Thursday Trios – January 27, 2022

Posted on January 28, 2022 by Mama Cormier

….another late post

All the days seem to run into each other and there are times when I literally forget what day of the week it is. I don’t think it’s an age thing but more of a COVID reality and winter blues combination. I’ve found it difficult to get out of the house to take photos and when I do finally get my coat on it’s already getting dark and the opportunity for taking photos of trios has diminished. Today’s trios are mostly from the archives but the three swans were captured by my camera earlier this week.

If you have trios you’d like to share, copy my link and paste it into your post and I’ll get a pingback. Have fun! Carol

Art in my Sketchbook – Part 1

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Mama Cormier

…I haven’t posted any art for awhile

I haven’t worked on any large pieces lately. My focus has been mainly on drawing in my sketchbook. I signed up for two classes. One was with Lewis Rossignol called
Sketchbooking and the other is a two week class with Karen Abend called Sketchbook Revival. The latter is a free set of classes with 27 artists that each give a lesson that takes about 30 minutes. Sketchbook Revival is free and you can still sign up. https://www.karenabend.com/sketchbook-revival-2021/

Lewis’s focus is on being loose and not too precious with your sketchbooks. In fact he encourages you to mess up your pages a bit so that it is easier to start drawing. He likes to work in ink, pen, and pencil and he uses collage to add interest and balance.

Here are a few of the sketches that I did after watching his lessons.

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I will post my art from Day 1 of Sketchbook Revival in a post tomorrow.

Portraits of Two Fine Gentlemen

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Mama Cormier

…..days 136 and 137 of 365 Days of Art

Yesterday I posted some portraits of older men that I found photos of on the internet. Two of my followers, Ivor and Derrick, made some nice comments about my work so I decided to try and draw them. I hope they won’t be offended at my attempts.

I found a photo on Ivor’s site Ivor.Plumber/Poet which I attempted to draw. The glasses were a bit tricky because there was a glare on them and I drew them slightly off kilter.

Derrick’s photo came from his profile picture. Sorry Jackie I left you out of the drawing. Check out the countryside where Derrick lives.

Old Men – Part One

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Mama Cormier

….days 129 to 135 of 365 Days of Art

I love the lines and facial hair in old men. They’re so much fun to draw. Last week Carla Sonheim asked us to draw numerous portraits of people. We could choose any subjects that we wanted so I searched the internet for photos of interesting older men.

We were to select a variety of papers to draw on and use black markers and liquid ink. I tried making my drawings using the blind contour method but I found myself looking more and more at my drawing.

Once we created a variety of portraits we had to place them on a larger piece of paper and decide how to arrange them and which ones to use. The first shot has all seven portraits and the next one has one less. Which one do you prefer?

Not sure what part two involves. I may make my final decision when I find out where this project is going.

More Fun Faces

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Mama Cormier

….a few more art projects done by my grade 3 classes

This last assignment on drawing faces has to be one of my favourite projects. If I ever get called back to do supply work in an art class I’ll definitely pull this one out of my bag of tricks if I have to come up with my own lesson plan.

Making Funny Faces

Posted on June 17, 2017 by Mama Cormier

…..what to do with the kindergarten class for art in June?

I’m always pondering on what to teach to my art classes, especially the kindergarten classes. I get inspiration from numerous sources, i.e., books, on-line classes, Pinterest, other teachers and Facebook.

Recently, two artists that I follow on Facebook were posting great portraits that they had made from crayons, markers, pencil and collaged papers. They were intended to be fun and somewhat abstract. I really thought that my kindergarten class could handle a similar assignment. I quickly made up a sample and drew some basic shapes that I used to show them how to put together a face. Here is my sample:

As usual the kids ate it up and created some fantastic faces. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera to the class so I don’t have any photos to share of their work but I did repeat the lesson with my grade 3s. I added one extra element to their lesson and that was adding watercolour as one of the mediums that they could use.

Here are some of the finished pieces. I love them all.

Thank you Stefanie von Hoesslin and Jill Kuhn for inspiring me.

Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenge – Jan. 22, 2017

Posted on January 22, 2017 by Mama Cormier

….now moved to Sundays

Come and join the fun and post some of your odd ball photos. There’s no theme.

These two photos were sent to me by my oldest daughter who recently discovered an App called Meitu that takes your photos and distorts them. We had fun seeing how our photos were going to be manipulated. Not sure how much input my daughter had for the final outcome. We all agreed that my husband’s photo was the best.

From this to

this:

More Paul Klee Art

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Mama Cormier

…. all from my grade 1s

I’ve really enjoyed teaching this unit on Paul Klee. The grade 1s and 2s really enjoyed the process and I loved their finished pieces. The grids took a lot of concentration and you can tell which students took their time. Some started out with good intentions but after awhile they changed course just so that they could be finished with it.

Here are some more portraits in the Paul Klee style. I love the giraffe. FullSizeRender-18
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It was this class that put their grid art into frames for Father’s Day. I wonder how they liked their gifts.

A Few More Portraits and New Animal Sketches

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Mama Cormier

….the grade 2s can’t seem to get enough art assignments

After Easter, when some of my students returned from extended holidays the last of the artist portraits were finished and I promised that I would post their work on my blog. So here goes:

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For the students who finished earlier I introduced them to to doing line drawings of animals and then filling them into with pencil and erasing parts to highlight light areas, markings and fur or skin texture. I had learned this technique from Carla Sonheim. I like to challenge this class because they are so open to trying new things. I showed them my samples of the elephant drawings I had done using this technique and then I provided them with photos of a variety of animals that they could choose to draw.

We started this last week and it was suppose to be a filler activity for those students who had finished all their work but at the end of this week’s class almost every student had made at least one of these drawings. Can you tell that Easter just passed when these were finished?

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Challenging Grade One Students

Posted on February 24, 2016 by Mama Cormier

….I was hesitant to teach this lesson to the little ones

How much can grade one students do? How far can I push them to try something new and something somewhat difficult? I found out today.

I thought I would try teaching my class how to draw portraits from photos. This was actually an assignment that I was given this week in Carla Sonheim’s on-line class Y is for Yellow.

I printed up several photos of some famous contemporary artists, including Picasso, Dali, Frida Kahlo and Warhol. I showed the class very quickly how to use the negative space around the photo to start drawing and how to lay out some points on the paper to help guide the pencil from one area to another.

Most of the students were very excited about starting and many of them chose to draw Dali. One student, however, was not happy with the assignment and didn’t even want to start it. I asked her what she was going to do because this was the assignment. After a few minutes and some gentle encouragement she asked me if I would help her. She chose the Andy Warhol photo to copy and I helped her with placing some of the key points onto her paper. Once she started she quickly found success. Here are a few examples of their work: