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!

Halloween House

My painting students asked if I ever did anything creative, since I teach them still lifes. I told them I prefer it, and said we should do one next week. They all shuddered in horror at the thought of doing something creative with paint. So I decided to compromise. This is my house, but not my house. They have to bring pictures of their own house, and get all Halloween with it. They have a model, so it shouldn't be too overwhelmingly creative... or at least that's what I'll tell them (I feel like I should cackle gleefully).

Preteen Pirate

This came about during a semi-private painting class I was teaching. One of the kids had two bits of news - one, that she got braces, and two, that she and her family were going on a cruise to the Caribbean. I commented that she was going to go sailing like a pirate, when her friend said "Pirates don't wear braces." I called Nonsense! and said that all you'd have to do is add braces to the skull on the Jolly Roger.

So while they painted their assignment, I painted this.

In part, it was just because I loved the idea. But also, I finished this in a half an hour, while walking around and critiquing their work. I made it part of the lesson - all the kids in the class were getting too particular, and trying to make just one spot perfect. I wanted to show them that they needed to loosen up and paint more freely. Always time to clean things up later, just get paint on canvas. Besides, it was an acrylic paint class, the more you mess up early, the more layers you have, and the final result looks richer in the end.

And here is the pre-teen pirate herself, posing with the painting:

Last Art Class!

For the last art class before summer, I decided to let them make their own summer blockbuster poster - about themselves! And, of course, I had to do a sketch to show them what it could look like. And I got to get in a dig at the phrase "Based on a true story" that movies use. So all of this is sooooo true. Really.

I may have to take this to final at some point. Hard to resist helicopter sharks.

My Last Drawing of Last Year

For the last class before Christmas break, I decided to teach cartooning, with action and expression. And what better way to start kids on it than gingerbread men - they have emoji-like faces, they have stick-figure like bodies to help learn motion, and, best of all, they're edible. Not the drawing kind - the ones that my wife made to give to the class after they finished drawing. So the first half of the class was pen-and-ink, the second half was cookies-and-icing.

They asked if every class could end that way.

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!

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.