paperwork: November 2012

11/27/12

11/26/12

IF: whiskers

This subject reminded me that I need to practice my grownups, men in particular. That'll be the theme here for a while : gentlemen, with and without whiskers.

11/19/12

I am teaching an after school art class called "abstract acrylic painting". I stepped in when the original instructor had a conflict, and If you know me at all, you can tell I did not come up with that. What came as a surprise to me is how much I am enjoying that class, and the students, and how much I am getting out of it. Hurray for stepping out of your comfort zone!

student work

We started off with a color mixing project; every student divided his/her board into even squares, and set out to fill the spaces by mixing as many different colors as possible from the egg carton palette of (an approximation of) cyan, magenta, yellow, black and white. This kept a small group of kids between the ages of 6 and twelve seriously engaged for more than an hour. They were amazed by how different each of their projects looked, and proud of the range of colors. They ended by making up names for some favorite colors: Frog Burp anyone?

Awesome.

11/16/12

morning surprise

On walking into the studio this morning I found this bookmark in progress on my work table. Thanks for the inspiration Louisa, you are the horse master....

Louisa, 10

11/15/12

horse

Collage turned into articulated animal, I love making these....

With a nod to Ann Wood and her herd of horses, given the horse loving situation at my house, I did have to make my own (with my own drawing, of course) ...

11/14/12

Insight

Jillian Tamaki, one of my all around favorite illustrators, just published a post called "On Drawing, Illustration and the Difference Between the Two" This sticky question comes up all the time and she nailed it.

Thanks

11/13/12

birthday cake

A quick papercut card for some animal loving friends with a big birthday.

happy birthday!

11/12/12

six and three quarters

This is a postcard from the land of first grade. Strange, funny, sometimes puzzling, but never dull.

I think I'm planning a series of drawings.

The cat ears? That's for next time.

thank you Nora...

11/10/12

IF: tree

or, as it turned out today: trees

I pass this field every saturday on my way out to the horse farm, actually sometimes twice a day. Today there were some buckskin ponies grazing nearby, and i thought they'd match nicely.

Here's a quick study done out in the nice fall weather. This is acrylic on cardboard, kind of a nice change from watercolors.

11/8/12

color bunny

After an inky november, I'm ready to get back to some color. Here is yesterdays shy rabbit making a chatty friend. On second look, I think this would benefit from a clean sky; white or very light grey. What do you think?

Aah, that's better. I've been working with watercolor for so long, it took me a while to remember the acrylic advantage: you can always paint over it :)