Painting

 Went for a walk and saw this scene; seemed like a good idea for a painting.

Giant Food

Paintings

I'm up to the Impressionists in my art class, so I painted this to show them the assignment. And then, my younger class saw that the older class was painting. They asked if they could paint as well, but could it be something easier? So I painted this for them:

A total win-win for me, the kids are engaged in painting and I had an excuse to paint again!

Art Class - Thanksgiving Still Life

I decided to do a Thanksgiving still-life - in sepia, if they were up for it. So I had to go out and buy a bunch of vegetables that I don't normally eat (translate: know how to cook). Thankfully my wife could make something out of it all after the class - the big vegetable on the bottom left ended up in turkey soup.

Oddly enough, the younger class had better luck with this than the older class. They just took what they saw and ran with it. The older class was trying to draw it as accurately as possible, so very few of them finished the drawing. I don't really fault them for that - it's not like they didn't finish because they weren't trying, it's more that that were trying too hard - but I do want to see if they can loosen up in future classes.

From the younger class:

I actually liked that this was off center. There's a nice compositional balance to it all compacted in the bottom corner.

And this one I loved. She just took the basic idea of what was there and ran with it. The basket handle is huge, and it works really well. And why not add a rainbow, I ask you. It's practically a Thanksgiving wonderland she's drawn here. Great way to pump up a still life!

Art Class - Color Mixing

It looks like this should be called "Art Class - Leaves," but the leaves were just the excuse to follow up on my color mixing class. I limited the colors they could use to yellow, magenta, cyan, and white. They did really well on it - in fact, I taught this before the pumpkin painting class, which is probably how they were able to get a whole painting done in an hour! This class took two sessions to complete (these posts are slightly out of order, but I wanted to put up my Jack O'Lantern pic before it got too far from Hallowe'en).

Since it was color theory, I had initially planned to have them paint the same leaf in complementary colors, like I did as well. But after two classes on just one leaf, they were ready to move on, and the pumpkin paintings were a lot more fun. But I like my purple leaf for it's own sake, so I'm glad I painted it as well.

Art Class - Halloween

The kids in the class wanted to do something for Halloween, and they wanted something substantial for a decoration. So I thought, why not paint on tiles? They're considerably substantial, as I remember from carrying boxes of them around when we were working on the kitchen floor. But the class is only an hour, so I figured I had to be able to paint one in that time if I was going to ask them to do so. So this is my one-hour painting of a Jack O'Lantern.

You'll notice that the pumpkin in the photo actually isn't carved. I did that on purpose - the kids are really in to being creative, so I wanted a blank pumpkin (as it were) so they could make their own face on their painting. Some did it in reverse - made the background lit in orange, with a black pumpkin in shadow with glowing features, and one just painted the pumpkin as itself, which came out really nice.

And on a related note - I found an explanation of why Halloween pumpkins are called Jack O'Lanterns. It comes from the story of Stingy Jack, told here on the History Channel web site!

Art Class - Prepping and Teaching

Some pics from preparing for art class, and the art class itself!

Halloween banner for the younger class: The object of the class is not to have them copy everything I do - I try to give examples so they can be inspired to do it themselves. On the board you can see how I'm giving them examples of other expressions they could give their figures. Kind of an emoji class for the younger group!

Here's the older class:

Color theory: I wanted them to learn that red, yellow, and blue aren't primary colors, at least not in painting. Rather, yellow, cyan, and magenta are (my time spent in print was not wasted! Translates well to the canvas). Above were my examples - below are the kids finding it out for themselves.

They got into it! Especially if they knew the color wheel before, it was interesting to see how it actually worked with real paint, instead of a theoretical color wheel.

Art Class - Emojis

In the art class I'm teaching, I wanted to teach them how to draw expression. And it seemed like a relateable way to teach it by having them do emojis. So I did an example to show what I had in mind:

They totally got into it, especially after seeing it rendered digitally (I showed it to them on my phone). So they made several of their own. I told them to pick the one they liked best, and I would render it for them. Here are the ones they created:

And here's how I rendered them:

We have class again tomorrow - I'll show them these then. I love the work they came up with, especially the guru and the really hungry guy!

Fishing

I based this drawing on a sketch I did while camping (same camping trip that I came up with the Hobbit Day idea. Did a lot of sketching that weekend!).

One evening we went down to the lake to go fishing, me with sketchbook in tow as well as tackle. At first, my daughter tried fishing. Then, she tried skipping rocks. THEN, she decided it was more fun to just take big rocks and hurl them into the water.

Surprisingly, we caught no fish that night.

Prepping for Art Class

I'm teaching an art class starting this Sunday at the Chinese School. And when I was coming up with a subject for the first class, I remembered my first class from art school. We had to draw our initials, in a way that would represent us. It was a way for the professor both to see what we could do, and also learn a little about the students. So I wanted to do it in my class as well!

To kick things up a bit, I'm also having them make this the cover of a sketchbook that they can use. And, so they could see what could be done, and how it would look at the end, I made one myself to show them:

Anyone who reads this blog won't be surprised at the fairy tale reference for the S! And since we just went camping, I wanted to try something different for the V.

It was fun putting it together - never tried stitching a sketchbook together before, and it came together well. I also asked my kids to try the same assignment. They're working on it now - coming up with some interesting work! I'll show it tomorrow as more examples, to help generate ideas.

Book - The Last Akaway

Haven't posted for a while, but that's because I've been working on a book! Front cover, illustrations, everything. Couldn't post anything until the work was released!

It's "The Last Akaway" by Gary Karton. If you're in to Harry Potter-age literature (kids? Young adult? Juvenile fiction? Hard to keep track what each sub-genre is called), I definitely recommend the book (I can say that because my work on it is completely done, so I'm unbiased at this point).

I did like the story a lot - not a requirement to do illustrations, but definitely made it more enjoyable to work on!

Wedding Invite: the pencil comp

A friend is getting married in Hong Kong this year, and she asked Serena to do the invitation, and me to do the drawing. She said she wanted swans, so my first take on this was to do them like an Asian brush painting.

When she saw them, she said don't do that. Go full-out fairy-tale style.

For me, that's like saying to your puppy, "No, don't play with the rubber bone. Here, have some steak."

I mean, I love Chinese and Japanese brushwork, it's absolutely amazing. But even more than that, I'm the biggest fairy-tale geek, so I was all over this.

The final will be in full color, so I get to have even more fun.

The Story Continues

Oh, those sneaky mermaids. Good thing our hero is so honest.

Complaint is Voiced and a Test Devised

sketch: Serena

Moving beyond faces to the whole figure. Although I can't help but feel there's something wrong here – Serena's the one sitting in front of the TV, drink in one hand and remote in the other. Perhaps if I watched more sports (i.e. didn't go to art school) I'd be the one on the couch.

Along those lines, the other day I had a dream that I was being stalked by a bear. When I told Serena she asked, "Was it polar, panda, or koala?" Koala?!? Sure, I'm an artist and all, but I hardly find koalas terrifying. At least she didn't add "teddy" to that list.

Back from Vacation: R

Haven't posted for a bit because I've been on vacation. Good times. Especially relevant for this blog was a chance to check out the Philadelphia Art Museum – I got to see a lot of my favorite artists. Whistler, Sargent, and Alma-Tadema in particular, but also Cassatt, Munch, and Toulouse-Latrec. In addition, my son loved the armor exhibit... sniff... I'm so proud...

Here's something I finished just before taking off. It's R, for Rushing out the door.

Arianna's Alphabet Book: D

As in "Drat! I dropped it!"

Arianna's Alphabet Book: C

This is for "Catch!" said the pitcher.

Another spot illustration, but more than just the figure of Arianna this time. And the alphabet book gets to do double duty as a child's first primer on puns.

The Gingerbread Policeman (VI)

The Big Bad Wolf decides to take things into his own paws. He lies in wait for the Gingerbread Policeman...

...and gives chase. But it's a trap! An unwise one, scowls the wolf, since the Gingerbread Policeman is locked up in the cage with him.


But the the little cookie shows that the Big Bad Wolf is no match for his cleverness.
He sliiiiiiips out between the bars, and lives happily ever after. Fairy tale evil-doers, beware!

And so ends the tale of the Gingerbread Policeman, for now at least. I've got a couple more in mind, but first, my daughter needs an alphabet book. I've finally got the next painting finished, so it'll be back to those drawings next.

The Gingerbread Policeman (III)

I'm jumping ahead a bit in the story, but this is the Gingerbread Man and the fox – make that Officer Fox – on the other side of the river. In my story, the fox took him away from the others not to eat him, but to recruit him for police force. In this picture the Gingerbread Man is taking him up on the deal.

I was going to put a part in the book about the fox swimming back over and claiming to have eaten the Gingerbread Man, to throw everyone off. But it slowed the story down too much, so I decided to leave it to the imagination (or this blog, now that I've written it).

More work being done on the alphabet book. The hard part is determining how Arianna will look throughout, even though I've already done one picture of her. Fortunately, her eyes were closed, because that's the thing that's going to change the most from the way I drew the kids in the other books. So I'll keep putting up Gingerbread Policeman images until I can get another alphabet painting finished.