New Year New Stuff

Happy New Year all!  I have acquired some new art supplies which will be the subject of future blog posts (fingers crossed).   I am starting 2017 off teaching the Art Merit Badge for Boy Scouts which is always exciting.  I usually purchase new supplies for the class.  This year I, got the full range of Prismacolors premieres,  Faber-Castell Polychromos ,  Derwent Intense and the 24 set of  Staedtler Watercolor pencils.  Next in the supply list was a more professional set of soft pastels by Faber-Castell, Cray Pas oil pastels, an acrylic set from Artists Loft ( wanted to practice a bit before investing in the more professional grade of acrylics and pastels) .  After much reflection and soul searching, I decided to seriously jump into to the realm of  markers and purchased  some Copics and Spectrum Noir Illustrator markers. Lastly, I bought supports for all my new mediums.

Adult Coloring Books

Before children and homeschooling I used to be a teacher and art therapist.  Coloring was and still is an excellent means of calming oneself.  A lot of people on the adult coloring band wagon use it for that purpose.  Others use it because it is in vogue now.  Yet others, such as myself  use it to improve their art skills and surprisingly ( not really) you can use coloring to  teach yourself to draw.   That is what actually sparked my interest in visual art.  I would copy the pictures out of my coloring books.

Today I use them for a different purpose.  I have always had bad good luck in using colored  pencils.  Graphite  I could control , watercolor no problem, but colored pencil was my nemesis.  I just couldn't get them to do what I wanted them to  do.  I was never good at shading .  No matter where I put my light source no good, the painting would always come out flat with no dimension ( well it was two dimensional).  Then my friend Kathleen  started coloring.  For her birthday/ Christmas present ( whenever I got around to completing it. ) I was going to draw a coloring book for her ( still in the works).  After doing research and watching YouTube videos, I decided to practice coloring to see if my designs were worthy of coloring. ( another post).  I bought the coloring book Fanciful Faces  which has now bought to this point.   After taking my time and studying how to use and control the medium, I actually got the hang of it ( I also think years of water color painting had a lot to do with it as well).   Here is my first coloring page from Creative Haven  Fanciful Faces published by Dover.

Tangling is difficult!

Tangle with betweed, flux ,cadent, and orbs

       Zentangle is supposed to be a fun, contemplative, relaxing art form that employs structured and coordinated patterns as a means of creating beautiful and interesting pieces of art.  It really stresses me out. I guess due to the perfectionist nature of my personality, going with the flow is not something I can do easily. Or should I dare say want to do. Developed by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas who really annoy me. There are a lot of rules to this art form - which I used to do back in the day but it didn't have a name oh wait we called it doodling- which by the way is something different. Not to be confused with tangling.  Well enough of the rant I  decided to try my hand at it since I used to do it as kid before I learned to do "real drawing"- here is what I came up with.

Tangle featuring betweed , cadent, and orb patterns

 Now It was supposed to be relaxing and meditative . It was anything  but. When I was daydreaming during my lessons. I would knock out these things in no time flat and they would turn out great (in my opinion).  It took me forever and countless pages trying to get these patterns drawn. Not to mention the paper I wasted trying to the others ones. The perfectionist in me was totally freaking screaming and yelling at me to stop. Naturally my stubbornness kicked in to overdrive so I couldn't let it go.  Now I am on a mission not to let this art form  get the best the of me. I have seen some beautiful pieces.  I want to create a few. I guess it time to settled down and quiet mind and get to work on that 3.5 x3.5 piece of paper and create some beautiful black and white art. But first I must learn the patterns. :)

I Am Back

Whew, after a long absence filled with a plethora of problems that had to be dealt with I can now say I am back just in time to go away again lol (I have a summer job at a Cub Scout camp there is Internet, but the posts will be mainly about my work at the Nature Lodge and Space center).   Most homeschoolers are about to end the year , and the last thing you are thinking about  is art. But as you are making your plans for next year.  Keep us in mind, not only will I have ideas and tutorials for your art lessons but I decided to change the focus of this blog slightly to include tips and advice for all aspects homeschooling as well.  Might  as well  since I am a homeschooler.  I am very proud to say my oldest child is going off to college in the fall. At the moment our school year is coming to end and I am prepping child #2 for his last two years of high school.  My third is going into her freshmen year and the youngest will enter seventh grade.  Not once did any of them attend traditional school. 

Anyway, my computer need some repairs then the house needed to be rewired, so I was without Internet for March and April so I could only microblog( ie Twitter and Facebook).  So while my computer was getting fixed and my house rewired I did manage to finish a sketchbook ( video and blog post  coming soon ).  I have an art haul to share with you ( which there will be plenty of  after a I buy a couple of tablets and a convertible laptop).  And finally after months of waiting for it to go on sale,  I  was able to purchase Mark Crilley's new book and some charcoal and graphite sticks .  I paid a whopping $.06 ( had a gift card for $25 dollars). Well that is all for now. Looking forward to getting back to writing again and with chatting you all.  BTW although this blog is mainly devoted to homeschooling, it is for all who wish to create.

Paper

Here is another rant about quality.  Let's discuss paper.  I know some artist recommend top of the line uber expensive 100% archival quality cotton rag for the work. Ok I get it,  you spend hours on something you are proud of  it and you want it to last forever.  But if you are in the business of recommending products to people who trust your opinion . Most of the people who read blogs or go on Youtube viewing tutorials about art aren't expecting their stuff to last forever and be a legacy for future generations. If they are they will figure out what they need to spend money on to achieve that goal.  Now I am not rating about student grade versus artist grade. What kind of paper you put your work on does matter ( especially for watercolor), but I am suggesting there are very good inexpensive papers out there that will last forever ( almost) and isn't necessarily the top of the line.  Strathmore makes very good varieties  of papers suited for artists at different stages in their artistic journey and budget.  There are six different varieties of paper to choose from beginner to archival quality.

The Trials and Tribulations of Anamorphic Drawing

Anamorphic drawing is my newest obsession. I spend hours and hours looking at tutorial on . This type of drawing is a form of perspective drawing. It obeys all the laws of perspective in a very strict way ( as opposed to one, two, three point or atmospheric perspective) .  Anamorphosis is an extreme type of perspective in which the picture is usually distorted in some way. Here is my first attempt at putting it into practice. I will link the video that I got this from on the How to Draw Page. At first I thought it was an epic fail ( just like I did with the wood grain drawing) , but I am feeling this one. There is definitely room for improvement . But the first one is ok.

 

 



Staedtler Colored pencils 24 pack

     I was so excited when I went into Staples last Saturday. I needed to get a new set of Verithin pencils ( Stanford) because I went a little crazy with the wood grain technique and broke the inside of my dark brown Verithin pencil, so I had to get  a new set ( couldn't find them individually) .  A set of twelve costs $ 9.00and I get 5% cash back I am like ok I will get them. But then I see that the makers of my favorite graphite pencils came out with colored pencils right next to the Verithins for like 3 bucks cheaper and double the colors. Another bonus they have lead protection.  *for those who don't know colored pencils - professional or artist quality are extremely fragile if the lead breaks it breaks all the way to the end of the casing  making it useless which is what happened to my brown Verithin.  So I figured I can't go wrong they make the best drafting pencils in the business ad the price is so good.  And that is where I went totally wrong.
      Well I tried them out today.  They are not bad pencils but they don't the job for me. I paint with colored pencils so I need to blend which they do to a point but I can do the same thing with the Staedtler  as I can with Crayola or Rose Art ( which my be slightly better) which then puts them in the overpriced category.  Next I have no idea what the colors are. There are blues , some pinks , some reds etc., but no names to the colors and they all have the same number 144. What the heck does that mean?  I have no clue.  I guess the colors don't need names because you just have to buy another set. Again overpriced .  Well I suppose the lead protection is good but I suspect as with cheaper pencils the casing is more than sufficient because core isn't high quality and is hard to begin with.  That bummed me out about the Verithins the core is supposed to  hard and not break as easy and it did.
    So next time  I go to Staples I will break down and get the Prismacolors and use the Staedtlers for teaching.