First Friday Art Class for March 2012 - Color Craziness

This month our focus was COLOR, COLOR and more COLOR. We worked with watercolors in 3 different ways.

We began by making splatter creatures. You get a nice blog of juicy watercolor paints on your paper and then blow it around with a straw, like this:

You then let the splatters dry and then go back in with a thin permanent marker and add eyes to make splatter creatures. You can also add branches, words, anything!!

Once again the girls completely blew me away with their ideas and creativity. They each tried doing particular shapes and everyone's splatters were different (and wonderful!!).

We then moved onto rubber cement paintings. I splattered rubber cement on the paper hours before class. I would have liked the girls to be able to do it, but it wouldn't have been dry in time. Here they are drying in preparation for class:

The rubber cement acts as a mask for the watercolor. (There are more technical masking agents you can use with watercolor, but rubber cement is easy and cheap, so that's what we used).

The girls took their respective pages with the rubber cement dry and ready to go and they added color. However they wanted to. We talked about blending the colors into each other and letting them flow and stay a bit wet.

Here are their finished paintings--don't you love the gorgeous, bright, happy colors?? They will peel the rubber cement off once the painting is completely dry.

Here's one that's completely finished:

The last thing we worked on was painting a strawberry using first pencil, then thin permanent marker and then watercolor. They worked from life--having an actual strawberry to look at while they drew.

And here are their finished pieces:

Aren't they beautiful?

We had a lovely, color filled, (almost) Spring day! Looking forward to next month!!

Newest Sign

First Friday Art Class for February 2012 - Fun and Funky Lettering

A bit late on this one because we had the actual class on the second Friday. But here you go.


Because February is the month of LOVE, we studied lettering so the girls could use some fun lettering techniques to make Valentine cards if they'd like. 


We began by talking about how NOBODY loves their own handwriting, but they should. It's unique to them and it's part of them.


We talked about changing a few letters here and there to make things look more fancy. (Don't try this at school--teachers don't love this) 


For instance, look at the a, t and g I just typed. Adding those old fashioned ways of writing those letters can make your writing look more fancy. We also talked about where you place part of the letters making differences. (see page 1 below). The bouncy writing is when you don't have all your letters level on a line, some are high and some are low--bouncy. 


We practiced lots of fun types of writing (see both pages 1 and 2 below). I even let the girls in on how I do the lettering for my signs. (Steps 1-5 writing 'TiF' on page 2).

Pardon the wrinkles in the pages. My naughty dog walked on them in the car. :( But you get the idea.
The next thing we did was start a page like this one: (dog really got to this one...)

This is a fun page to put in your sketchbook or journal and add to it whenever you feel like practicing some writing. You can add anything you love--ice cream, sunshine, your family...anything! It's also a great way to remind you of all the things you love and help you be grateful for them!

 Hard at work

 This little sweetie is always so bold and fearless...I LOVE it!!

This one didn't want to be locked in to doing 100, so she just put "a lot of things I love" :)

We ended the class by playing Valentine Bingo that I found HERE. Notice the fun lettering on the bingo cards--lettering is everywhere! :)


The girls did so well and we had a lovely 2nd Friday afternoon! See you next month!

Paypal is Evil

Just got off the phone with Paypal. They are limiting my account and then permanently shutting it down AND suggest I find another payment co. ie, I can't open another account with them. I've been blackballed. And from what I've heard, you really can't ever open another account because everything is so linked up, they'll know. 

I've used the account for over 12 years and every transaction has been on the up and up and I've never had a negative balance. My ebay and ETSY ratings are both 100% positive. They won't tell me why they're shutting it down. They say that's "proprietary information". I told them it's proprietary to me because it deals with my account, to which they said, "we've decided to part ways. The decision is final and there is no overturning it." Which to me means the loss of most, if not all, of my ETSY business. 
I sell art and crafts and I buy yarn, art and books. NOTHING SUSPICIOUS HAS EVER HAPPENED WITH MY ACCOUNT--EVER!! 

I did some google searches and this seems to be a common problem. Paypal seems to do this a lot to people with no explanation and then you're banned for life. So spread the word BEWARE OF PAYPAL. They will screw you over the first chance they get!!!!!

Anybody else ever been through this or know someone who has??? 

Knitting Journal

Another Pookie for another one of my little Lovies. I love this pattern. So far I've made 4 bears. Next I think I'll make one with the little bunny ears.

And another of these fun hats. This one was for some cute friends expecting their 3rd baby--a boy.

I'm not sure if you can tell just how small the hat it. I LOVE knitting newborn hats. They are so fun and quick and rewarding. I always try them on my daughter's Cabbage Patch Doll when I'm done to check the size. :)

First Friday Art Class for January 2012 - Animals from Basic Shapes

For this class I wanted to really talk about some of the fundamentals of drawing. So we started with a quiz taken mainly from Drawing With Children by Mona Brookes.

True/False - There is a right way and a wrong way to draw?
True/False - Drawing is just for fun and won't help you in the future?
True/False - People who can draw only abstractly aren't real artists?
True/False - Real artists draw only from their imagination and don't need to copy things?
True/False - Real artists are pleased with most of what they produce?

The answer to all of these is false. So we talked about it. We talked about silencing that "inner critic" in our head and knowing that if a drawing is the way we want it, it's perfect. If not, we can change it or start over. No big deal.

We talked about how drawing can lead to a career as an architect or an engineer or an artist! :) Drawing also helps you express emotions and creativity and helps you with problem solving.

We also talked about the benefit of copying things--pictures, drawings, whatever. Because you'll interpret them your own way and always learn something. Using a reference photo is not "cheating". There are VERY FEW artists that can draw a distinct likeness of a particular person without either a photograph of that person or having them sit as a model. Even when I'm doing a painting of an abstract cat, I still like to have a reference picture of a real cat.

And most importantly, be patient with yourself, have fun while you learn and enjoy the process.

So to help us loosen up, I had the girls draw a cat with their non-dominant hand. Drawing with your non-dominant hand forces you to let go of expectations and loosen up.

We then talked about the Five Basic Elements of Shape

(Picture Source) 

We talked about how everything we want to draw can be broken down into these 5 basic elements. It's so much less daunting to face a drawing when you first break it down into the very most basic of shapes. 

We practiced this by drawing animals. We started with animals based on an oval, then moved to animals based on circles (specifically two circles on top of each other like a snowman), and then animals that begin with a teardrop shape.

We then moved onto some other animals that all included our 5 basic elements. We also drew a dog from an actual photograph. First we drew him more simply and stylized, then more realistically. Because all of this fun cartooning and basic shape exploration can lead to drawing more realistically, if that's where you want to go. It's all about practice and learning and becoming comfortable with these basic shapes.

The last thing we drew just for fun was a cat using our method of drawing people that we learned in our October class.

Here's a peek into the girls' sketchbooks...

And here they are (...minus one who left before the pictures. Sorry Ms. M).

I'm hoping that they spend the next month drawing cats and dogs and birds and horses and elephants all over the place!

We covered a lot of material really fast and the girls did GREAT. They are such a fun group!!

See you next month!

ETA: And look at the fun sight that greeted me at church. Two of the girls drawing together and teaching each other!! Yay!!

Newest (Sort of) Paintings

Some of these were wedding presents, some of them were Christmas presents. So I couldn't blog them until now. But they are all 4 in their proper homes now so here you go...

 

 

 

New Name Sign

This one was made for a sweet returning buyer on ETSY. Isn't this color scheme fun?