……Thanks to Little Pieces of Me
for hosting the Photo Adventure.
One of my hobbies, besides photography, is baking bread. Every week I volunteer at a local historic museum called Montgomery’s Inn where I prepare the dough and help bake it in the outdoor oven. After it’s baked it’s sold the same day at the Farmers’ Market which supports local farmers, food producers and bakers all year round.
Here is the focaccia that I baked today.
…thanks to Nancy Merrill for hosting A Photo a Week Challenge
Typically a still life is a photograph or painting of things like bowls of fruit, vases of flowers or bottles of wine. My still life photos include fruit, pastries, bread, seed pods, a sand toy and a very still butterfly.
…..Days 20 and 21
In Carla Sonheim’s on-line class we were instructed to create a still life using a scraping technique using an old credit card. Any left over paint on the card could be scraped off onto another piece of paper that could be used in future projects.
I loved this process. My brush pens didn’t give me the desired effect that Carla was looking for so I used the credit card to make all my marks. Jill Kuhn also used bubble wrap to stamp on some colour and I really liked that so I tried that as well. The flowers go off the page in this piece so the vase and the pear are the focal points of this still life. I know that I’m going to experiment with this technique some more. It’s very addictive. I even really like the art paper I created from the left over paint.
….seems like I need complete solitude to paint
I’ve found in the past that I get my best work done late at night when everyone is in bed. At the cottage it is more difficult to do because the light isn’t good after the sun goes down. Today I found myself all alone at the cottage. My neighbours had left for a few days and I didn’t have a lot of things to pack before I left for home.
I got out my paints and set up my brushes. I had a large canvas that already had the background done. In fact the background had been done for two years and I just wasn’t sure how to finish it. Then I remember hearing these wise words….” it’s only paint”. In other words don’t worry about messing it up, just go for it.
I knew that I wanted to paint pears and I had a vision in my head how I thought it might look. I lightly sketched two pears and then started adding colour. I like to work quickly and I use brushes, rags and my hands. Two hours later I finished my piece and am quite happy with it.
….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.
….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!
….I knew that some of my students knew about my blog but it still surprised me to hear this question
I needed a break from using paint. Most of the older students are pretty good at cleaning at the end of art class but some of the younger children, especially the boys, have a hard time with the cleaning concept. Two days ago I snapped and told my students that we were done with paint for awhile. When we go back I think I may limit the number of students who paint and have the rest of the students work with another medium. In other words, I’ll have two separate projects on the go.
Yesterday I introduced line drawing using pencil and then finishing if off with a fine tip Sharpie. I place a number of objects on their tables to arrange into an interesting still life.
I demonstrated how to draw what they see without lifting the pencil off the paper. We used rough copy paper to practise and then when they felt comfortable the students produced a final copy that was trimmed and then mounted on black construction paper. The following examples were done by grade 3s.
So what’s next? Maybe I’ll use oil or chalk pastels. At least there won’t be any brushes to clean.
Cheers!
…..here are 3 pieces of art that I finished today
Doing art puts in me in a zen state of mind. I’m totally into what I’m doing and I lose all sense of time. I like to create examples of art that I can share with my students or leave for supply teachers to use when they have to cover one of my art classes. There have been times when I’ve gone to school despite being sick because the art project we were working on was too complicated or too messy for an occasional teacher to have to deal with.
Lately I’ve across some interesting, fun and very doable projects that I can leave for a supply teacher. Here are the samples I’ve been working on. The first one I’m actually doing with some of my classes right now. It’s a still life that the students outline in crayon and then fill in with watercolour. The wax crayon creates a resist which prevents the paints from running into one another. The idea came from Be Creative Mary.
The next two projects are perfectly suited for a supply teacher. Both ideas came from Artisan des Arts
If you need instructions for any of these projects check out the blogs where I got therm from. Cheers to creating art!
Mama Cormier 