Egg carton head

Made by Tristan, grade 4

You need:

1. cardboard A3 size, black or brown
2. egg cartons
3. scissors
4. glue

Bring some things with an obvious texture: a piece of wood, stone, glass, a knitted sweater, carpet etc. Let the children feel and express what they feel. Show them with a flashlight (shine directly or indirectly) that texture can be soon also.

Give each student two egg cartons and a piece of cardboard. Students have to make a head of the egg cartons, using the different textures of the material. The inside of the carton feels different as the outside.

Slide the pieces (torn or cut) on the cardboard until you have a good composition. Paste everything securely, taking care to minimize the black or brown carton shown in the face.

Stamped snowmen

You need:

1. coloured construction paper A3 size
2. white and black tempera
3. saucer
4. brush
5. wine bottle corks

Give all students a sheet of coloured construction paper. Give a saucer with white paint and a little black paint for every two students. Children have to use a cork to stamp a snowman. Knots, eyes and mouth have to be made by finger printing. Only a hat or broom may be painted with a brush.

By students of grade 1

Responding to your requests!

Several have asked for information on lettering...so far that's the second-most frequent request in our poll at right.  Until we have some input from our correspondents--and there are some WONDERFUL calligraphy artists here!--I've added a few books on calligraphy and hand lettering in the Bookshelf category at right.

Many of these have the "look inside" capability on Amazon, to take advantage and poke around!  (If you hit "surprise me" you can see much more...

This one's one of my favorites...it's fun and inspiring!  If you click on the image, it will take you to the book--wish this one had a "look within" feature, sorry!

And if you have a favorite lettering resource, please let us know...I couldn't find my favorite books, they must be too old!

BUYING MATERIALS

One of the things that makes me sad and frustrates me is how much attention new and fledgling artists sometimes pay to the materials they need. Of course good products are important and fascinating sometimes, but it is truly not necessary to spend much at all if you can’t afford it or if you aren’t sure. There is simply no need to buy expensive materials if you aren’t sure what you’ll wind up loving. A ream of computer paper and a pencil or pen is fine…just start drawing! This especially frees you from the fear of committing to a book or an expensive piece of paper so that you are free to experiment.

I think we’ve all heard of the beautiful work done by several artists who use nothing but BIC pens. Just google BIC pen artists and you’ll find several. If you can buy all of those pricier materials, go for it. But if you can’t do NOT let that stop you.

Wausau Paper Co. makes a wonderful 140 lb.acid free index stock paper that is about $12.00 for 250 sheets. It’ll take almost anything you put on it, including gesso, paint, ink, etc. You can even collage layers on it and it works. It’s what I’ll use after I’m finished with my current journal.

Also for my journal I use almost exclusively those cheap acrylic craft paints that come in two ounce bottles for about 79 cents each. Why? They have a smooth finish and are consistent for what I’m doing and I only need a drop or two at a time. And the funny thing is some of them are artist colors, with clever names so they mix the same. Sure, for paintings I go to better grades, but if I had to stick with the cheap stuff I wouldn’t worry about it.

Finally a comment about archivally safe products. Yes, it’s important. But not always and not for everything. I was reading discussions on this on EDM a while back and come upon a comment by Roz Stendahl (I am pretty sure it was her) saying that a teacher of hers once said “Do you really need your work to last 500 years? Just start!!!” And Cathy Johnson said she used less expensive materials for years.

So the bottom line is do it! On whatever, with whatever. Just do it! And lose that fear!

Watch for Interview #3--Vicky Williamson!

Hi all...

Vicky will be our next featured journal keeper here, and I know you're going to enjoy it.  She binds some of her own books, reloads day planners and other books, tracks her travels, records her adorable grandchildren, designs projects using her journal, and does some delightful nature sketches; she's a keen observer.  (She's also a member of the international Sketching in Nature group blog.)

Vicky's one of our co-authors that I'm delighted and privileged to know personally.  She started coming to our local sketchcrawls about 3 years ago, and we've had some lovely times sketching in nature, or town scenes, or eachother.  She and I got to meet Liz Steel (and Borromini!) when Liz was in the states last fall, and had a great time journaling together.

One of Vicky's sketches of Borromini Bear!

So watch this space, #3 will be up in a few days!  (Thank you, Vicky!)  In the meantime, you can check out more of her work on her Flickr  or her blog.

Artist Trading Cards

Some weeks before Christmas, I was contacted by Amy Baldwin, art teacher at St. Pauls Lutheran School in Millington (Michigan). She wrote me she was a fan of my weblog. We emailed for a while, wondering if we could do a little project together. I read about exchanging ATC's on many art blogs, so I proposed to let our students make those little cards for eachother. This seemed to her very nice, so we got started!

Amy's students made ATC's for my students, my Dutch students did the same for hers.
A couple of days before Christmas I sent an envelope filled with 50 ATC's of my 23 students to Millington.

Yesterday we received the big envelope, full of ATC's! How exciting for my students to get those beautiful cards from the other side of the world! They admired the cards and were surprised about the Dutch words on some of them. Thank you very much Amy and thank you all, St. Paul's students!

Go with the flow...those accordion sketchbooks

 

Part of the fun of the accordion journal is letting the image flow from page to page...it's a bit tricky unless you have a flat surface to work on, but it IS a lot of fun.  Nice design challenge!

(You can click on the image to see it larger) 

This is my California Journal, showing the flowers that were in bloom, bits of a courtyard, the mountains, my husband, and to the far right, my mother-in-law's nasturtiums and the start of a 3-page spread of the ocean.  I take it with me every time I go out there (my husband's dad still lives there) and add to it or not, as the spirit moves...I don't normally set aside a journal for a theme like this, but the accordions seem to lend themselves to that especially well.