Art Class

I signed Sophie up to take an online class this semester.  She has wanted to take an art class for a long time and as much as I would love to have her actually attend an art class I just couldn't add yet another outside activity into our already busy schedule. This is where the internet steps in. She gets to take a class and we don't even have to leave the house.  Plus if I sign up for something and actually have to pay for it, I am more likely to make sure it happens. Art is going to happen this semester for Sophie!

The class is given through Leadership Education Academy.  Sophie sits in front of the computer with a set of ear phones and watches the instructor draw and she listens to the lecture. She has a sketch book in her hands and draws or takes notes during the class. An assignment to complete during the week is given. She is expected to complete it and then email it to the teacher. It sounds simple enough.  So far it has gone smoothly except that I can't seem to get the microphone to work on her headset. I don't have the settings right on the computer or something. So she has to type her responses rather than talk.  We are going to have to figure out the problem.

Her first assignment which was due last week was to draw cartoon characters.  She choose Luigi and Mario. I think they turned out great!

 

She wasn't totally happy with this one because of the smudge on the right side of the paper that wouldn't erase and she did this drawing on a piece of scratch paper rather than on good drawing paper or in her sketch book. She also did another drawing just in case this first one wasn't good enough. This time her drawing is of the pink panther and totally from memory and not from a picture.

So far she has enjoyed the two days of class she has "attended".  L.E.A. offers many other classes for her age and also for high school students so now that we have given one a try we may do more in the future.

She gets to give cross hatch drawing a try this week. I wonder what she will come up with for that assignment.

Finally Doing Something Fun

I read Rafe Esquith's book Teach like your Hair's on Fire a few weeks ago.  It was one of those books that makes me feel guilty that I don't teach as well or as thoroughly as he does. As much as I would love to run things as efficiently as he does. I had to remind myself that he teaches one grade and the same grade every year. He can reuse and make minor changes to his yearly curriculum but more or less teach the same things every year. Yeah the kids, the Shakespeare play and the music changes each year but the activities are more or less the same.  I have to reinvent the wheel each year with students in multiple grades, some who can't read well or do the same math.  But I really enjoyed the book and took what ideas I could from it.

One of the things that quickly caught my attention was the art projects his kids do. I would love to do the string art project that he describes in the book but I don't see my kids doing that one right now. But one of the other project he mentions in the art section is a plaster mask. He does it every October for Halloween. I figured I could rationalize this as a sort of history project. Sort of a mummy type thing. But really it is just a fun project.

So I bought some plaster bandages. I actually got them on ebay. I got 6 rolls for the same price Amazon was selling one. I didn't know how much plaster bandages I would need to make the masks so 6 rolls sounded good. It ended up being a whole lot. I used 1 and a half rolls to make all 4 masks. So perhaps we will be doing this project next year as well. I certainly am ready if we have any broken bones.

Henry was the first victim. I covered his eyebrows and face with petroleum jelly so that it would come off without too much fuss and with out pulling out the hairs. Then we set to work on the bandages. 

 None of the kids wanted me to cover their eyes or mouth so we left them open.

 I can't say it ended up being really smooth. Perhaps I was in too much of a rush. These kids were somewhat impatient to "see the results", they couldn't hold still.

 Sophie was next.

 I was surprised at how quickly the plaster dried so the kids could take the masks off.

 Ian was a little skeptical of the whole thing. He thought it might be a little scary to lay there on the table and have plaster all over his face. But eventually he did it because I think he knew he would miss out on the painting later. And of course the camera battery died right then so I don't have any pictures of him laying on the table. He was by far the wiggliest and would wrinkle up his eyes so I had to keep smoothing them out.

 Here he is with his finished project once I got the camera back to full power.

 I sort of liked them just white but the kids were determined to paint them.

 That night they also insisted that my husband have a mask of his own. So he let himself be covered in plaster as well.

 It has been a whole 2 days since we made the masks and Sophie has been pestering me about painting them. So this afternoon, since it was raining anyway, I broke out the paints and they got down to business.

 Molly woke up from her nap and had to do a little painting as well.

 Here are the finished masks. The painted them any way they wanted.

 Sophie was determined to make hers look Egyptian.  I think she did a great job.

So my kids can't say we never do anything fun! Now... what am I going to do with these masks? Do I mount them on the wall? If I don't they will soon get smashed. I guess we will see what happens.

Teaching Themselves How to Draw

My kids always prefer to do things on their own. They really don't like me to give them lessons on to do things. I have to do things in a little more round about way. I tried Drawing with Children last year and got through a few lessons but Sophie just fell apart each time because she didn't think she was doing it well enough. If I ever made any suggestions she would flip out and the lesson would quickly be over. I have more or less left her on her own for the last few months. We do have a few How to draw animals type books and she has been looking at those but I really thought she needed something that would help her learn to draw.

I recently got a copy of Mark Kistler's Draw Squad. It was recommended from a few different sources. And I thought we would give it a try. It is a more self directed drawing course. Sophie can go through the lessons herself without me doing anything except nodding and telling her she is making progress. I try really hard to not tell her it looks great unless it truly does. I usually try to tell her she is getting much better at something or that I can see she is moving in the right direction. I am trying to focus on drawing well as a process and not an event. It is something she will have to work at. After one lesson she isn't a master but she is practicing the technique.

I really am impressed with how much just a few hours with this book has improved her drawing. She is giving things depth and shading. I can tell she is reading the text that goes along with the lessons because she uses the drawing terminology when she comes and shows me her drawings in her sketchbook.

Ian decided that he too needs to learn to draw so he is having Sophie teach him as he goes through the first few lessons.  

They spent a good two hours just drawing in their books today. Ian has started taking his sketchbook with him everywhere. I just recently had to get him a new one. He finally filled up the old one I had given him.

The sketchbooks are working really well still. I don't have loose papers everywhere and my kids are learning to use all the blank spaces in their books. They love looking through all their old drawings to see their progress too. 

The Flow of Paper

We have a problem. My kids seem to think paper grows on trees. They go through pages and pages of paper everyday. They are always drawing, coloring, and cutting out things. We almost constantly have little bits of papers all over the floor. This isn't a great condition to be in since our little crawler seems to love to eat paper. I am also really tired of throwing that much paper away at the end of each day. Sure it goes into the recycle bin but it still feels like such a waste to go through that much paper. So, I have decided to make a change.
It may not save me any money. In fact I know it will end up more expensive in the short run. I am going to start enforcing a no printer paper rule. There isn't going to be any more trips into my room to raid the printer of it's paper.

What I am giving them is one sketch book a piece. They only have that sketchbook for all their doodles and drawings for a whole month. That seemed very generous on my part. When I was younger I used to have sketchbooks that lasted me a year or more.

My desire is that by having a tighter limit on paper consumption in our home, there will be more careful drawing. I want them to really work on a picture until it is done and not just jump to the next paper and the next drawing. I am also hoping there will be less cutting out of pictures and therefore less little bits of stuff all over the house.

I just instituted this new rule and handed out sketchbooks tonight. They immediately went to work. This first book may be used up quickly. They each already went through a few pages of their new books. They really loved that they can take their drawing to the couch or the chair rather than always sitting at the table.

There is a part of me that hates to put a limit on their creativity. I love that my boys spend a lot of time drawing. They are always showing me their latest rendering of Indiana Jones and telling me all about his latest adventure. This is new. It wasn't that long ago I couldn't get Ian to color anything. Sophie's creations are usually 3D and require tape or staples. But all these papers end up cluttering up my house and eventually get filed away in the recycling bin.

Am I guilty of placing a clean home over creativity? I hope not. I anticipate that by making this small change there will be more purpose and planning involved in their work.  These first few weeks are going to be hard on them. Once their books fill up and there isn't any more paper they will either go back and rework their old drawings, find little places in their books where they can doodle or they will find something else to do.

Does anyone know of a place to buy cheep sketch books? I have often used Michaels coupons to buy them 50% off. But even at at price they will still be more expensive then a ream of white printer paper.

It is an experiment. We will see how it goes.

 

See! they did come in handy.

I have a box in my closet that holds what I affectionately call "the junk from my childhood". Over the years this box has been downsized and things get taken out and thrown away. So hopefully this box now holds only the really important things.It holds a few journals from my early years. One in particular is always funny to read. It is written in my parent's hand writing but they wrote exactly what said when I was only 3 or 4 years old. So it is my voice but their writing. This box is also home to a bunch of the pictures I took on trips that I went on or of friends and family as well as school pictures over the years. For some reason I kept a song book from girls camp when I was 12 years old. There is also a few awards that I won and little items given to me from friends, family or teachers. When looking through the papers I have kept I found a few old report cards and school papers I wrote. I even found my SAT and ACT scores in there. Very important things to save! But two things from this box came out yesterday. They are probably the oldest items I have in this box.
The book of stories is from the Fall of my 3rd grade year and the Marvelous Me Book is from 2nd Grade. I dragged out the box yesterday to find these little treasures because Sophie was in tears yesterday during our drawing lesson. She was frustrated that things just didn't look right and she kept saying she just wasn't good at drawing. She likes to compare her drawings to mine and she gets so frustrated when hers don't look as good as mine. No matter how many times I tell her that it takes a lot of practice and years of work to be able to draw well, she just doesn't believe me. So I went in search of some of my early artwork. And these two books were perfect.
Here is one of the Halloween stories from the book of stories I wrote and illustrated in the Fall of 1983. Great work!

Here are a few of the pictures included in the Marvelous Me book that I did in 2nd grade.

You would never think that these drawings done by a little 7 year old girl who dreamed of being a "Jokey" (Jockey) would later get an art degree.

Now take a look at my 7 year old's art work. Here is one she did for fun this week.
A very good drawing of a viking ship!

And here is one of the drawings that she was crying about. For our drawing lesson this week we did a few practice warm-ups and then tried to draw birds. The book gave us some very specific drawing instructions to follow. I loved her birds but she thought they just weren't good enough. They didn't look exactly like the ones in the book. And she didn't like me giving any suggestions on things she could do differently to make them look more like the ones in the book. This is when I pulled out my old drawings and showed her how much better she is at drawing than I was at her age. She loved looking through the books and pointing out all my misspellings and she laughed at my silly drawings. She thought my stories were pretty boring. I guess even then I wasn't headed to a literary career. But she did have to admit that my hand writing was easier to read than hers and one of the stories was written in cursive.

This experience reminded me to make sure I save some of these great drawings and some of her work so she too can pull them out later in life to show to her kids. Thanks mom for saving these for me. I am glad that she didn't save everything because I really don't have space for boxes and boxes of "Junk from my childhood" but one box with a few things will hopefully be able to show the journey one traveled and what was important at the time.
Every time I dig through this box I find little treasures that I didn't realize I saved. And of course there are still things in this box I have no idea why I am still holding on to them.

Picasso Study

Our artist for the month is Picasso. I found a great book about Picasso at the library last week. Picasso and Minou is a fun picture book that introduces the painter and tells about his blue period and leads into his pink period. My kids loved sitting down and reading this book together. We have already read Venezia's biography of Picasso and it talked about the blue period and it showed us a few of the blue paintings but the Minou book really brought the reasons behind the paintings to life for them. They got it a little better after reading the picture book story.

We broke out our paints after reading the book and tried to make paintings using just one main color. My kids can't resist all the different colors so we ended up just having fun painting. While painting we discussed what emotions each color conveys. Sophie decided pink and red were very happy colors. Blue was a sad color. We differed in our opinions about green. I thought it was a cheerful color and Sophie thought it was a sort of quiet and sad. I guess it depends on what hue of green we are talking about. We agreed that most colors in the pure hue were much happier than if you mixed them with other colors.

Maybe next week we will get into the cubism style that Picasso is so famous for. But this week we enjoyed his blue and pink pictures.

Weather Art Book

Today we sat down to read some books. Today is library day and I usually try to read our library books at least once before returning them. I had a few that have been on my shelf for a long time.

We are finishing up our study of weather and storms so most of the books were something related to this topic. We finally got to a great one today. The book is How Artists See The Weather. It is part of a whole series of books that take a topic such as the weather, people, play, feelings and such like that. This is the first one I have picked up.

At first I just had Sophie sitting with me as we looked at the first picture which is the Van Gogh piece that is on the cover and with the text we explored the painting and looked at it compared to another also by Van Gogh. It really took us for a tour through these paintings and we saw how artists show the different elements of weather through color, stroke or subject. After a few pages of paintings and discussions about them. The boys wanted to join in on the fun and point out the things they saw in the paintings as well. I totally recommend the book and I will be picking up others from the library. It fit in so nicely with our study of weather. It if fun to look at paintings from all sorts of different artists and styles but that are all related to a subject like this.

May Day Thoughts

Hurray it is May!

I always love a new month. I know Summer doesn't officially start until June but May always starts to heat up around here and thoughts change and start to lean more toward playing outside and enjoying the sunshine. (I am sorry to mention Summer already when I know some people just got more snow this week). I recently had to think about what classes the kids would take in the coming months. Do I sign up Sophie for more ballet and tap? Ian needs to start and Sophie could use more swimming lessons. Do I want to renew our membership at the aquarium or get a membership at the tech museum this year instead? So many choices, and I really don't want to do it all. I have to pick and choose what I can handle and what the kids really need and want. I still haven't signed up for anything yet. I am still debating.... maybe the classes will just fill up and that will decide for me.

I have also spent the last week thinking (trying not to scratch my poison oak) about what we were going to do academically all summer. We finished Story of the World, ancient history, last week and I don't feel ready to jump into the next volume yet. We have also finished up what I had planned as far as science for the year. (Except for the garden, that will continue through the summer. We will still be watching our plants grow and hopefully get some tomatoes and cucumbers to eat.) So it feels like our school year kinda had an ending. But I don't really like the idea of ending a school year. I don't ever want to feel tied to a schedule like that. We can start whenever and stop whenever and move on or leave off whenever we feel like it. Plus we always need something that we are studying. We need the structure of having things to do each day.

We have been just playing around this week. I sort of have a FIAR book we have been Rowing but even that hasn't been a bit hit. We just really need a change of pace. So I have decided we will do some American History for a change of pace. We are going to be starting a unit on American Indians. I thought we would read the American Girls Kaya books and read a lot about the native americans. The kids got excited when I got books about horses and indians at the library this week. So I think it will go over alright with them. We will see.

Other than this we will just play a lot outside. Do our Green hour challenges and draw a lot. Sophie loves to draw and I have been getting her how to draw books from the library and she is getting really good!

Sophie also asked who our artist and composer for May were. So we will continue with our musician and artist study. I had already picked the artist, Van Gogh for the month. But I hadn't picked a composer. So I asked her who she would like and she told me she wants to study Beethoven. He has been her favorite for a long time, thanks to Fantasia. I will have to get some books about him and CD's of some of his works from the library.


So anyway... this is what I have been mulling over the last little bit.

Vermeer

For the month of February I choose the artist Johannes Vermeer to study. I don't know how much Sophie or any of the kids are getting out of the study but I am enjoying it. I have always liked Vermeer's paintings and remember seeing a few of them when in the Louvre. The Lace Maker is one I distinctly remember seeing. (I went to Paris before I had really studied art so didn't know what I was looking at a lot of the time.)It is actually a lot smaller then I would have ever imagined. They had it displayed with a large, wide frame to make it seem bigger. When I looked up it's measurements today in the Vermeer book we have, it gives the dimenions in cm and not inches like many of the other paintings in the book.
This afternoon I sat with the Vermeer Book on my lap listening to Chasing Vermeer and looking up the paintings that are mentioned in the story. Sophie came and sat down with me and looked at the book with me for a bit. I don't know how much she is listening to the story but that is alright, I am enjoying it. As I was flipping through the book I noticed a few of Vermeer's earliest works. I had never seen some of them. He actually did a few biblical scenes which were the normal subjects for paintings in his day. I noticed this one in particular. Christ in the home of Mary and Martha. I just thought it was lovely. It doesn't totally feel like a Vermeer. The colors seem a little too vibrant but then some of his paintings do have some very strong reds in it. It does has an intimate feeling about it, like most of Vermeer's works. Anyway.. I just liked it and especially enjoy the fact that I found a new painting of his that I hadn't seen before.

Minerva Teichert

I look back on my BYU years with fondness. I had a great time during college. I don't think I appreciated all that BYU had to offer me. I didn't go the the MOA very often when I was there. I was busy doing other things I guess.
I got the BYU alumni magazine in the mail yesterday and on the cover is a picture of some cowboys painted by Minerva Teichert. I remember walking through the halls of the Joseph Smith building and seeing her art work on the walls. I always loved her style and the way she approached the subjects.
In the BYU magazine they talk about her and about the exhibition that is now showing in the BYU Museum of Art. I would love to be able to go and see her paintings. I will have to content myself with what I can find online and that are included in the magazine. Oh to be a college student again and getting to see an exhibit like this for FREE.