Shoes

Autumn drew her shoes and Sylvie's shoes.  Very nice still lives.  There's even some perspective in there!  (Hint: zoom in on the purple ones, they're strikingly accurate.)  The pointy things at the top are their hands putting on the shoes, and the gridwork at the bottom is the shoe basket.

VBS Puppet Videos

Here is a series of videos that I made for VBS.  All of the videos were shot without scripts, and a good ten minutes of planning.  Keeping that in mind., they didn't turn out too badly.  The kids helped with with the supporting characters.  

Tad & the Thunderstorm

This is the first video I shot with Tad.  I had a little more thought put into this one, and I had a lot more time to work with it.

Tad & Feet video

Here is the third video i shot with Tad

Tad Video 1

Here is one of the video that I shot with Tad.  

Looking for Depth

The strip malls here are not just flat facades. The landscaping in front of the stores and even in the parking lots adds to the appeal. 

I tried using toned washes of watercolor to work into the picture plane. I drew the pictures last summer and painted them yesterday.

Tad The Train Conductor

Meet Tad the Train Conductor

Kid's Bible Adventures (KBA) is doing a unit on transportation.  I built Tad to introduce the theme for this session of KBA and to help me tell the stories to the kids.  He is made out of foam, blizzard fleece, a whole lot of thread and a whole lot of glue.  I even made his little train conductor hat.  He is a "live hand" puppet.  My first live hand.  I am excited to see how well he works.  I wanted to give him some bright orange hair, but the sans hair looks ok too.

Next project is an orange monster puppet. 

Oh Give Thanks

Matt is a very special friend and student of mine.  We meet on Wednesdays to study God's Word together.  We talked about how God protects us and keeps us safe, just like he did for Noah and his family.  Then we also talked about how we might be able to show God we are thankful, like Noah did.  This is what Matthew came up with.  He and I are going to church.  I'm the one on the right side of the page.  I like it, because I have hair in this picture!  Thank you Matt.  Thank you.

hair

Hair.  Ugggh.  Rule #1 of drawing hair- TAKE YOUR TIME.  Guess what I didn't have to put into this assignment?  Time.  So I tried to grasp the form, and find value that would give volume to the the different forms.  But, still not overly pleased with the results.  I'll keep working at it- what other choice do i have?

Ears

Here are two drawings of ears.  One from the side and one from the back.  because of the plane changes in the ear, and because of the many different soft edges (form shadows) and hard edges (cast shadows) i found ears to be a challenge to draw.

SUMMER QUARTER: COLOR THEORY - Aria

lips #1

Lips.  They don't look quite right without a nose and a chin, but I am working on lips this week.  No, I'm not really working from a book, although I am referencing a few great books on facial anatomy.  One is  secrets to drawing realistic faces by Carrie Stuart Parks, and the other is a book that Micah just got for me, called drawing the head and hands by Andrew Loomis.  Most of this however is the result of teaching art class at school.

Noses

Here are the noses I picked.  (That joke never gets old!) I finally got back to my 6B lead.  Maybe a little too soft to get real good mid-tone, but it was fun sketching.

The Eyes have it

Eye wish the top eye on the bottom drawing would have been fully visible.  That was a decent one.  

Anyway, I'm working on eyes.  Trying to memorize the forms and how light falls across them (the light source is from above.  Next, I'll be drawing noses.  I'll pick some to post.  (Get it!  Pick some!  )

THE WHISPER

If you didn’t make it out, the girl is whispering to a man wearing a cowboy hat. Watercolor, 1997.

KING FAISAL

I painted this in watercolor in 1980.

COLOR THEORY: TINTS & SHADES

This summer I've been teaching Aria a Summer Quarter on "Color Theory." This was a demonstration of Tints and Shades. A tint is made by adding white to a color, and a shade is made by adding black. I started with a white sun, then made tints of blue until I got full strength. The sharks are mostly shades, black being the darkest of all shades, working up to a light tint for the smallest, farthest shark. We are using acrylic craft paints, so the circles dried before I could blend them. Oil would do better.

CRUCIFIX - 1964

ELLIE'S PORCH

A 

From the top:

1. Very challenging subject--try one.

2. Spent Daffodil, with a volunteer pine tree; a lesson in perspective with thanks to Mark Kistler.

3. The same view as in the second one before this post. This was early spring.

4. Ellie's porch has two arches. Makes for interesting framing. These along with the top two of the last post, plus the bird feeder and the wind chime were all drawn from the same chair.

TWO-TONED

From the top:

1. From Ellie's porch. During spring we watched the landscaping bushes and trees slowly hide the buildings. I have some late winter-early spring drawings of this, but not in two-tones.

2. From Ellie's porch. This view is from the same place but straight out. It's another building in the large apartment complex. What might have been an imposing, inner city "project" is really quite beautiful because of the spacing of things--buildings, parking, pool, mail center, garbage dumpster corner, playground, and strolling areas. But it is the landscaping that makes this so visually appealing--tiny woods, flowering trees and hedges everywhere, shade trees, annual flowers exploding at the entrance. Everywhere we've been in the Atlanta area the landscaping is outstanding. 

In this picture I paid attention to the "holes" in the foliage, noticing a pattern.

3. Parking Lot. I found that the car, the truck, the fire hydrant, and the sky holes broke up the black. But now I think I could have made up a better pattern. The trick seems to be to make up an interesting pattern without doing violence to the believability. For example, there cannot be sky holes where the straight trunk of a pine tree should be. Rather they should define it--and form an interesting design at the same time.  I'll have to try again.

4. A strip mall. The malls here, big or small, have great facades and wonderful landscaping. 

5. A bright, sunny day made black shadows on a wall of a litter barrel and a cigarette urn.

6. Ellie's porch, without the backdrop.

7. Ellie's porch. This wind chime is a bit more than two tones, but it belongs with the bird feeder & mop.