Art 101 Begins!

My basic art class, Art 101 launched Tuesday morning. It's a small class that meets in my studio. I painted some of my furniture white and the difference it makes is amazing. The space looks less cluttered and large.

After a brief lesson about pencils and paper we went on to begin learning about line and contour drawing. Contour drawing is one of the best exercises a person can do to help coordinate their hand and eye movements. It also can be used to render subjects in fine art works.

Contour drawings can be done several ways-

•  Blind, eye following the edges of the subject while the hand draws them
• Blind with peeks, looking only to place a pencil,but not looking when drawing
• Looking as much as desired
• Tracing edges on photographs
• Another form of contour drawing refers to the surface of a shape, such as contour maps

The students did very well with their work. Below are two of the students' works.

Next week we move on to gesture drawing.

Folk Art Goes Abstract

Week 2 at the Co-op is complete. The elementary class learned about watercolor pencils today and we continued working on our folk art pieces from last week. We also looked at some contemporary folk art  from the following artists. These are their websites-

This is my Abstract Folk Art.  Notice the patterns.  I haven't finished coloring this drawing.
 I'll switch to the finished one as soon as it is complete.

Wilson and Wilson Folk Art, Eureka Springs AR   
Cathy Horvath-Buchanan, Artist, Canada                   
Karla Gerard, Artist, Maine

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The middle school class worked on finishing their art pieces from last week and learned about pattern in art. They began an abstract folk art work that used doodle designs in combination with a folk art design to produce an abstract folk art piece with lots of patterns.

These are Abstract Folk Art works by 2 of my Middle School students. Aren't these exciting designs?

1st Day of Co-op

Wow, what a beginning!

Our brief lesson was about Folk Art. It has been around for hundreds of years. We were focusing on American Folk Art from 1800 on.

Traditionally, Folk Art was created by individuals who lacked formal training, using the materials that were available to them, to create something decorative and sometimes also functional. Our focus was on landscapes.







Grandma Moses was probably the most famous Folk Artist. This is a stamp created with a landscape painting by Grandma Moses. Notice all the detail. A church, a school, children playing, the flags, the procession of people, and so much more. Her work was decorative and it told a story of what happened in that scene.

Today most of the folk art produced is created by people who have some art training. We will look at some contemporary folk art next week.

Our first assignment in both classes was to draw a Folk Art style landscape with lots of detail. This week the students were to do a pencil sketch, then a drawing using an extra fine permanent black marker and a black ink pen. Next week we will color them with watercolor pencils. This was an example I created for class.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  These are two pictures done by students. They used watercolor pencils and permanent marker. The top one was created by an Upper Elementary student and the bottom picture was created by a Middle School student.