R is for Resist

This being November and Oregon, it has be RAINING .... a lot. The grey skies and constant broken light inspired this fun project which I call "Make it Rain." I used this in all of my art classes last week with consistently great results.

First, we create a place - in my senior classes I demonstrated a street of houses on a horizon line. These were colored heavily with bright colored oil pastel. I reminded students that any area that was to remain white needed to be covered with white oil pastel. Then we covered the entire image with a coat of black water color. Voila! It's raining.

We had great results in all the classes. My younger kids followed the houses on a street pattern. My older kids took the opportunity to create their own imaginary and highly original "places." Almost everyone loved the effect of the watercolor resist.

Maybe next time we will bring on the sun.

TUV is for Tripped Up by Virus

Or maybe by the vaccines I took on Tuesday to prevent flu and pneumonia. All I know is that two days are gone and I am finally starting to feel better.

In case you did not know, creativity is not necessarily enhanced by sickness. I missed my printing class, and two that I teach - but lying in bed I did have time to THINK UP VARIATIONS (get it? TUV) and the part they play in my art.

I have drawn and painted numerous variations on this cat theme - on my own and in classes - I like this one because the idea was to use only hot colors on the cat and cool colors on the background - and match the eyes to the background. He is a favorite because he reminds my of my beautiful cat Charlie who is no longer with us. So, this guy hangs in my studio. He is oil pastel and sharpie on textured heavy paper - 11x14".

Since Charlie always knew how to make me feel better - I thought he deserved a place on the blog today.

H is for Hue

My friend Lynne says I have a "pagan love of color." I think she is right. When I paint and draw, 95% of the time I am just working toward the moment when I can break out the colors and the fun begins.
My studio (heck, my whole house) vibrates with the colors I love - no browns and subtle tones for me - check out my work and you can see I love the bright colors, the shimmering shades of light and flowers and jewels.

When I teach art, no matter what else is on the agenda, I teach about color. Of course I bring out the color wheel, but most of all, I let the students learn through their eyes and hands. We frequently have color mixing exercises that include generating strips of all the possible colors we can create with just a few squirts of paint.

Another way I help them to see color is by using some of the wonderful digital tools that allow me to manipulate images that I can print and use of teaching tools.

The floral on the bottom is an original sketch done in heavy oil pastels to demonstrate warm colors on a cool background. Its reverse is also vibrant - cool on warm. I created both of these to help me better understand and articulate the concepts I want to teach.



HUES  are the family of twelve purest and brightest colors.

• Three Primary Colors
• Three Secondary Colors
• Six Tertiary Colors

They form the full spectrum of colors which progress around the Primary Color Wheel in gradual increments.

from The Color Wheel Artist