Art is Alive at Clinton-Massie Schools

On Saturday afternoon we went to an all-school art exhibition at our granddaughter's school in Clinton County, Ohio. Art teacher Dan McKay had set up a show that appeared to have at least one piece from every child in the school, ranging from pottery to painting, at all grade levels. The 2-D artwork was hung individually and covered the walls of the gymnasium and the auditeria. Paintings, drawings and collages were propped on chairs and easels throughout both rooms and 3-D projects were arranged on large, round tables. Our granddaughter's class had made clay turtles, their backs textured and painted. The show took a great deal of work to arrange and looked fantastic. (One of our grandson's favorites was a giant sculpture of a bag of Tostitos!)

I was astonished at the variety and quality of the work. Most of the work was project oriented, as with the turtles, abstractions, portraits, and a snow scene-collage, for example, but many showed delightful originality within the themes. The pictures were fairly large and very colorful. Many of the young artists have excellent observation and skills with a variety of mediums, including charcoal, pastel, oil pastel, collage, and acrylics.

Any artist will tell you what a thrill it is to see your work on display for others to enjoy. Kudos to Mr. McKay for making this happen for the students at Clinton-Massie. I hope the parents and community continue to support the school's art program and help to provide supplies for these budding artists.

Art, an endangered species in many school systems, is alive and well in Clinton County.

Collages from Nebraska eighth graders

Art teacher Jerene Kruse, who took my collage workshop in Beatrice, Nebraska, last November, sent me these images of artwork her eighth-grade students did in her class. These kids did such a good job.

If you're an art teacher and haven't done collage with your classes, I hope you'll try it. They each bring in magazines reflecting their interests. They tear up the images and colors and use a glue stick or white glue to attach the pieces to a piece of card stock or poster board. If they don't like something that has already dried, they can just stick another collage piece on top of it. The shapes and colors in these collages are wonderful. So are the textures some of them made. They should all be very proud of their work.

The Little Artist's house

Here are Jenna's house drawings. I took quick pix after the birthday party yesterday and there was all kinds of reflected light coming from somewhere. They're on white paper. There's so much detail, but it doesn't show up in the small image. What tickled me was the rainbow lines around the house and all the creatures, wild and domestic: a dog, monkey on a tree, turtle, small tiger, skunk, elephant, giraffe, a bird on the fence. She included a bicycle, a car in a garage, and a wagon with a baby in it. Mommy is calling to the baby from the window in the roof at the back. Flowers next to the fence and along the driveway, which she says is gravel, like theirs, therefore gray. The sun is exactly on the reverse side of where the sun is in the front. I was out of the room for most of it, but I gave her a start with the schematic for the house, hill, and driveway on a separate sheet of paper. She made the rest of it up. Is that creative, or what?

The Little Artist strikes again

Jenna slept over a couple of weeks ago and I'm just getting around to posting the tempera painting she did while she was here. I thrills me to watch her paint. She doesn't hesitate--just gets right to it. She began with the yellow circle near the top and surrounded it with red dots to make a flower. A long purple stem came next, with the green leaves, which she mixed by putting the yellow down and stirring blue into it. Next, she painted the rainbow around the flower. She realized it was getting a little muddy, so she moved to the lower part and put in some colorful shapes. I showed her how to make marks with a tongue depressor and she enjoyed playing with that to decorate the shapes. It doesn't take her very long and she is definite about when the painting is finished. What's more, when she comes to visit, she seems surprised to see her paintings and likes what she has done. So do I!

Finally starting the New Year

My new year never seems to begin until January 2. New Year's Day is always crowded with tasks to wind up the old year, like taking down the Christmas decorations, doing the year's-end inventory, getting the bills paid. I'm looking forward to a wonderful 2008, teaching lots of workshops and seeing my new book in print. The year 2007 was a mixed bag, a lot of hard work and some highs and lows. The highest point was the birth of our grandson, who continues to be a delight when I babysit four days a week. The lowest point was the loss of my best friend. After thirty years of friendship, it ended on a sour note in February, leaving me shocked and grieving.

Our granddaughter slept over Saturday night and did her first painting on her new Christmas easel. It was amazing watching her step up to the easel with such confidence and begin painting. I set out the three primaries and purple, her favorite color. It was the first color she chose, then she added in all the others, mixing to make orange and green. She switched back and forth between her left and right hands. When she finished her painting, she told me it was a "rainbow cave." Jenna is going on five. I wish I had been that confident at such a tender age. All I remember of art from those days is coloring inside the lines.

A glorious autumn

Even our granddaughter is loving the fall this year. This is her picture of her favorite thing to do in the fall--jumping in the leaves. Please note in her left hand that she is carrying her purse while jumping. She is such a girly-girl.

I'm back on the nanny-track now that the sinusitis has improved a bit. I haul a lot of my work to my daughter's house in case Daniel decides to take a nap. About every other day I have up to three hours to work. There are still some loose ends to tie up on the book. Now that I'm feeling better, I should be able to wrap it up.

I didn't think we would have a colorful fall this year with all the dry weather, but the rains came before the leaves dried out and fell. All week the drive to my daughter's house, about 27 miles through hilly countryside, has been more than glorious. I'm glad I'm doing the drive. If I stayed in my studio, I would be missing all this wondrous beauty.

Wallpaper

I know this isn't a new idea, but it's a first for me. Several students have shown up in my collage classes with out-of-date wallpaper books to use the colors and patterns in collages. A couple of weeks ago I stopped at a paint store nearby looking for paint chips and it dawned on me to ask if they had any old wallpaper books lying around. In the past it seemed that school teachers always grabbed them up and I could never get them. I got lucky and found three with contemporary designs for homes and two great big ones full of stuff for kids. Jenna and I had a ball today with these. She picked out pages she wanted and we took them to her special art place, where she drew colored pictures on the back of border prints that could be folded into fun cards for her friends. We cut out some of the designs for her to play with--a necklace, ring, bracelet and watch. We tore out a rainbow and cut a border to paste onto another bigger page. She took about half of her treasures home and left the rest to play with next time--but the books are filled with more pictures, so will be useful for awhile. It was great fun and I recommend it to parents and grandparents for an inexpensive, engaging activity for toddlers who love picture-making.

Life-size paper doll

Jenna came over to play Saturday morning and we had a ton of fun. She lay down on a sheet of brown paper and I traced around her with a black marker. Then she got busy decorating her paper doll with odds and ends of laces, ribbons and sequins from my scrap box, plus markers and crayons. I helped with the gluing, but she decided where everything would go, including the google-eyes and the blue circles and eyelashes she put around them. She wanted the ruffle trim for socks, pink velvet on the skirt, shirttail and sleeves and gold braid for her ponytail. Not to mention the sequin jewelry and yarn necklace.

We taped Paper Jenna to the closet door, then Jenna hid while Granddaddy looked for her. Lo and behold, there she was, in front of the closet. He tickled her, but she didn't giggle. Jenna thought it was a great joke, so we took P-J over to her house and taped her to the basement door. Mommy and Daddy had a nice conversation with her, although it seemed like her voice was coming from around the corner. Imagine their surprise to see that there are two Jennas!

Am I having fun, or what?

Watercolor painting and drawing people

Yesterday I picked up the Little Artist and brought her here to play for awhile before her parents joined us for dinner. We walked through the woods to enjoy the wildflowers, but she was more interested in climbing the front and back steps with Granddaddy and ringing the doorbell to see if anyone was home. No one was. We were outside with her. After collecting a basketful of pine cones, which we convinced her that her daddy would love to have, we went inside to play.

After dinner she wanted to paint watercolors using the Altoid palette I made for her awhile ago. She loved playing with the colors (must be genetic) and making colored lines and marks. One of her pictures had a blue sky, green grass and a yellow sun with rays. Very typical for a four-year-old, but of course, exceptional to Grammy. She was delighted when I showed her how the colors would run on wet paper. It worried her that there was no brown on the palette, so I showed her how to mix it and she gave me a big smile. She understands how to rinse her brush between colors and does a good job of it.

Then she switched to "crans" to show me how she can draw people. She makes almost perfect circles for heads, two long legs to the bottom of the paper, stubby arms, dots for eyes and a smiling mouth. She said she didn't know how to make a nose. When I suggested a circle, all of her faces had noses after that. I also mentioned that her people might see better if they had bigger eyes, so she drew larger circles for eyes. She made one figure with an "e-normous" head and eyes, and made a downturned enclosed mouth for one person, who was frowning, she said. She also showed me a page I hadn't seen from last time she was here--four or five orange ovals that were swimming fish. Right now she seems more interested in drawing than in coloring in her pictures. She uses a different color for the head, eyes, mouth, nose, arms and legs.

She took all her pictures home and I forgot to take a photo for the blog.

Valentine collages

The Little Artist spent the afternoon with me today and headed straight for the collage box. I told her I was thinking of cutting out some hearts, so she picked the colors and made a beautiful valentine for Mommy with hearts, stickers and coloring all over it. To my surprise she printed her name--or close to it--on the card. This was a big day for playing with dollies. She brought two, one for me and one for her. We also looked at her Mom's baby pictures and she said in amazement, "She looks like me!" We're supposed to get snow tomorrow and Tuesday, so I'm going to stay with them overnight tomorrow in case they get snowed in.

A new collage artist

The Little Artist came over after school today. She walked into her playroom and said, "What are we going to do today?" I said, "Would you like to make a collage?" She smiled and sat down at her new table--just her size--and said, "Yes." Then, "What's a collage?"

We had a great time. I had lots of colorful rice-paper scraps. She picked out her favorite colors and tore and glued them all over the outside of a folded (5 1/2" x 8") inexpensive blank greeting-card. Then she colored the inside on one page and added stickers to the other. She told me the card was for "Mommy, Daddy and me."

Now and then, after she announced that it was finished, she took it out of the envelope and added a new embellishment or two. A born collage artist.

Exploring Color for Kids

On reading my recent blogs about comparing color temperatures, Laura Lemley of Potomac Valley Watercolorists in the Washington, DC area, emailed the following (used with her permission):

In addition to painting, I teach children 6 to 18 years old. They are just as excited as your adults to learn to recognize the warm to cool range in watercolor paints. I started the 8 weeks of lessons with the color wheel…they learned color mixing for the colors other than primaries. First they arrange all my tubes of a particular color from warm to cool by guessing. The color stripe and name sometimes give them clues. I take off all the caps and I read the name of the color to them as they take turns painting a ½” wide stripe from pure to tint on a “chart” (long narrow strip of watercolor paper. When they see that one is out of place, we mark it to be cut and put in the correct order. Afterwards they select three they like from the chart and do a painting. There was an outstanding painting of a brown red horse in an orange red tall grass field with a warm red tinted sky by an eight year old! The older children chose to make a pop art collage of red objects from magazines to make a bouquet including tints, pure color and shades. If you have any teachers who need ideas, you might pass along my enthusiasm for painting color with your guidance!

What a fun way for kids--or anyone--to play with color. Thirty years ago one of my boys took an introductory art course and they painted one color in each class, attempting to make a perfect color wheel by the end of the semester. No wonder he hated art class! (He turned out to be a fantastic potter, though.)

More Art Book Reviews

Ron Ranson on Skies (Studio Vista, 1998) is for landscape painters in any medium who love to feature skies. The book shows techniques mostly in watercolor, but does include instruction on some other media, along with excellent photographs of cloud formations and many wonderful sky paintings. This is a great reference for landscape painters. I'm a sky freak myself and love paging through this book to look at the photos and paintings.

Colour and Light in Oils by Nicholas Verrall and Robin Capon (Batsford, 2004). The pages on Understanding Oils are very informative and user friendly, even to a beginner in oils like me. There aren't many swatches for visual comprehension, but the artwork throughout is dazzling, but not overwhelming as a possible goal for an artist to strive for. Verrall and Capon cover painting color and light, different types of subject matter and the working process, with a few demos scattered throughout the book in two or three stages.

The Digital Canvas: Discovering the Art Studio in Your Computer. (Abrams Studio, 2006.) This book by Jonathan Raimes almost makes me want to sell all my painting gear and just play with my computer. It's dazzling and I really think I could do it with this book as my text. The book has page after page of brilliant color effects with simple computer screen shots to show the tools for achieving them. Probably not for beginners, but definitely for creative computer artists.

Barbara McGuire has written Embracing Child Art. (Krause, 2001) to give adults ideas on how to encourage a child's natural creativity and ultimately help them to make a few treasured objects. There are wonderful suggestions for guiding Little Artists and helping them create projects with their own art to last a lifetime. The best part of the book is page after page of wonderful examples of child art.

Helen Van Wyk's Color Mixing the Van Wyk Way: A Manual for Oil Painters (Art Instruction Associates, 2000) has quickly become a classic since it was first published in 1995. She keeps the color concepts simple, emphasizing primarily color temperature and comparing a few basic palette choices for simple still lifes and portraits. This book would help beginners in oils to understand their colors and master color mixing of specific pigments.

Helen Van Wyk's Favorite Color Recipes. (Art Instruction Associates, 2000) expands somewhat on the previous book and introduces a greater variety of subjects with color recipes in oil paints that are her recommendations for painting them. This book ale effects in this book are understood, the painter would be well advised to develop a more personal palette of colors.

Barron's Creative Painting Series: Color. (2005) by Gemma Guasch and Josep Asunción contains a wealth of useful information on color and numerous beautiful reproductions of masterpieces to illustrate the use of color throughout art history. I love that part of the book, but I don't think the demo paintings do it justice. Maybe it's just the design of the book. Check it out, though, because it has a lot to offer.

Once again, thanks to McCallister's Art Store for providing books for my reviews.

The Little Artist's first watercolor exhibition

Here are a few of the many paintings Jenna did when we painted together recently. She started out on inkjet printouts. I was surprised at her choice of the primary colors for the three girls.



She never told me what this one is, but she was very intent on making a figure of some sort. She sort of scrubbed the paint on the figure. Then she carefully framed it. She was still using the cheap paint set for this one.



She painted the big rectangles and didn't seem to think they were finished, so I said, "If the brown one had a branch, it might look like a tree." Pow! She slapped a branch on both of them.



She made a lot of circles and blobs, so I asked her if she had ever tried to make dots. Of course, they had to be purple, her favorite color. By this time she was using my paints, so the colors are more intense.



This is my favorite. She was concentrating so hard to make the big red blob as bright as she could. She looked up at me and said, very seriously, "These are lips." When she got them just the way she wanted them, with a flourish she dotted in the three spots and made a face.

First Watercolor Lesson

Our Little Artist, almost four now, received a tiny kit of watercolor paints as a party favor this week. Her parents said she loved them and enjoyed painting pictures they printed out from the computer for her. Then they wheedled me into babysitting by saying Jenna was excited about painting with Grammy. Ha! So I picked her up yesterday and we painted together. Mostly she painted and I watched. She really does love it, but especially when I let her use my little pocket palette and small brushes (sable, no less). It took her about a fraction of a second to see the difference. I had some small, blank sketchbook pages that she puddled colors on and eventually she carefully made a big red blob that she said was "lips" and added three spots for nose and eyes. Her first watercolor portrait. I'm so proud!

The Little Artist strikes again

We fingerpainted yesterday and used computer paper instead of fingerpainting paper. It doesn't work as well, because the paint doesn't slip and slide as much, but still it was fun. We like big paper better, but once we figured out how to make handprints without putting a blob of paint on the paper first, it really got interesting. I "buttered" Jenna's hand with paint, using a plastic picnic knife, and she plopped it down on the paper for the print. She loved having both hands buttered with paint and found she could make more than one print each time. Unfortunately, her favorite color--purple--had turned into a gummy substance, so we couldn't use it, but every other color had a turn, except orange. Eventually we ran out of paper and floor space. Simultaneously, Daddy came home, so Grammy went back to the real world, where sticky hugs are just a warm memory.

I would like to study children's drawings. That's where the truth lies, without a doubt. --André Derain

Finger-painting

The Little Artist was here yesterday and made a picture for her Uncle Kurt for his birthday. The first one was for "practice" and became a big swirl of mud as she moved the colors vigorously in circles with the palms of both hands. This paint was runnier than we've used before and I don't like it. Also, the colors aren't very bright--the red is almost orange. We encouraged her to use her fingers instead of her whole hand for the next one and that worked much better. She spread the colors and made marks in them with her fingers. For her masterpiece I told her she could put her finger in the paint jar to get the color, so she drew circles and dots, then squished her hands in the paint and made handprints--her favorite, especially the one where she stuck all of her fingertips in the blue-paint jar and printed on top of her handprint.

Don't laugh

My three-year-old granddaughter loves to draw on a big newsprint pad I gave her. When I presented her with her first crayons shortly after her first birthday, they went right into her mouth. No surprise there. I drew some cartoon characters for her and she made a few marks on the paper and wandered off. Now she loves to color and draw. My Little Artist knows that the marks she makes can depict something--Mommy, Daddy or the moon.

Many students I've worked with during more than thirty years of teaching have told me that they loved to draw as children, but gave it up because a teacher or parent or another child had made fun of their drawing and told them it didn't look like anything. That's so sad. Fortunately, I've learned that these people can be taught if they overcome the negative perception that they can't do it. But it would have been so much better if they hadn't been burdened with that idea in the first place.

That's why I say, "Don't laugh." Don't laugh at a small child's first efforts and don't make fun of your middle-aged or elderly relative's or friend's attempts at drawing or painting. Everyone is entitled to know the pleasure of making art without the fear of ridicule. It isn't about being an artist. It's about experiencing the joy of creating something that never existed before, a uniquely human privilege. We should celebrate everyone's attempts to develop their creative skills.

The little artist

Our two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter visited this afternoon. Jenna and I are very close and like to build towers with blocks, read stories and play with her dollies and Little People. She loves to finger paint and color with crayons and markers. It's fun to see how she's developing as a "junior artist." She knew her colors before she could talk. (I didn't drill her, honestly.) Mostly she scribbles, but some time ago her marks become more purposeful. She drew a straight line and said it was Daddy, then put a Mommy line next to it. She makes circles and zigzags, too. Today she used colored markers in a coloring book. The picture had six bunny rabbits in it. She colored each one a different color, happily unconcerned about going outside the lines. She used her right hand except for two small bunnies that were side-by-side. She colored the one on the right with her right hand and switched the marker to her left hand to do the other. Two of my children (her mother is one) are right-handed but use their left hands for many tasks. How about those genes?