The tulips are blooming!

It is spring in Seattle and my garden is going crazy. I like to edit the still life so that students can can do some careful observation for their compositions.  I was hoping for a traditional closed tulip for my printmaking class but after 30 minutes in the water, this happened!

This week we made some beautiful Monoprints.

 After printing their plates, students did another image using the same plate and the ghost image that remained. The gradual build up of layers has beautiful results.

 These 3 would be gorgeous framed and hanging together!

Tools of the trade, the humble q-tip.

Spring Classes and Painted Self Portraits...

Spring Classes are now enrolling, sign up today.

Inspired by stained glass, this was a fun and successful project for all ages. I had the students stretch out across the paper in a few different directions. This gave us some interesting areas of overlap. I did the tracing for my younger class. After a demonstration, older students could trace younger students as well.

Basic kids tempera paint in fun colors on a medium weight paper. When we taped these up to the windows the colors were glowing!

Painting Lesson with cupcakes

Spring classes are now enrolling, check out the the classes page for all the details. 

In celebration of Uma (my dog's) 5th birthday we painted cupcakes! I picked up my lovely models from the local bakery. After a quick look at the artist Wayne Thiebaud, I prepared our models and the kids started sketching. We blocked in our colors the first week and then added a second coat of acrylic paint the following week. Here's a few of the finished cupcakes by the 7 and 8 year olds.

Posing patiently for acrylic portraits  our models did a fabulous job. 

Sprinkles and a cherry on top.

Polka dots and a pretty painted palette.

Uma waiting outside the studio for the birthday party games to begin.

Spring Art classes are now enrolling!

Its my favorite time of the year. The days are long and something new pops up in the garden everyday. The spring classes are now enrolling. Check out the classes page and sign up soon, as always, class sizes are small and fill up quickly. New this spring is a Middle School session on Tuesday afternoons.

My daughter got a pretty sweet bike for her birthday. She thought it would make for a good drawing lesson.

I started by having the students do 3 detailed drawings with a nice soft pencil.

Students then focused in on a close up of part of the bike to do a large study with charcoal.