Happy Autumn!

Basic color wheels created by beginning painting class

 What a beautiful time of year! My beginning painting students enjoyed the sunny weather and did some sketching outside with chalk and oil pastels, then we came inside and mixed earth tone palettes and painted from our sketches. We talked about how to create shortcuts with brushstrokes- so instead of  trying to capture all of the details of the trees we tried to capture the feeling or impression of the trees. We looked at some impressionism paintings and discussed the different artist's styles and how they used their brushstrokes. 

Chalk pastel sketches on black paper

Tile Quilting at College Hill

Close up of some of the tiles 

This month the students at College Hill High School kicked off the school year with a collaborative tile project! During orientation each student in the school got to decorate a 4"x4" tile, keeping the overall themes of "respect" and "empathy" in mind. There were about 90 tiles in total made. Students had the creative freedom to express what those themes meant to them by using stamps, hand carving and hand painting designs. Some of the tiles represented the themes more literally by using words like "respect" and quotes like "Be the change you wish to see in the world". Other tiles were more playful with sayings like "I (heart) cats" and "moop". There were also purely visual tiles made using abstract designs and images of people holding hands, footprints, and nature.

Watercolor flower paintings

Here are some photos of lovely paintings done by the 4th and 5th graders at Lincoln Elementary school during my residency in spring 2013! We talked about shape, contour, and value and students learned how to blend their colors and add shading. 

Summer Madness

 The whirlwind of summer camps at the Arts Center hit and some wonderful things were created, (most of which I did not photograph, unfortunately). We started off the summer with circus camp where students learned stilting and poi, made props and I taught a yoga class that kept students focused and taught concentration, mindfulness and balance. The yoga turned out to be invaluable for the students (and the counselors, and me) and I received lots of positive feedback! I also was able to sit in the audience (having not had students prepare anything in particular for the circus performance) and that was a real treat to see the whole production from the audience (as usually I am behind the scenes coordinating).

Life Drawing Class

In this 4 week class, students learned fundamental drawing techniques to help them create more realistic drawings. Students practiced form, value, shading, portraits, and perspective! Here are some of the results!

Shading exercise with modeling clay

Spring Overview!!

Once again the wonderful craziness of spring has hit and the creativity is spiraling out of control! There are so many wonderful things going on right now in my classes I am going to lump them together a bit and do an overview of some of the amazing projects this spring!!

Picasso Play pre-school class doing self portraits! Students used oil pastels to sketch themselves and added watercolors to color their backgrounds.  

 Tie dying in Open Studio! Open Studio students created amazing tie dyed clothing, some of which was used for the Flower Power fundraising event for arts education and outreach!

Fantasy Fiction of Spain

 Here are some fantastic artworks from my classes at The Arts Center's Fantasy Fiction of Spain Bi-Lingual camp. My classes read a spanish folktale called the Bird of Truth ("El Pajaro de la Verdad") and designed illustrations to go with the story using at least 3 different mediums (paint, pastels, markers, glitter, feathers, ink, pencils, etc.).