I just love fall! I get so much inspiration from this season. The sights, the sounds the colors. I love picking pumpkins and painting/ carving them. I love hayrides, long walks to see the changing leaves and warm apple cider. So I have been working on a series of different fall themed drawings with students. For my Saturday classes for 7-10 year olds we have been creating fall scenes using markers. We talked about how to get different values out of the marker color be varying the pressure you apply on the marker. We also have a small how to draw a pumpkin tutorial and a discussion on horizon line and foreground, background and middle ground. We discussed how items in the front are larger then items in the back.

I created another variation of a marker drawing. The one below was draw with water based markers then a used a brush and brushed water back into it for a more water color effect.

More sandwhihces and ATC's-last batch of sat classes for 2012

I just completed me most recent session of sat classes at the art gallery. Kids picked their favorite works of the first few we made and hung them in the show.Here's their work on display.

The gallery has some pieces by Claes Oldenburg that we got to look at after we made our sandwiches.We used craft foam and paper to make these sandwiches.


We also looked at examples from my collection of ATC and ACEO and then kids created their own using crayons watercolors and the resist method.










We did so much more then this but I did not get pictures of all the other work we did. We made collages, artist's books with their own prints,gumball machine mixed media pieces, polymer clay,and so much more in our 8 week session.

Stella Art Gallery

 So I got a knock down drag out leave you on your couch miss two days of work type of cold/sinus infection last week. So I  was a little behind on my blog..  I try to post at least one time a week...

I wanted to share some news about a good friend of mines gallery space  that just opened. My good friend Kat who  I have blogged about before just opened a  art gallery. art studio space in the store front space right next to her sign shop Instant Sign Center in East  Rochester.
The first Friday of the month in Rochester is a large event for art gallery's here in Rochester and Kat took part with her new space. My good friend Becky Phillips who is a talented young photographer currently studying photo journalism at Rochester Institute of Technology who the headlining artist for this first show.

Stella art will be offering weekly classes for children and adults, as well as studio time for people to drop in and work. They will also be having several shows coming up with a call for artists!  There is a webpage with all pertinent information and below is a link for the facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/stellaartgalleryandstudio

Happy Halloween!

 I have been working on several Halloween projects both at work with my students and at home. I have found some Awesome projects on other peoples blogs and adapted them.

 I have made milk jug skeletons before and we made them with the after school program this year. There is a lot of cutting involved and younger students needed a lot of help putting of the milk jug handles and assembling the pieces.


 I also found some flag banners on anothers persons blog and adapted these for work by making a Boo banner with construction paper. the kids glued precut shapes of bats witch hats, letter etc on to the pendents then glued plastic drinking straws on the back to hang them.

I made a more elaborate  version of this for my home that used punches scrap booking paper  etc.

Last week we did the song "Five little pumpkins" and  a created this card stock prop to use in the sing along. I made copies of it for kids to color in and make there own. there just cut colored and added tongue depressor sticks to the back.


and of course the costume.. This part is always a challenge the sewing machine always decides to freak out on me last minute. I supposed it is because of the nature or if the Halloween fabrics I use. They are never anything like the normal fabrics I use and the sewing machine never knows how to deal with them.

So anyways I have always wanted to go as Lydia from Beetle juice abut this requires someone to go with me as "Beetlejuice"  During the summer at a street fest in Syracuse after finishing two dance performances with a group I stumbled across a bag sale and one of the items in it was a black and white striped suit. I was going to go make one.. but that would require going from good will to good will etc... painting sewing altering... so we just used the suit altered it a little and used the smaller stripes instead. I also made a tie and some wrist wraps as well as. The cape was a nightmare to make and took three attempts before arriving finally on the easiest whihc was to use my red cape and put electrical tape on it.I had used two other capes with a stretch fabric but the ribbon is was trying to apply did not stretch-- disaster!