This one was of a butterfly.

PS: I DID warn them not to suck in…but one of them did.  YUCK.

“Stained Glass” Fish

 

Our class did a simple but effective way to learn what colors will do when mixed together.

Supplies needed are simple: a spray bottle, coffee filters, paper plates, magic markers, frames for “stained glass” objects (we used fish purchased from Dick Blick, but you can cut your own), and some iridescent medium for watercolor.

 

 

First put the coffee filter on the plate. Using regular magic markers, scribble patches of color, using several colors.

 

 

 

Put a little (about a tsp. ) of iridescent medium into about 4 oz. of water in a spray bottle. Saturate the coffee filter until the colors run together.  (The iridescent medium will leave a sparkle when it dries.)

 

Dry completely. It only takes about a minute with a hairdryer.

 

 

 

 

Carefully pop the “stained glass” forms apart. Apply glue to the inside of one side. (These came from Dick Blick) Then gently lay the dried coffee filter on top of the glue.

 

 

 

 

Trim the excess filter away from the form.

 

 

 

 

Apply liquid glue to the inside over the filter. Make sure to apply glue to all the lines. Then carefully lay the second part of the stained glass pattern over the first.

 

 

 

 

 

Thread some fishing line through the hold in the top. Hang near a light for a fun sun catcher.

Ludlow Hill Park

Here is a very bad image of the painting of Ludlow Hill Park I put in the Sharon Woods Art Show. I framed it before I had a chance to scan it.

My class of girls from the summer has started up again and I'm very excited about it. They are so fun! We've done some bubble painting and some light catchers. I'll try to get some photos of their projects, but I usually get so caught up in doing them, I forget to take photos.

The show at Sharon Woods was a lot of fun. I really enjoy seeing all the different artistic styles and meeting the artists. One of the five paintings I put in was this yupo version of Lawrenceburg's Ludlow Hill park early morning.

Matting artwork

In this class the kids learned to mat their own artwork. We talked about the math of how to figure out how big your mat board needs to be. We discussed how large a mat is needed to best enhance the painting, and what colors would make the painting look best.

Rowan is holding an almost-finished painting done on masa paper. (Done in the last two classes) She just has to finish the brushes.

T.B. is holding a mat that she is embellishing with designs in colored pencil.

















Emily is holding her white with black core mat for the Steve-Blackburn style painting she did of butterflies. (Done in the last two weeks of class, along with a masa paper painting). This is going to be part of her 4-H exhibit in the Butler County 4-H Fair. Good luck, Emily!

Creating textures

Here Avery and Rowan show their exploration in ways of creating textures. The kids made six spaces on their papers. On the first they lay down yellow, blue, and red, then salted with three different salts to see how each reacted in each color. Another space was used to lay down color, then when dry, lift off color over a stencil with a sponge. In a third space they used masking tape to tape off a picture, then painted around it. In a fourth space, they wet the middle, then spattered the whole thing. Then they spritzed the bottom part with water. This let them see three separate textures they can create just with spattering. In the fifth space they lay down color, then put crumpled saran wrap over it while wet, creating this very wrinkled, icy look. In the last - and I think they had the most fun with this - they put a drop of very wet color on the paper and blew it with a straw, repeating over and over again.

Student Trees

Here is some student work for this beginner lesson on trees.

We began by learning to sketch a tree "skeleton" on graph paper. They learned to compare the dimensions of the height with the width and other important parts of the tree. I like to use graph paper when they are first learning to draw so they can make quick size comparisons.

They transferred the pictures onto wc paper. Then they sponged yellow all over the outline of the leaf portion. Next came a sponging of orange for TB, green for Emily and Felicity, then a final sponge of a darker color. Feicity used salt on her leaves to create some texture.

After drying the leaves they painted the trunk and limbs. I had them wet the paper first, add some burnt sienna, and darken around the edges with blue to give the trunk a rounded appearance.

I encouraged the students to choose some item that would tell the viewer the size of their trees. TB drew in a squirrel, park bench, and lamppost and road. FL drew in a park bench and a sign and grass in the foreground. Emily opted not to add anything.

Here are some web sites that might help in learning about sketching trees.

sibleyfineart.com
squidoo.com/draw-a-tree
dianewrightfineart.com/drawing-trees-1.htm

Beginning Portrait class

Here is F.L.'s student work for today. First we learned about how to proportion a face, using a gridded paper as a guideline. Who knew there was so much math in art?

After drawing their own face, the students took a pre-drawn face and began "sculpting" it with one color of paint. We began blocking in all the light colors first, then the darkest, then the medium shades. Keeping it monochrome helped focus on values instead of getting the right skin tones.

A good web site to look into portrait basics is www.portrait-artist.org

TRADING CARDS

There's a new fad in artists circles - trading cards. They are 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches. You paint/draw/whatever one for each of your friends, and they do the same, then you trade. Voila - you have lots of interesting original mini paintings to remember your friends by.

We did this in class about three weeks ago, right around Mothers Day. I did a portrait of each person in our class for my trading cards. (Yes, it is hard to paint a likeness so small.) The portraits are, in order: Mary, Paul, Kathy, Ginger, June, Joane, Joan, Maryanne, and Sandy M.

The seven other cards are by others in the class. I really loved getting them! Thank you Kathy, Joan, Sandy, June, Joane, Ginger, and Maryanne.
(Given in order of the cards)

New Classes

I just started my first regular class for younger students. I've tutored individual kids and adults, and I've taught adults classes. I've taught large community driven classes for kids, but I prefer the smaller classes where they can get more personal attention. They also have opportunities to express what they are interested in learning, and we can steer the class in that direction. Interest equals learning in my book.

I am really impressed with the kids so far. I will try to post some of their work on-line now and then. Also some brief lessons in case they miss a class.

I also discovered some good on-line sites for portrait drawing, which is what our next class will be on. (Man, they want the hard stuff first!) A good basic one is portrait-artist.org. They use some of the principles from The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards.

Tulip Batik

Candy gave me some beautiful red tulips for Easter. I photographed their progress as they blossomed, and loved how interesting the shapes were, when I normally associate tulips with kind of a boring same-same shape. We were doing batik in class, and I decided to take two blossoms and reverse the images in a quilt-like pattern.

The unmatted painting is about 15 x 16 inches.

Also, Sandy had some cool new "toys" to play with. As usual, my non-technical mind can't remember the names, but they are like copper stamps that you heat in the hot wax and stamp shapes, like the star, or leaf patterns on the side. I used a rice paper (again, name challenged) that had the checkered background. I like the result. The only draw-back was how fragile that rice paper is compared to kinwashe or thai unru.
I originally intended to mount these on a canvas. Sandy M. had done one, and boy, I loved the look!!!! I didn't though. Just mounted it on regular Canson, which gives a nice white undertone. Also Maryanne W. finished one last night, and it looks gorgeous!!! Maryanne, get a blog so we can see some of your beautiful work!!!

Dogwoods

While on a walk at Ludlow Hill Park I saw this dogwood tree in bloom and liked the odd ways some of the petals curled. Three weeks later I ended up with this. I really like the S-curve overall design and got some good advice from the class.

I painted on Canson (which I don't normally like because I like to lift, and Canson seems to destroy the paper when I lift.) Oddly enough, another painting that I really like I did on Canson - the '49 Hudson. (see previous blogs) I also tried putting lifting preparation under the petals to see if it helped any. I think it kept the Canson from losing its sizing completely. I'll have to try it on something I am more familiar with before I can make a judgment on lifting prep.

This original painting is 10 x 20 inches.

Stargazers

Here are the stargazer lilies I was working on. These are adapted from some of Kim's photos she sent me.
They are done on Arches 140 lb.
The finished painting is about 12 X 16,
and I plan to mat it to about a 16 X 20.

Contented Cat in a Bird Sanctuary

I've painted lately, but haven't done much I really like...or I've liked it at first, then messed it up.

I kind of like this little guy, though. In Sept. we were at Parrot Mountain in Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge. On the way out there was this very contented cat. I thought he has the life-a cat in a bird sanctuary!