Showing posts with label Birds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Birds. Show all posts

Friday, June 11, 2010

Lesson One: Line





Some weeks ago, I began giving private art lessons to a couple of kids that go to our church. They are seven and nine. They love to draw and make art, so it's been a lot of fun teaching them new things. We meet once a week. I started them off with the elements of art, and each week is dedicated to one of those elements.

There are seven, respectively:

Line
Shape
Space
Value
Texture
Color
Form

For line, we talked about different kinds of lines, why they are important, and how to make them. We also talked about the emotion of line. I had them try different exercises, and even showed them some different artworks to have them identify the kinds of lines they saw, like straight, wavy, thick, and thin. When I returned the following week, I was very impressed that one of them had fun drawing more lines, and that the other remembered the word "elements" when I asked what they were called.

Anyway, I recently decided that if I am going to be teaching these kids art, no matter how foundational, I must also be practicing it. So, in my own way, I will be practicing the lessons along with my students.

I played catch-up today. These are my experiments with line. The first couple are my warm ups. I'm a big fan of line and gesture.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Desktop Image


Adam had me make his bird into a background image for his desktop. What a supportive husband! He even picked out what color he wanted behind the bird.

Angry Bird?



The other day when Adam came home from work, I showed him the birds I was working on. He got kind of excited and started searching for more bird pictures online. Then he said that if I was going to have bird paintings taped all over our wall, he got to pick the next one I did. So this is the one he "commissioned" me to do. He was pretty thrilled today when he came home and saw that I had done it after all.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Reshoot




Reshot these in the morning. Much better I think.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Two Cardinals Today




I got a little more particular today. And I've realized that I need to take pictures in the morning when the natural light is coming in. The pictures don't come out quite so yellow that way, like they do when I'm using lamps at night. I will probably reshoot the second cardinal, the "Merry Christmas..." one, tomorrow. I really want a nice scanner someday, though, so I don't have to keep taking photos. Color is so much harder to adjust than black & white. I did manage to update the last bluejay picture. The color is a little better now.

Also, the for the second cardinal I began with a yellow wash for a base. The first one, I noticed, wasn't popping as much as I wanted it to be, so for the second one I thought the yellow would help.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Another Day With Jay


I am definitely having an off day today. I hope it's only a day anyway. Not terribly trilled with this one, but I am posting it nonetheless, as a record of progress.

I hate working when I'm cold!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Bluejay Sketch


I'm sensing a theme here.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

More Cardinal Sketches


Experimenting a bit with line and color. The second sketch got really muddy when I tried to paint over an ink pen. I went over it with white to try and fix it. Now I know not to use the pen like that. And really I should be doing this stuff on bristol board or something. Anyway, I'm having fun with the birds. I'll probably do more. Oh, and I need to invest in a white light of some kind so I stop getting the yellowed pictures. Alas! The woes of the artist.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Cardinal Sketch


I felt like painting with the left over red on my palette. So I looked up a photo of a cardinal.