Colourful cows, like Peter Diem

You need:

1. white painting sheet A3 size or a canvas
2. acrylic paint
3. brushes
4. jar with water
5. paper towels

Peter Diem (1945) is a Dutch painter. Diem, born from a Dutch father and a German mother, came in Amsterdam at the age of 3. He had a difficult childhood in which the people of Amsterdam showed they were not charmed by Germans so soon after the Second World War. After highschool Diem went to a school for graphic design to study graphic work. Through several European countries Diem landed in the 70's in the USA, where he married and had children. Halfway through the 90's he returned to the Netherlands and settled with his Diem Museum on the Prinsengracht Amsterdam.

Diem is inspired by the CoBrA Group ( a group of artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam - see also my lesson about CoBrA artist Corneille). His style is abstract and expressive. He brings the paint thick on the canvas, sometimes directly from the tube. With brush, knife and fingers the bright coloured paint is spread across the canvas. 'Diem paints like a tornado, he lives his art'. Themes in his work are flying cows, Napoleon, Africa and Ernest Hemingway.

Show artwork of Diem on the digital board. Pictures are to be found on Diem's website or use the Google picture viewer and look for Peter Diem. Discuss Diem's work:

• subject, Diem paints often cows
• use of bright colours
• simplicity of the image
• thick black contour lines
• no white spots anymore
• the cow is full screen

Show students how to draw a simplified cow, by drawing a cow on the digital board (click on the picture to enlarge). Let the children draw a picture of a simple cow. They have to sketch thin, without drawing many details. The cow has to be painted with acrylic paint, considering the features of Diem's work. Paint a background. Outline the cow with black paint and a small brush. This will also eliminate the unevenness. And of course the work has to be signed, just like Diem does!

All artworks are made by students grade 5

Jana Bouc on making your own journal

The other day I'd asked our friend the talented Jana Bouc if she minded if I linked to her journal-making posts and other information, and she told me she was JUST reworking all that.  

I heard from her over the weekend!  She wrote "The journal came out nicely and is posted today on my blog and the how to sheet is updated on my website here ."

I'll put the links up in our list in the sidebar, but thought you'd like to see them NOW.

Thank you, Jana, this is wonderful!

One of the useful things to do with a journal...

Sometimes Real Life is a challenge...and once in a while I like to visualize a solution.  Since it's in my journal, it can be as fantastic as this one, my Cone of Silence.  It's not glass, because that could shatter; whatever it's made of, only the sounds I want to hear can get in, and nothing can get at me there...stresses and demands and worries just bounce right off!

This image made me laugh, the other day, and helped my mood a great deal!  You can click on the image to read my whimsical notes if you like!

I suggest my students make an imaginary map of their creative journey, with its goals and pitfalls...this image is sort of that type!

Ink and watercolor...

What a great resource our readers and correspondents are!

Roz Stendahl sent a bunch of meetup and sketchcrawl links from her area, and Jan Olsen sent some international ones!  I've added them to the page at the top of this blog, below our banner.


Keep 'em coming!

On being stuck.

This post is about me. I am stuck and not drawing after the holidays. But I am working through this - and wanted to share how :)

But first of all I would like to mention that image below shows you how I made a little book based on instructions I found on Keri Smith blog. She is incredibly inspiring and innovative author /illustrator/ guerrilla artist who wrote several books for reading and playing with. My favorite ones are living out loud and how to be an explorer of the world :) (Her books can move mountains and may be one day I can write separately about why and how they do this for me - but not today :).
Here is a link to her PDF on making this sort of book:
http://www.kerismith.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/magic_booksm.pdf

So here I am - three days without even a drop of ink in my sketchbook, feeling bad about this and realizing that I am not ready to draw through this (which is my usual way of dealing with emptiness of being stuck). Pages of my 5 x 8 book look intimidatingly large. I try to draw little square to draw in it as a start - but it looks too puny. On a whim I hide my book and decide to make a tiny journal - for right now - and fill it with 15 things that I see right this moment in front of me - on my table. And do it all in 15 minutes.

I took a page from my printer and - well here is what I did:

And then I drew whatever I saw:

Rightmost image shows you how this page looks like when I unfold the book. Hmm - may be I should try making a few of these and binding them together...
Anyways - not quite 15 things and all this took me less than 15 minutes - but I felt much better :) And I think I will glue/tape this in my sketchbook next to that puny square - which I am ready to draw in now ;)

Try it out!

New feature--Links We Like

Hi all...I've just added another goodie in the sidebar called Links We Like.  We outgrew just bookbinding links, and need lettering, resources and more...

So far just one link, but we'll get more up as we go!

Beautiful writing...

...and of course far beyond what most of us aspire to in our journals, but I know you'll love world-renowned Irish calligrapher Denis Brown's work...check his website at http://quillskill.com/--complete with a movie.


Wow...such control and confidence...