Seattle Painting Studio

Curious about what's going on in the studio?

The January drawing class is enrolling now. Send me an email at ameen@studio-kids.com to sign up.

Childrens Winter Painting Class

Last nights models.

A beautiful little painting by Henry (almost 7).

Ananya wanted to include the flowers.


Our delicious palette!

Life Drawing with Chickens

One of my favorite memories of art school was the first week, just after summer break. The Concourse Gallery at Emily Carr University was transformed to resemble a barn. Bales of hay and live critters were brought in as models and all drawing classes took place there. My favorite models were always the chickens.

So, I'm excited to announce, we've added chickens to the backyard at Studio-Kids. We have 5 beautiful girls practicing their poise and stomp, just waiting to be life drawing models! The January drawing class is now enrolling, class size is limited so register soon.

Peachy and Poof Daddy posing (don't worry neighbors, despite the name, Poof Daddy's a hen, or so BackyardChickens. com assures us)

 

The full gang, five models, ready to report for duty.

Poof Daddy, straight back, great form, and always keeping at least one eye on the artist.

2011 and 2012 Classes are Now Enrolling

 Its been a busy summer and fall around the studio, and winter is just around the corner. Check out my Class page for the new postings which are now enrolling.  I'm squeezing in a quick colorful class before Christmas.  We'll explore color theory by painting simple compositions in many different color combinations. Students will take home a lot of beautiful painting perfect for gift giving!

 A lovely watercolor by one of my 7 year old students in the spring class.

 Acrylic on board, still life with green apples from the same spring class, also age 7.

Green apples in water color, colored pencil and ink. I love the gestural qualities of this little still life.
Age 7, spring 2011 drawing class.

Spring Fling's Almost Here

Spring Fling buzz is spreading down the halls of North Beach. The kids are very proud of their collaborative masterpieces. We'll be hanging the finished works at Diva Espresso's 80th and Greenwood location all month. March 3rd-16th we'll feature kindergarten, first and second grade projects. On March 16th we'll rotate in 2/3 split through forth grade projects, (fifth grade will be in on the bulletin boards at school in a couple of weeks). Stop in with your kids so they can see their projects up on the walls!

I've included another sneak peak of the kid's work below. Both second grade classes created colorful "Impressionist Gardens" by collaging tissue paper onto canvas.

carefully placing stems in just the right place

 

now for some blooming flowers



and finally, little hands seal it all up with some matte medium

  

Room 5 took charge of their project and created beautiful portraits inspired by Pablo Picasso.



Spring Fling has always been my favorite event at North Beach. It has been so much fun working with the kids on their projects. Now just a few more weeks until the big event!

Collaborative Kids Paintings for School Fundraiser

With both of my kids now in school full time, I'm really enjoying my volunteer time at their school. April 1st is our annual  "Spring Fling" event at  North Beach; it's a fun night out for parents as well as a fund raising auction of kids artwork. I'm helping to coordinate the art projects this year. My goal is to help the kids use nice artist grade materials so their finished projects look their very best. We are executing some of the projects on 2'x3' stretched canvas that I picked up at ArtistCraftsman.com for just $15.00 each! We also have some great frames donated by school fans, so I am keeping those sizes in mind when we are working on the paper projects.

Here's some shots of work in progress with the two kindergarten classes. Their project takes its inspiration from American pop artist Jim Dine.

Its getting close to Valentine's day so the kids really enjoyed the subject.

 

Hearts, hearts and more hearts.

In our two 1st grade classes, we're tackling a concentric circle mosaic inspired by Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky.

 

First, we divided the canvas up into equal sections, then we quickly sketched out some rough circles to get the kids started. The kids had a lot of fun with the colors.

Our 3rd grade students in room 13 used oil pastels to create self portraits in the style of Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.  Kids are well versed in self portraits, so this was a particularly fun and successful project.

 

We started with a brief introduction to Modigliani and his particular style. Afterward, I showed the students my self portrait I did the night before as an example.  Then, we got started.

Check out ArtProjectsForKids.org for their step by step instructions that I used for my guide if you're interested in pursuing a similar project at your school. I absolutely love this web site; they have many great kids art projects.

And finally, Room 13, the whole class.

We're shooting to have all the projects finished before mid-winter break. Its really exciting as the art projects are creating some buzz around school. And to all my local readers, come to our fundraiser and check out the work!

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The Joy of a Finished Painting

I love how unique each painting turned out even though the students were working from the same subject and color palette. Our prior painting lesson was fairly controlled so we could learn about composition, the different stages a painting goes through, and how to work in layers. With this foundation, the students were now free to make their own final creative decisions.

Painting Lesson: Acrylics on Canvas from Still Life

We started our first paintings on canvas this week, I'm so excited with the early stages of all the paintings that I can't wait for this week's class when the kids complete them. We started the class by looking through a book of Pablo Picasso's work. We focused on his still life paintings and talked about using the still life as our own subject matter. I set up the arrangement using my son's guitar, an old suitcase my mom brought over from India over 50 years ago, a nice little lamp, and some other goodies. The children started by completing some preliminary drawings in their sketch books.

We started by drawing the table top first, followed by the suitcase. Finally, the other objects were  drawn; we payed close attention to their size and placement in relationship to the suitcase.

 

I described the details the kids should include in their drawings and reminded them to really look at the still life, and try hard not to draw from memory.

Once the students were happy with their compositions, they moved onto canvas. With colored pencils, the children sketched on their canvas. They could chose which part of the still life they wanted to draw, but they were asked to include the table top and the plant.   Finally, it was time to paint. The children first blocked out the negative spaces of the painting using a yellow ochre color. This became the base coat for the painting -- it will give depth and texture to the next layer of the painting and make subsequent colors richer than if they were just painted onto the white canvas. Next, the kids chose their table top colors and blocked in the suitcase.

I can't wait for this week when we'll get to work on more layers in the paintings. Stay tuned!