Pomegranates

Tuesdays are busy for me. I teach my youngsters at lunch and then my teenager after work. Today my teenager and I painted pomegranates! Hers is on the left. For her second time painting fruit, I think she did awesome! Here's what we did a few weeks ago: a watercolor and gouache study of a fish. 

The Frog

I think it's fun when people post images of their progress. I drew this frog back in August when I was teaching summer art lessons at the museum. I got to TA for my colleague, which gave me time to practice my art skills. Here's a picture of a frog I drew in my sketchbook.

Gandhi

Here's the picture I was talking about! My student is, like...half my age and he's making stuff like this.

Foxes and Gouache

I can't believe it's going to be 2014 tomorrow. This year has been awesome for my art lessons, since I started them around March? May? I don't remember. So really, this is the only year I can go off of! But since then, I have gotten some awesome students and had so much fun. One of my students is learning about gouache right now. She's doing a great job! This is her fox on the left.

I never really got into gouache before, but it's my new favorite medium! It's got the feel of watercolor, but it's opaque and more forgiving than watercolors. So you can paint something and have it dry in a few seconds, then paint over it again if you mess up. It's really forgiving for people who don't have the patience to wait for oils to dry, but get frustrated that they can't fix messed up watercolors.

This student is really into painting specific things. So next week, we're going to do a fish study -- one with watercolors, and one with gouache. I'll post a picture and show you what a difference a medium can make!

Reflections

I'm proud to report that my art student who entered the Reflections contest won an award! I was so proud I told my entire team at work and posted it on Facebook. It's always rewarding for a teacher to see their student work hard and excel. Of course, this student already came to me with a lot of talent. It's been fun to help him stretch in different areas, like composition, framing, subject matter, drawing techniques, and title selection. So proud of him! (By the way, this image is just a picture of Gandhi. It's not the picture he drew. I'll try to get a copy of that and post it on here soon!)

 

Lately

Since the last time I updated, I have added an art student and have the possibility of 2 more! I'm excited to be growing the business little by little as I work full-time. Teaching art is one of the best parts of my week (besides Saturday morning snuggles with my dachshund puppy, Bruce).

It's fun to teach different students, too. My first art student has just finished a Reflections entry of Mahatma Gandhi. He came up with the idea himself, and I helped him execute it. Before that he was working on a graphic novel based on Spiderman. We came up with an entire story, and he's working on that on his own time now! Now we're moving on to masks. We figured out how to make paper mache masks out of foil. I can't wait to see how his Joker mask turns out.

My other student just started a few weeks ago. She love manga, but wanted to learn more about how to draw people realistically. We have practiced drawing parts of the body. Last week she made a super realistic eye and we're going to practice face proportions together.

I'm having a blast!

Cherries In Progress

Tonight after a lesson I busted out my watercolors and painted some cherries. I am trying to be better about making time for my own art, and I forgot how therapeutic it is to just sit and create something. 

I'm learning that it's so important to not be afraid of color and value. If something in a picture I'm working off of is black, I need to make that area black! Not grey...black. Same goes with color. If that cherry is bright red, you better believe I'm going to work on it until I get a vibrant red. 

Working this way tends to get me a lot of mistakes. I have to go all out to get the reward, or else I'll have just a kind of ok, but boring picture. I might fail and have to start over. It's all in the name of becoming a better, bolder artist. Let this be a lesson in bravery.