I'll tell you what, I am one proud mama bear.  Look at what my little art cubs can do!!!!!

My Drawing I students are in the midst of the apparent torture that is value studies.  I put a lot of emphasis on value studies, because frankly, aside from line, it is the most fundamental element of drawing well. 

The photo above shows a simple still-life, where students had to study a single kernel of popcorn, and render it on both white paper and black paper.  The challenges were to blow it up to touch all four sides of the paper, and also to invert their thinking when they had to switch to black paper.  They HATED that exercise.

But they LOVED my Mystery Portrait Project, where they created grids to blow up a photo of a "mystery celebrity" from 8x10 to 16x20.  The photos were cut up into 1x1 squares, numbered and coded, so the students didn't know who they were drawing until almost the end.  And sometimes they still didn't know who they got after they finished (but I'll forgive them).  The point of the exercise was to pay attention to the values in each individual square, without getting caught up in trying to make the drawing "look right."  When they were able to trust the values they saw, the drawings turned out, well, amazing.  See for yourself:

As we continue our adventures in drawing, I hope to post more work.  I love my job.  It's hella fun.

Til next time,

Yes, so...

It has been a while.  I've been caught up in the new big-girl job, which, surprisingly, doesn't leave much for recreational blogging (imagine that).  But yesterday, I stepped back in time to the glorious summer I just spent painting a mural in Bellevue, KY.  The ArtWorks dedication of the mural was last night - treats, live music, and inspirational speeches by the mayor, the director of the Taft Museum, and our peeps from Artworks.  The cricket and the dungeon master were my dates.  The weather was GORGE.  A sharp contrast to the conditions over the summer!

It was my first time seeing the mural without the scaffolding, and it was, well, awesome!  It looked so much bigger than it seemed as we worked on it, bit by bit.  I felt a wave of exhausted satisfaction, knowing that something I had a hand in creating would be existing, quite publicly, for decades.  Decades!  It was fun to point out the parts that I worked on, and the apprentices took particular joy in pointing out the fact that a bird pooed on the buckskin coat of my interpretation of Henry Farney's "The Song of the Talking Wire" (1904). One of the pitfalls of outdoor art...

Anyway, here are some pics:

What a trip!  I can't think of a better way to spend a summer :)