Adding to our art work

Dear Parents,
Today we went back and added more shading to our charcoal pieces and then matted them on black backgrounds.   Your children did a wonderful job blending the charcoal.

We also added to our chalk pastel cityscapes.

Both pieces of artwork will go home with your child next week.


Next week we will be working with watercolor pencils!

Chalk Pastel CityScapes

We had another fun day at the Lakeview Art Room!

 Today we created a cityscape with chalk pastels on black paper.
We looked at the paintings of Kandinsky and other modern artists for inspiration.
These artist incorporated bold, vibrant colors into their work.
We designed a cityscape, creating a horizon line and using both vertical and
horizontal lines.

 Soft, hard and oil pastels are the most common but there are also water-based pastels
and pastel pencils. They all can be smudged and blended during the drawing process.
Although pastels offer a little more control than paint; they need special treatment
when finished; spraying with a pastel fixative or framing under glass prevents further
smudging.

We learned the different properties of chalk pastels and realized they can be messy if
not used correctly. Our cityscapes are exciting and full of energy.

Students will get a chance to work more with charcoal and chalk pastel next week when we spend time  finishing their cityscapes (as well as their charcoal pieces).  Students who finish early, will get to experiment some more with blending chalk and blending charcoal.

Good News!  Kids aprons and portfolios are for sale NOW for $20.00 each.  Check out www.smartwithart.net (click on Register  under "Goodies") or email Michelle Dutton michelle@smartwithart.net to order.  We will have them available for pickup at the next class.

Charcoal

Welcome to Smart With Art's Spring Session:  Back to the Drawing Board.
We have a wonderful group of artists and an exciting new curriculum for this session.

Today we learned about drawing with charcoal.

 Charcoal drawings remain an essential skill for budding artists. Working with
charcoal serves the dual purpose of building artistic creation skills and
developing art appreciation skills.
We worked with vine charcoal and used gum erasers and blending stumps to
create a still life.

 We learned the properties of charcoal and how to work with this material.
We discovered that erasing charcoal creates light areas; smudging charcoal
creates value; and drawing lightly with charcoal creates contour lines.

 We also discussed overlapping shapes, and where it exists in a still life set up

Students practiced on newsprint and then did a final still life on white charcoal paper.   Final projects are being sprayed with a fixative and then will be mounted on black paper.   We will post pictures of the final pieces after they have been matted.


Next week, students will learn about drawing landscapes and they will use chalk pastels.
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