I Love This Idea!!!

This is from the blog: Artistic Freedom

What a lovely idea for Dr. Seuss' birthday.

Guess My Silhouette

This is from a bulletin board at a friend's school.  Be still my heart!  I so want to steal this idea!


Check out more of these shots at art teacher Stephanie Allgood's site:  Make It a Wonderful Life.

Kinder Scherenschnitte

I wish I had done these.  A kindergarten teacher at my school snipped them.  When I saw these silhouettes lining the primary hallway I was so drawn in.

 The teacher told me that I should hold off showing them until after the kids added speech bubbles.

 

 This way looks perfect to me.  I'd rather imagine what these shadow kids are doing.

 These little shadows are SO much like the little dears who they represent.

These look as though they are having so much fun, they make me want to spend a day playing in kindergarten.

Last Week of "Summer"

This is where I spent the past week.

County Line Guest House, on Allegheny Mountain in West Virginia.

I spent two days alone; two with my friend, Lynda; and three with M.

Lots of time was spent drawing....


.......and snipping. This is a silhouette snip of my Granddaughter and it actually resembles her.

I snipped profiles of folks whose photos were already on my computer


or of folks who had sent me photos with which I could practice.


I did a couple of 3D pieces that might end up in my Etsy shop....that was supposed to open last Monday....before I made a mad dash to West Virginia instead.


I had this whole big place to myself a lot of the time and it was delicious.


Lynda and I did some sightseeing, napping, reading, and lots of gabbing. Lots and lots of gabbing.

At the end of the week, M and I visited our friends, JoJo and Vernon. Vernon took us on one of the best mountain biking excursions on which I have ever been.

I got one nasty bruise on my quad from the ride. My wheel went down off a rock and into a mud puddle, and then got wedged in by another rock. I, along with the rest of my bike, kept going....over the bars. But it didn't dampen my fun. I had a blast.

Part of the trail was even named after JoJo.


JoJo and I visited her beloved horse. Beautiful, isn't it? It's a rescued race horse.

A young horse, whose nose is to the left of this photo, galloped behind me at some point, and JoJo said it looked as though it wanted to mount me. ??? It knocked me pretty hard and sent me careening down the pasture. JoJo and I had a good time though and I didn't get bruised...nor mounted.

Last night it stormed hard all night long. We didn't get a lot of sleep.

This morning M and I did the three hour drive back home.

Tomorrow, my school year begins again. = ( I really could use just one more week in West Virginia.

Learning Something New - Silhouettes

When it comes to drawing faces, I can do a decent job. Portraits I have done in pencil, pen, and watercolor actually show recognizable people. But up until now I have never really tried silhouette snipping.

When I got an Amazon gift card this week, I knew exactly what I wanted to buy.

The book, Silhouettes: Rediscovering the Lost Art, by Kathryn Flocken, arrived yesterday afternoon and I got started on practicing right away.



Some of the original stuff is pretty embarrassing, but I tried to critique the mistakes. Hopefully, upon reflecting on the problems, I will learn from them.

I taped them in an old sketch pad so that when I get to be an expert, I can laugh delightedly at my early attempts.



Honestly, I was surprised at how different it is to cut a profile than it is to draw one. Supposedly, the traditional way to cut silhouettes is to not sketch beforehand. You just snip as you study the face. If you make a mistake, you are stuck with it. Of course, it is only supposed to take you 90 seconds to snip a silhouette, so "stuck with it" is only a temporary condition if you ball it up and try again. Some of the positions your hands get into while cutting these are quite contorted. Since you actually want to see what you are cutting in the same direction as you are snipping, you have to learn backhand snipping techniques.

After trying the samples in the book, which included lots of neat little details on the profile, I tried some profiles from the internet. Whew! That was like starting from scratch.

After not finding lots of profiles that showed the angle I wanted, I started using my own. Three of the images below are of me. They all have similarities to my profile, but still have some problems with the proportions.


I did look at "all y'all's" blogs for profiles, but you seem to prefer frontal shots. I did snip a couple of the ones I found, but I'm not ready to say which ones they are and of whom. But, if you include a close-up profile in your blog now and then, it would provide some nice practice for me. = )