A gift for my dad

My dad is an amazing man. He is a daily example of unselfish love. 

Over the years he has spent countless hours helping me with my art program, tackling chores that most people not only don't want to do, but never see. For example, just last week he sorted, washed, dried and stored a thousand soiled flag blanks for me. And these weren't just dirty.. they were rodent soiled from being in cardboard boxes in a storage building. UGH! 

So anyway, I wanted to do something to show my appreciation and I've been wanting to try a new art project, so I figured this would be a good time. When I think of my dad, I think of music and art. Specifically, screen printing... and I just happen to have access to some of the screens that he used in his business for twenty plus years!

I pulled this photo off my dad's facebook page. This is so him!  In fact, this was him in his early twenties.

I took the picture and edited it in photoshop and used it to draw on the silk screen. I used a couple of different kinds of sharpie markers as I found that the plain sharpie dried a grey color, but the one that was created for fabric dried black. You can see the difference in the two below.

Here is the piece in process. I ended up going over the entire thing a few times as I liked the dark contrast on the screen. (If I had time, I would have used both shades to create more depth.. but no time!)

Here is the piece complete.

It was so much fun giving him the gift. 

I have to say, this was one of the best gifts I have ever made. I loved creating it and I loved giving it! I know that what made it special was the meaning behind not just the piece but the screen as well.

Making my heart smile!

I love how-to art books. I bought probably hundreds over the years! Some end up worthless, and some are treasures.

This weekend I found a how to on Disney's classic characters. It was on clearance, and it was a little torn up, but a great book!

Kylie and I drew Mickey and Minnie Mouse the other night. 

Tonight, Kylie wanted to draw again, so Doug sat down and drew with her and Lexi.

It was soo sweet. I had to stop cleaning the kitchen and pick up the camera!

It was great for the girls to see Doug enjoy drawing. He said that tonight was the first time in 30 years that he has sat down to just draw! Wow! He did fantastic, and we started talking about getting him some art supplies! 

Yep, watching my family draw together (while listening to Maddie practice clarinet) does wonderful things for my heart!

The wrong support messes up the whole piece

I had a great idea. So I thought. I created a little still life of my shoes and my marathon medal and decided to do a color pencil drawing.

It was a nice thought. But I used a black piece of paper and it was the WRONG choice. No matter what I did, it was too dark. I thought the black would be a nice deep base to provide the depth that I wanted.

It didn't work. See.

In person it looks a little better and the ribbon and medal actually look pretty good.. they jump off the paper like I planned.  It only took about a hundred layers of color pencil.

But the overall drawing is blah.

So not what I was going for.

And it's all about choosing the wrong paper to start off with.

Very frustrating.

I'm not going to give up on it though. I'm going to redo the entire thing with a white support.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

Art Convention 2013

I'm preparing to leave for the Texas Art Education Association's annual conference. It's always a fun time of learning new classroom tricks, finding new products and just rejuvenating with like-minded people.

This year I'm teaching two different workshops. One is 

"Georgia O'Keeffe Meets Andy Warhol" 

It's about drawing flowers up close and then turning them into a three part stencil and printing the flowers multiple times.

You can find out more by clicking on the guide below.

Check out How to Create a Set of Andy Warhol Inspired Flower Prints by Emily McLemore on Snapguide.

I'm also teaching a workshop on how to use Snapguide and Guidecentral. I am a great fan of these sites/applications.

So that's what I've been working on the last few days. Gathering supplies for a hands on workshop for 50 (but I'm teaching it twice, so 100) and having to pack them for travel takes some planning and prepping.  But I think I pretty much have it all done... except for a few things I though about during the night, good ideas have a way of doing that...

Making a colored pencil "old master"

I love the look of the Old Master's painting. I really like Jean-Batpiste-Simeon Chardin's works.

http://www.jean-baptiste-simeon-chardin.org/

 

 

And as much as I would love to have student's work in oils, there is not enough time or money to devote to oil painting.. at least not for Art 1 and 2 students. So, after seeing a process last year at art teacher convention that used India ink and Lyra pencils, I have created my own, "Old Masters" lesson using lower cost supplies and addresses multiple art standards. It has become a keeper lesson!

 

The first thing I have students do is draw a still life from observation. This is done on just normal paper that you would do a colored pencil drawing. You can use the good stuff or just tag board. This takes a while. They must color the drawing in its entirety and need to have at least 10 layers of pencil wax. I like using a number of colors on each item as well. While the bottle is green, it has many shades of green, blue, purple, yellow and white in it. This is the easiest way to build up layers of wax, by building up layers of color.

 

 

Once the drawing is complete. TAKE A PICTURE OF IT. Or scan it. Because it won't look like this again! And if the student's haven't used enough layers of pencil, the piece is going to be ruined in the next step!

Take India ink and some cotton or gauze and rub ink over the BACK of the drawing. Completely coat the paper.

 

It should look like this.

 

 Flip the paper over and now coat the front. Yes, you are covering up your drawing!

 

 Now take a clean piece of gauze/cotton and rub off the ink.

Once you have rubbed off all the ink you want off, go back in with colored pencils or wax crayons or oil pastels and add color back in areas of the drawing.

 

These are the supplies that I used.

 

Here is a close up of the finished piece.



 

And there you have it. My "old master" colored pencil still life!

 

Want to make one for yourself or have your class do this project? Click on the image below to take you to my Snapguide! This let's you view the in depth tutorial on your smartphone, ipad or computer! (I've even included a couple of video segments!)

http://snapguide.com/guides/create-an-old-master-mixed-media-drawing/?_exp=02&utm_expid=69945963-37&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fsnapguide.com%2F%3F_exp%3D02

 

Enjoy!