PAPER TONES AND CHARCOAL PENCILS

I have been playing with charcoal pencils lately. It started when I was at everybody's favorite craft store, Michael's, and I found this stupid awesome sketchpad with toned paper. There was one with grey toned paper, but I went with the brown, because why not? Hashtag carpe diem. 

And since I now possess toned paper, I can't just use graphite because that goes against every fiber of my art heart, which is no good for no body. Also, charcoal is one of my favorite mediums to use and well, logically I couldn't go anywhere else. So here we are! 

I pulled up a photograph on Pinterest to imitate using a white charcoal pencil and a HB and 6B charcoal pencil. In my opinion she kind of looks like Faith Hill, but I mean, worse things could have happened.

Then I started to incorporate color, and just, hold on to your seats, kids.

All of this art stuff I've been doing lately has been good for my soul. I am re-starting to create my own art and it was Drawing 111 where I fell back in love with art making anyway, so it's also a little like going back to my roots.

"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." - Maya Angelou

student work

here is some student work from this second semester. my kids created artwork based off the theme STEAM which could be interpreted literally, metaphorically or whimsically. These are some of the best examples and they are all a variety of media and content. 

these kids are so stinkin talented! 

after we finished up the STEAM project, I had them relax a little bit with some Zentangles. Instead of just filling in circles like my art 1 classes did in the first semester, they filled in animal shapes.

these are some of the ones I have so far.

blends and shades

Hi there. It's been a while, I know. Welcome to January 2014, kids. So far I have really only been working in graphite, a medium I forgot I loved. Wooden pencils, blending stumps, big erasers. They feel so good in my fingers and it's been so long since I drew with them!

In college it was all charcoal, chalk pastels, ink, paints, etc. No pencils. I even took my notes for class in mostly pen, so there's that. I mean, but here we are now with graphite. New year, new(ish) medium? It makes sense.

Enjoy.

Linear Equations

After our Zentangle project, I moved on to Linear Equations. 

This is a fun project for students because they get to trace photographs. Zero artistic ability required, yo. It's pretty rad.

So basically what we do is spend a day in the computer lab finding images they can use. These have to be good quality images (no pixelations here folks!) and real photographs (not cartoon images, logos or words).

Students have to find two images that are somewhat related to create their own original composition. It's fun to see what kinds of things students come up with - what are they interested in, etc. Then, when they have their chosen images in the right sizes printed out, they have to figure out where to place the images in order to create their own composition. Then the tracing begins.

We made our own tracing paper by covering the reverse sides of their printed photographs with graphite and then tracing the images on the other side over their final piece of drawing paper. I don't have any photos of the original photographs my students used, I just have the finished products.

This project is good to teach them composition and appropriation of images. Plus it's easy to start out the year with since they don't feel pressure to draw something exactly how it looks, they just get to trace the image. Fun, fun.

pastels, mostly

just in case you guys were wondering what the heck i've been doing lately, here is an update. a lot can happen in three months - sorry about that. i am the worst blogger some days.

what i want to get for my next tattoo...mmmmmm yes

a highly unrealistic caricature of a man who mildly resembles TheBoy if you squint real hard.

an abstracted guitar of sorts. unfinished. 

zentangles! it's like doodling, but a little more sophisticated.

Honduras water color. i'm in the process of making some cards with these on the front. should be good.

chalk pastel sunflower. i turned out liking this a lot more than i originally planned.