Art Journaling Workshop - July 2

Looking for a creative way to get your kids to write this summer or to record vacations or events over summer break?  I am offering an art journaling workshop on July 2 at Leidy's Church. I have a few spots left in the 9-12pm class and space available in the 12:30-3:30pm class.  Cost is $25 and includes a 44 page 5.5"x8" journal. This is appropriate for kids 6 and up.  Adults are also welcome to join.  I have two moms currently enrolled.

Art journaling is the best of both worlds; art and words. It is a place to practice different art techniques.  A place to record your thoughts or write a poem. There are no rules, no mistakes, just creativity.

In this workshop we will be learning to make different backgrounds that will be ready to add ephemera (post cards, maps, brochures, tickets), stamps, collage or paint.  We will make pockets, doodle, rip, cut, paint, color, collage to create fun pages for your journal entries.

Here are some examples from a previous workshop:

A few backgrounds:

Using ephemera collected on trips:

A few examples from my journals:

Wrapping paper background.

Photo copy of my hand.

Line & Pattern Landscape - Romero Britto

Our lanscape project is based on the bold, playful style of Brazilian Neo Pop artist Romero Britto.

We will be working with line, pattern & color while designing a whimsical landscape.

Foreshortening

Foreshortening is a perspective technique used to create the illusion of an object receding into the distance or background.  Objects closest to you appear much larger than other parts, sometimes looking distorted.

For our next project we will be using our hands and feet.  Students will trace their shoes with their hands positioned on top of the shoes.  We will look at the patterns on our shoes and try to duplicate them on our drawings.  We will add a small head and body - going over proper feature placement so we don't have eyeballs at the top of the head - to complete the foreshortening.  Students will further personalize their projects by adding patterns and color to their clothes and creating a scenario for "falling".

1st Step - hand and feet

2nd step:  add head and body

3rd Step - add color, patterns and falling scenario

Results from class today.  They look great!!

Wayne Thiebaud Inspired Cake

Our next project is based on the work of New Realism Artist Wayne Thiebaud. Born in 1920, Thiebaud became known in the 1950s and 1960s for his paintings of cakes and pastries.  Some say his work influenced the Pop Art movement of the 1960s (think Andy Warhol).

This is another step by step drawing to make the 3D looking cake. We start with the top oval, find the center, make some lines on an angle and you have a cake with a slice cut out.

 We will talk about tints (mix of color and white to increase lightness) and shades (mix of color and black to reduce lightness).  We will talk about a light source and how a shadow or darker area is present.  For my example, the light source is on the left side of the cake so the left side and inside right of the cake appear lighter. The inside left and outside right sides of the cake are darker because they are shadowed.  This balance of light and dark give the cake a 3 dimensional look.  For this project we will be using oil pastels.  The finished piece will be cut out, sit on a "plate" and glued on black paper for a dramatic effect.

Koi

A new session of home school art begins tomorrow. We are going to be painting Koi fish. We will talk about the symbolism of the Koi in Asia and look at photos of real fish as well as art work.  Students will work on watercolor paper, outline in sharpie and then paint with watercolors. We will use different shaped lines to draw the fish and work on controlling the light and darkness of the paint.

This looks complicated but I will go over step by step how to draw. It uses curved lines, little "C" on the mouth and eye area, a big "L" for the fin.

This is an easier version that students have the option of choosing.

ATCs for China

Artistic Trading Cards (ATCs) have been around since the mid 1990s.  They originated as a calling card or business card for artists.  They are original mini works of art that are traded: you give a card you get a card.  ATCs are now traded world wide.  I have a large collection from my years on yahoo art groups making and trading.  The only standard is they MUST be the size of a baseball card: 2-1/2" x 3-1/2".  Other than that, anything goes- paint, marker, crayons, collage...

While my husband, daughter, friend and I are in China we will be serving at a performing arts school that educates 135 very poor, rural mountain kids.  We will be teaching Bible lessons on Creation and Noah's Ark.  I plan on making ATCs with the Chinese kids with the themes of: weather, animals and food and trading them with the cards that I am bringing from kids here.

Here are some examples I made.  I still have a bit of coloring to do.

"Sunny" and playing around with Van Gogh's "Starry Nights".

These are some of the 90 cards made by my students at Grace Christian School.  I will be taking them to China, making trading cards with the students in China and returning home with the cards to swap out.

My son is working on this one.

Surrealism

Home school art classes will be working on a surrealism project based on Salvador Dali's "The Elephants" (picture further down).  Dali was a surrealism painter born in Spain in 1904.  As a child he created very detailed drawings at a young age.  His parents sent him to art school when he was older.  He studied classical style of painting and was introduced to Dada, an avant garde movement of art.

He met artists Picasso and Miro and tried cubism and impressionism and then met Magritte who introduced him to surrealism.

What is surrealism?  It is a philosophical movement that said the way to find the truth in the world was thru the subconscious mind and dreams rather than logical thought.  Hmm, sound way out there!  Dali studied Dr Sigmund Freud's theories and used this method to create reality from his dreams and subconscious thoughts.  He mentally changed reality to what he wanted it to be, not necessarily what it was.  This became his way of life and was expressed in his art.   Dali painted until 1980 and had to retire due to permanent trembling in his hands.  He died of a heart failure in 1989 at age 84.

"The Elephants", painted 1948.  Sorry still figuring out how to add photos!

Dali's most famous work "The Persistence of Memory", 1931