Shorebirds

Summertime for me is spending time by the water. Whether at the cabin by the lake, visiting the coast or even just having time to walk by the river here in the city.


As a bird lover I'm immediately drawn to my feathered friends.  Sketching birds in plein air is challenging, they are always on the move. So it helps to be armed with a fast camera and lots of patience.

Don't rely entirely on photographs though, make little gesture sketches that record common poses. You can then refer back to those sketches and add birds into your  larger compositions.

This painting is a good journal project….

and this seagull is a painted paper collage.

Both projects use a blurry line technique.  In the past I used gel pens but their quality has gone up in recent years and it's getting harder to find ones that will bleed when hit with a water wash.

There are other options.  My favourite is the Stabilo pencil.  It's easy to draw with and works on paper, glass, plastic and metal. I have to buy mine at a fine art supply store and they are about $2.00 a piece.

You can also use a watercolour pencil. You get a similar blurry effect. They are not as soft as a stabilo so I find them a little harder to sketch with.

A charcoal pencil will give you a bit of blurriness, you can smudge them with your finger before adding the water wash to enhance this a bit.

Watercolour markers will also give you a blurry effect.  I use them often at school as they are on every student supply list. My only complaints are they can blur too much and you may lose definition in your sketch. The colour also changes and your black fades into blues and purples.

Materials Required:

- paper, you can use an art journal or a nice quality drawing paper.  At school I use this paper a lot. Although it is called white construction paper it's not a construction paper. It paints up nice. You don't get WC paper effects but it is a good alternative and it's cheap.  It's an amazing drawing paper (better than the so-called drawing paper most suppliers carry) and has enough tooth (rough surface) to take pastels (both oil and chalk) beautifully.
- pencil and eraser
- stabilo or alternative
- disk tempera
- acrylic or liquid tempera
- sponge
- glue
- sandpaper

Procedure:

Let's start with the journal page. Now I made a journal page but you can easily make this into a single page project.

Select a shorebird you would like to draw.

Here I sketched a spotted sandpiper.  I used some reference photos of mine and gesture sketches.  I added a piece of driftwood in the foreground to add interest and included the water in the background, (both of which were not in my photos).

Then I went over my sketch with my stabilo.  Sometimes I go straight in with the stabilo but this was a new composition and you cannot erase a stabilo.

Start adding colour.

I have lots of watercolour paint in my studio but I used disk tempera to show you can easily do this project at school. Disk tempera costs a fraction of what watercolour does and I'm always impressed with how far I can push it.

The secret here is to treat it like watercolour, use more water to fade out your washes. Now I paint around my sandpiper because of the stabilo, I want to control the blurriness as well as conserve my whites.

I add some colour to the bird. The stabilo starts to blur forming the shadows. I use straight brown and watered down brown to get my colour variation.

I also leave some areas with no paint for the white of the feathers.

A nice touch is to go back and add a touch of white on top of the paint, (extra feather detail, some waves in the water).

You can use white disk tempera which acts very much like gouache.
I also use PITT markers which are opaque white ink, acrylic markers, at school I might use white pencil crayon, white oil pastel, or even white chalk.

I add some clouds using white liquid tempera or white acrylic and a sponge.

I want to add some text,  because it's a sand piper I cut a letter "S" from some sandpaper.  Great textural element.

I made a pattern out of some scrap paper and then traced it on the back.

I want it to stand out a bit so I trace around it with a black crayon. This gives the "S" a nice black outline.

I glued it into place and added text with a fine sharpie pen.





Painted paper collage:

I take a piece of that nice paper and tape it down to my art board.

Using liquid tempera or acrylic I take a dark blue, a light blue, and a little white and paint the background.

I use this cross stroke a lot for backgrounds.  Start with the darkest colour and work your way down adding the lighter colours.

While the background is drying I painted the paper for the posts in the pier.



I use brown, black, and a little white acrylic or liquid tempera.

I need a scraper so I take an old gift card and cut it to the size I want.

The paper I'm using is a scrap of brown kraft paper.


 I dip the end of the scraper into a few colours.  I then spread it down the paper getting this nice effect that looks like weathered wood.


Set aside to dry.

Using the same technique as for the journal page paint another bird.

This is a seagull I photographed last year in Cape Breton and you can see I misjudged the size of paper I needed.  Oh well….we'll just add some legs.

Cut out the seagull and the posts.



It started off as being all one piece but I couldn't get it to look right.

So I cut them apart. I also added a little white for a highlight on top edge.


Glue into place.

Sponge on a few clouds and then glue the gull into place.





I hope this inspires you to make a few shorebirds of your own.

Take care everyone.

Gail

Self Portraits

I have been working with Grade 1 and 2 on self portraits.


Trying to get them to hit the landmarks, put features in roughly the right places, and to really look at the shapes of things.

MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- brown kraft paper
- gesso or white primer
- paint roller
- regular paper for draft drawing
- pencil and eraser
- re-positionable contact paper, optional
- tempera paint in skin tones
- crayons, pencil crayons
- disk tempera for hair, shirt, text
- glue
- fine sharpie

PROCEDURE:

I have a set of mirrors that I give out and ask that they look closely at their features.  We use the mirrors as we draw.

We started doing a practice drawing. If I had more time I would of had them do a drawing with no instruction first, this helps to show progress.


On regular paper we start talking about the shape of the head.

We drew in pencil but I'm using a sharpie so you can see it.

We aim for an oval or egg shape.


We add the neck and shoulders.  I point out that the shoulders go straight out or angle down a little.  We don't want them shaped like hills,  makes it look like we are hunching up our shoulders.

We then find the centre of the face and make a dot.

Make a dotted line across the oval.

If you ask the kids what will be on this line they will say "the nose".  I ask them to look in the mirror again and then I get "oh, the eyes!".

We then draw a second dotted line halfway between our first line and the chin (nose line) and then a third line halfway between the second line and the chin (mouth line).

I talk to the kids about the eye shapes.  How we are going for a football shape and not a soccer ball.

Eye spacing can be difficult so we talk about how it's like drawing 3 eyes except we erase the middle one.

We can then put in that upper lid, just a sliver.  I ask the kids to look at their eyes (iris,pupil) to see if there is any white showing above them.

We then draw in the iris touching the top of the eye and add the pupil.  With older kids we add the reflection.

We talk about eyelashes.



We leave the eyebrows out for now.

On to the nose.  On the nose line in the section between where the eyes are spaced we add a little "c", add another on the their side but backwards, and then a little hill between the two.

You can then add some lines for the sides of the nose.  If you look at those side lines , they go up above the eyes and then arch into the eyebrows. (have students look in the mirror)

On the mouth line we put in the mouth.  We start with the little dip in the centre of the upper lip. We we then extend this, curving up if we want a smile, we do the bottom of the upper lip.

Add the lower lip, thinner and shorter than the upper lip.

Add the neckline of the shirt.

Add the ears.

Then add the hair.  I ask the kids to look in the mirror to see that hair comes down on the forehead even if their hair is short.

I took kraft paper and cut it into squares.  I placed them on the ground and using a paint roller with a handle rolled primer onto them.  I wanted it to looked quick so the brown shows on the edges.

It dries quickly.

After our practice drawing we repeated what we did on the primed paper.

With crayon we add colour to our eyes, lips, and eyebrows.

Because I had a lot of young Grade 1's, I cut eye shape out of contact paper and we covered the eyes.  If you place the paper on top of the eye you can see the pencil thru it and then you can trace out the shape.
Cut, peel and stick.

Mix up a skin tone using white liquid tempera.  Add a drop or two of red and some brown.



Paint in the face and neck.

Paint in the hair and shirt.


Peel off eye stickers when the face paint has dried.

I cut the letters for 'self' using the cricut.  I printed the text for portrait.  For the kids it was printed on paper I created that had faces all over it.  We painted our 'portrait' paper.

Glue into place.

That's it.

Kandinsky: Student Work

This is a lesson I never get tired of.  I know it is a staple with most art educators and why not....the results are always stunning!

This is what Grade 1 accomplished today.

In the Style of Rene Magritte #2

So we are still looking at Surrealism in Grade 6.  The students did my usual lesson on Magritte last year in Grade 5 but I thought we would try another.




Here is our version of  "The Large Family" 1963

and this is the original.


This is my favorite painting of Magritte and always leads to wonderful conversation regarding the symbolism.

















MATERIALS REQUIRED:
- 2 sheets wc paper
- green painter's tape
- disk tempera in blue, yellow,orange,white and black
- paintbrushes
- kleenex
- scissors
- white pastel or pencil crayon
- Dove Template 1, Dove Template 2 or create your own
- tacky glue

PROCEDURE:

Take your wc papers and tape down to your art boards with the green painter's tape.

While the paint is still wet use a kleenex to lift off clouds.

Let dry.

On the second board begin painting your background.

Add some blue, orange and yellow.  Leave the top white as well as the bottom.

Add some black now.  At the bottom you want to fill in with black for the water but leave that white horizon line.



Go over your sky colors with a black wash including the white at the top.

At the bottom add a few waves in the water with white tempera or gauche.





Let background dry.

Turn your cloud paper over and sketch out the flying dove.  Now with Grade 6 I will be asking them to create their own Dove.  I have included a template (see materials list)  for those of you who want it.




Cut out your sketch.

Now to make the head look separate from the back wing you may want to use some white pencil crayon or pastel and strategically place a cloudy mist.

Glue into place and let dry with a piece of wax paper put on top of the surface and then a large heavy book placed on top of that.

That's it.  Magritte used his cloud landscape in several other paintings that your students may enjoy recreating or coming up with their own compositions that draw upon his work.








See you soon.