Put a Beak on it!

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Mama Cormier

…..another great art idea from Carla Sonheim that I introduced to my kindergarten art class

You may recall a post where I shared some art that I did with scraps of paper. By simply adding a beak, eyes and feet you can make fun bird shapes. I turned them into cards and small framed gifts that I gave to friends and family.

A couple of weeks ago I introduced this concept to my kindergarten art class. They made a very simple tree shape with 5 to 6 branches and then on each branch they glued a scrap piece of paper and then drew on the details to create their birds. Here are some of their creations.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Five Stories, Five Photos Challenge – Day 4

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Mama Cormier

I was invited by Elizabeth from Tea and Paper to join the Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge “Post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge.” Elizabeth is a fellow Canadian who lives close by but never reveals exactly where. She loves to journal, take photographs and write poetry.

Tulips

My art is simple, almost child-like. I don’t paint to become the next Picasso or Frida Khalo or Matisse. I paint for me. If you like it, that’s wonderful; if you don’t that’s okay too. I take joy in the process. It relaxes me, gives me a sense of purpose and allows me to be creative and experiment with new techniques.

Tulips was done on a piece of birch plywood. The technique was new to me. I drew the flowers with a pink marker directly onto the board and then covered it with Gesso. When the Gesso dried the pink showed through enough to paint around the image. Before adding colour, more Gesso is applied to create texture. When the second coat dried, I used very wet watercolour to wash over the Gesso. When that dried the whole piece was rubbed and buffed with a damp cloth. The image was outlined with pencil and marker and shaded with charcoal.

Carla Sonheim taught me the technique. I’m taking a year long on-line art class with her and Lynn Whipple called Year of the Spark. I believe over 600 students, world-wide have signed up for this class. It’s wonderful sharing our work on a special FaceBook page and receiving comments and support from like-minded people.

*****************************************

Today I’d like to invite Joanne from My Life Lived Full. Joanne is another Canadian blogger. I love her sense of humour and gusto for life. I hope she accepts the challenge.

Sticks and Stones

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Mama Cormier

…..make wonderful art

Last week I was assigned a project that involved gathering up bits of nature to create a temporary work of art. After we finished creating we could photograph our masterpieces and then return the bits back to the environment or leave our creations somewhere outside where others could enjoy what we made. This idea came from Lynn Whipple who is one of the artists from Year of the Spark. This is a year long on-line art class brought to us by Carla Sonheim and Lynn. Every month they take turns coming up with wonderful and innovative assignments that bring out our inner spark. Every two weeks we get a new assignment.

I was really inspired by this project and came up with my own ‘Learning Stick’ and a composition of stones and dried foliage and grasses that I turned into a card.

I’m hoping to make more but in the meantime I offered this assignment to my kindergarten class and they ate it up.

Before I arrived for our regular weekly art class, the children took a walk around the school yard and gathered up as many bits of nature that they could find. Between me and the ECE teacher and what the children gathered we had a very nice collection of materials to work with.

I told the children that we weren’t gluing anything down and when their picture was done I would come around and photograph it and then we would take it apart and if they wanted they could make another picture. When we finished with the materials we would return them to nature.

I printed the photographs on my printer at home onto regular sized photocopy paper and then I made one 4 x 6 glossy print to mount onto a card. Here’s what mine looked like.

After we mounted all the photographs onto a black background they were put up outside the kindergarten class for all to enjoy. Today they were moved to a more central part of the school so that more people would see them. The cards that I made will be given to the parents as a special gift on Earth Day.

Year of the Spark

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Mama Cormier

….another great on-line art class with Carla Sonnheim and Lynn Whipple

In December I signed up for a year long on-line art class with two great artists, Carla Sonheim and Lynn Whipple. The class is called Year of the Spark and twice a month each teacher presents a lesson and several fun assignments. So far the assignments have been designed to get our hands moving and look at art and drawing in new ways.

Carla’s first class had us drawing dozens of one line sketches of animals, flowers, and houses and then choosing one favourite and drawing it again using many different types of drawing tools. We had to choose one finished piece in the end and frame it. Here are some of my one liners and my framed piece.

As much as I liked my dog drawings I decided to elaborate on my birds.

As you can see these drawings are intended to be fun and whimsical.

This week Lynn introduced us to pattern drawing and creating cards using people from old photos and a multitude of shapes of cut up papers. I’ve played with the pattern portion of the assignment but I haven’t yet started the card assignment.

The pattern assignment is a warm-up activity but I’m so addicted to this random doodling that it’s taking me hours to finish one page. Tomorrow I’m going to have to try to work faster and maybe use only watercolours to create my patterns. Keep it simple.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Filling in the Negative Space

Posted on January 10, 2015 by Mama Cormier

….an art lesson that focuses on the negative space

When I took the on-line course called Table Top: Drawing and Painting by Diane Culhane I knew that I wanted to do one of the assignments with my grades 2 and 3 classes. It was a great lesson on contour drawing and positive and negative space.

I gave the students a variety of bottles and vases to arrange into a pleasing still life. They used a fine tipped black Sharpie and drew a contour drawing of their still life. Then they divided the negative space into smaller areas and filled them in with pencil crayon. They left the positive space blank.

Share Your World – 2015 – Week 1

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Mama Cormier

…..wow a new year of Share Your World with Cee

How do you get rid of pesky phone calls from telemarketers?

If I hear dead air for a second or two after I say Hello I know it’s a telemarketer and I hang up. Simple!

What are you a “natural” at doing?

I don’t know if anyone is a natural at anything. I know that people might think I’m a natural when it comes to art or public speaking but it wasn’t always that way. I had to work at it to gain confidence and even now I still have doubts about my abilities but I am always willing to try new things and take some risks.

How often do you get a haircut?

When my hair is short I try to get it cut every 6 to 8 weeks. When it’s longer it might be every two to three months.

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “fun”?

Fun for me is creating art and being around friends.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last week I was grateful for having my entire family home for Christmas and having everyone together to celebrate B and G’s birthday. I also loved visiting and spending time with friends.

This week I’m looking forward to some quiet time with my husband before he has to go back for more surgery on his thyroid next Monday. I’m also looking forward to starting a new on-line year long art class with Carla Sonheim and Lynn Whipple called Year of the Spark.

I can’t upload my Year of the Spark poster that I made. How frustrating!

Table Top Painting and Drawing Part 2

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Mama Cormier

….I finished my on-line course this week

I really enjoyed this on-line class with Diane Culhane. I don’t always finish all the assignments but for some reason this class held my interest and the assignments didn’t inhibit me. Carla Sonheim really has a knack for finding amazing art instructors for her on-line classes.

The last three days of this six-day class involved painting on gessoed paper, a textured wood panel and glazed canvas and making glazes with acrylic paint. All the compositions consisted of table top still life arrangements that we had to create. Here are my creations in the order that I finished.

On gessoed paper.

On a textured wood panel.

On a glazed canvas.

Table Top Drawing and Painting

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Mama Cormier

….some of the art that I’ve created in the last week

I’m taking an on-line class again with Carla Sonheim and Diane Culhane. This one is called Table Top Drawing and Painting and the focus is on contour drawing and using line to create depth. The materials we’re using include micron pens, pencil, vellum paper, watercolour paper, Prismacolour pencils, acrylic paint and wood and canvas.

So far I’ve completed lessons 1, 2 and 3 and have prepped for lessons 4, 5 and 6. Here are some of the completed pieces that I’ve done. The first two are contour drawings of still life.

In the second assignment we had to use black paper and create another contour drawing but use Prismacolour pencils and a variety of hatching lines to create depth and texture. This was a lot of fun.

In the last picture I used vellum paper and drew a contour still life using pen and a variety of lines (continuous, broken, dashes, dots, etc.). Then I filled in the negative space using Prismacolour pencils. This was also a great exercise.

The next three assignments use acrylic paint, glazes, moulding clay, paper, canvas and wood panels. Hopefully I can complete them this weekend.

Cheers!

Art Through the Camera Lens

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Mama Cormier

…. an on-line assignment that involves taking photos that are not focused

In my Summer Camp art course I’ve painted with watercolour and acrylic, created drawings using oil pastels and pencil, sculpted with wire and made birds from scraps of paper. In today’s assignment I had to take my camera and walk about the neighbourhood and look for things I wouldn’t normally photograph and then snap them out of focus. The idea is to create interesting lines and shapes without recognizing what the object is.

Here is a gallery of some of my shots.

If you’d like more information about the on-line courses that I’ve taken with Carla Sonheim check out her blog here.

Painting Your Garden

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Mama Cormier

…..I’ve just completed another on-line painting course hosted by Carla Sonheim and taught by Diane Culhane

I loved this class. It was the first time I painted on wood and the first time I used the palette of paint from one assignment as my canvas for the next assignment. There were six lessons in all with 3 large assignments all using different techniques or a combination of techniques from one week to the next.

The process involved putting gesso on the board to prep it for painting and then creating a garden scene inspired from your memory, magazine pictures, other artists or from your own garden. Most of my inspiration came from my imagination. The idea is not to create realistic flowers (but you can if you want) but to use a variety of techniques to create a more whimsical garden. It’s almost more like folk art. I loved doing this and am looking forward to creating more gardens. Maybe in future paintings I will include some buildings and maybe I’ll scratch in some fun characters coming out from behind the flowers.