One Drawing A Day

One reason I started blogging was to inspire myself to do more art.  Lately, I have been doing lots of art, but not taking the time to blog it.

Cassie Stephens, of the Cassie Stephens blog, started a group on Facebook called "Artsy Book Club." The current intent is to have folks work along with the book, One Drawing a Day, by Veronica Lawlor.  It has been a lot of fun to have an art challenge.  It feels awfully vulnerable posting the results for the world to see.

Here are the drawings I have done so far.

Pen and ink drawing of a still life

Pen and ink drawing of something organic

Pen and ink portrait

Charcoal drawing from a photo

Ink drawing with washes

I'm looking forward to five more weeks of drawing.  Hopefully I will remember to share them!

Mark Paddling - Scherenschnitte Portrait

Now that Snippyville looks more inviting, I feel like spending more time down there.

Here's a snip I just finished.  It is of Mark paddling the kayak last summer. 

I had done a rough snip of it a few months ago and liked it enough to do a larger version.  Here's the practice one.

Pre-school Portraits of Mom

Negative and Positive Space Scherenschnitte

Sometimes my inspiration for work comes from what I am teaching.  My fourth graders are currently learning about negative and positive space.  That's what I am concentrating on in this piece.

Here was how I began.  I sketched my design on the back of the fadeless paper, planning where I had to cut in order for the piece to not fall apart.  Most of my snips are cut so that no piece of paper is attached apart from the main design.  Every piece of paper is connected to the whole.  That takes some planning.

This is a self portrait, by the way.  I'm always an easy model for myself.  You can also see how the image is reversed from the sketch to the snip.  That's how I goofed up on my last piece.  Oops!

paper cutting
scherenschnitte    5" x 7"

Jan in the Style of Roy Lichtenstein

This weekend I took a college class many, many hours from home.  The focus of the class was on three pieces of software for art education.

The remainder of the class is all done online.  I have five pieces of art that I have to create as a part of my grade.  Since my fifth graders just attended a showing of work by Roy Lichtenstein at the National Gallery, I decided to do a self portrait in his style.

This was done using the software program, Pixie.

Here is the original photo that is under the "Lichtenstein".

 LOL!  What a difference.  It makes me giggle, but I do like the glamorous version of me!