Painting progress

The last few months for me have been a blur. A lot of my projects have been put on the back burner. But I'm excited to be getting back to what I love. I won't go into detail right now about all that has happened in the last few months, that' s a long story. It has nothing to do with anything I blog about. I'm sure I'll share more of those personal details at some point. But right now I'm just glad that Spring seems to peering through the clouds and warmth is returning to the ground.

Today though I want to share some of the process I went through went my last painting.

My friend Lindsay, who I love and adore, is moving this week, SAD! She is a hairstylist and traded me a new hair-do for a painting. I've done this trade thing a few times now and I really like how it works out :) She told me she wanted a hummingbird, corals, peaches, and turquoise. Which is perfect because those are most of MY favorite things.  Here is the end product:

I started out putting in blocks of bright happy colors, leaving white space for the bird.

Then I added in blocks of color to the body.

Then I started to have some fun with it. I through in some drips, some scribbles, and some blocks of lighter colors.

My husband said the red drips looked like the bird was bleeding...not really my intention. I hate when he's right. I therefore tried to cover a little bit of that up.

In the end, this became one of my most favorite paintings I've ever done. It combines all of what I like to do with art. This will sound really cheezy, but I kind of found myself as I did this. I've struggled back and forth between styles and techniques. I love to try lots of new things and that kicks me sometimes because then I can't decide what to stick with. But this...this is my happy place. I'll be adding prints of this to the shop soon since the original has a home. One of my goals this year is to add in originals to my etsy shop this year. That's the plan! Stay tuned!

A sketchbook look

I'm going to share more of my sketchbook with you folks. It houses a lot of random things and thoughts. It's always on my desk and I use it a lot, especially to test colors while I'm painting. So here's a look in. I have a bajillion sketchbooks. This one I've had since November of 2012 I think. It's full. I need another. I have about 20 filled journals and sketchbook on my bookshelf. I can't help it. 

This was with my computer's webcam, so eh, the text is backwards. Oh well this time.

From the first day I got my gouache paint. I didn't want to go to bed. I felt jipped that for all these years I didn't know about it.

 More from my first date with gouache. Had to do some birds of course.

This page? I don't even know where it came from.

Ya that's a bearded baby.

The day I got a bottle of neon yellow paint. Love neon!

This page in particular...I remember drawing all of things while I was feeling overwhelmed with all of my household duties. I was drawing all this stuff that consumed my life at the point and now it seems funny.   Among it all included the tv show The Office (all time fan here), laundry, sweeping, feeding our boy, blowing bubbles, and cleaning binkies. It's a beautiful life, ha.

This last page I've used as a palette many times when I didn't feel like getting a real one wet. Ya I'm lazy a lot with my paint use.

One day my husband and I had a little drawing session together. We decided we would draw a nerdy bird.  I want to frame his.

Art activities the last week of school

What do you do the last week of school with your students?

Keeping students engaged the last week (and myself to be honest) can be tough since they are wired and springing about singing the tunes of summer.  All of their work is graded and finished so what are we to do? I planned several fun art projects for us to do that were both FUN and could be done in a day or two.  You don't have to be an art teacher to do these projects.  Sorry for my crummy photos. Today was the last day of school (happy summer dance!) and all my good pictures are on my school computer.

Here was our schedule:

Monday: Make TAPE sculptures!  It's pretty easy, there are tutorials online for this. I'm sorry I didn't get more photos of the process to explain it all!

Tuesday: Finish tape sculptures and display them in the school in random places.  We posed some with clothes from lost and found.  Our tape people sat on the benches and were flying through windows.  They were hilarious and all the other students walking by thought they were real people. I didn't get a picture! Shame on me!

image from artplace4kids

Wednesday: Bring sticks. Dip them in ink and draw on big paper! Do it outside in case you spill!
                                 

Thursday: Drawing contest outside with sidewalk chalk
                                            

Friday: Last day! Sign yearbooks and run around like crazy

These final 3 projects are some of my students favorites.  I like to end the year with a bang. I try to take them out to do sidewalk chalk art when the weather is nice either in September or May.  The inbetween months in Utah are TOO cold! Or unreliable.  Whatever you do the last week of school, make it memorable!  That's the last time many of them will be in my class so I want it to have a lasting impression on them.  Have a great summer everybody!

How to make a tape transfer

Packing tape is for more than just packing up boxes.  I accidentally over-ordered packing tape last semester...I have about 5 boxes full of them.  Ridiculous. Totally over estimated! You can also make tape sculptures with it which I post about later.  

But for today's packing tape feature...how to do a tape transfer!

This can be done for so many things! Make decals for your windows, for a kid's room, for art projects, whatever.  It's fast and easy.  This will not work with ink printed from a regular inkjet printer. It has to be from a laser printer or magazines.  

You need:

one roll of clear packing tape

scissors

a magazine or laser copied image

water

 Find the image you want.  The only thing that will transfer onto the tape is the ink.  So white paper won't be there later.  Put the sticky side down on the image you want to transfer.

 Add more if you want.

 Flip it over to the paper side and run it under water to soak the paper.  You can do this immediately after sticking the paper and tape together.

 Then using a wet sponge or your fingers, start carefully peeling off the paper from the tape.  You want to rub hard enough to get off the paper, but not soo hard the ink comes off. Although that is the beauty of transfers is that rubbed off quality, do it to your liking.

 You can cut shapes out of it and stick it anywhere! In college I made a bazillion tape transfer butterflies, I just couldn't stop, I loved them.  I assigned my classes to do this for a sketchbook assignment. They thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I'm not the expert on this of course, there are lots of ways to do transfers and I don't know them all.  I do know you can do this with gesso (but it doesn't work with magazine) and gel medium or gloss medium works too.  Any others ways you know please share!

Collaborative project: 7th grade line drawing

I wanted something up on the walls by parent teacher conferences a few weeks ago.  I had only had my students for about a week, not enough time to make much. So in one day we made some massive butcher paper abstract line color drawing thingies for the hallways.  I looove them! They are so bright and colorful.

All of this was done within a 45 minute class period.  Each of my 7th grade classes made 4 long strips of butcher paper pieces.  We talked about line and color a bit and then they traced a partner with crayola washable markers.  Everyone in the class was traced, making sure to overlap their bodies (not while the other person is still laying there of course).

After the lines had criss-crossed everywhere, making lots of shapes, I told them to start filling in the shapes with different patterns of line.  Sort of like a zentangle. They did this for about 8 minutes and then we brought out the paint! 

I use these tempera cakes palettes a lot now.  It's quick clean up, they last forever! The brush comes in the palette. I used to hate tempera and I still don't like the texture much.  But when you have 35 students and 3 sinks...the less clean up the better.

After filling in with lines, they started painted inside the shapes.  Because we used crayola washable markers, when the wet paint touched it, the markers started to bleed, but I loved the effect.  It was a welcomed accident.  So in just 45 minutes, we had lots of huge colorful papers to hang on the walls. =)