Summer Art Camp - Week Two

All about Me!

 What could be better than creating works of art centered on you and what you love?  The theme for my second week of summer art camp was "All about Me".  With this theme the artists and I had an opportunity to explore a rather self centered idea.  The young artist talked about themselves and discussed what they most enjoy doing.  These passions were then designed, drawn and painted into each students art work.

PROJECT I

Pottery Portrait Plate

For our first project the artists sketched a portrait of themselves performing a favorite activity.  The room was unusually quiet as each student recreated a favorite past time onto their bisque plate.

The artists painted their portraits with pottery glaze and signed the back.  The plates were fired in my kiln,

and are ready to be filled with favorite treats and fun things to eat!

PROJECT II

Portrait in a mirror.

Our second project was a portrait of the artist seen through a hand held mirror.  

When working with a plain white canvas the first step is to cover the whole canvas with color.  In an art class focused on you, this covering should be your very favorite color, and applied in whatever manner you deem necessary.  Whether that is through painting the background in organized, straight lines, big splotches of color, or with organic and animal shapes.

Once the background was finished, we discussed what a portrait of a person would look like from behind.  Would you see their face?  What would the back of their head look like?  Would it be covered with hair, could you see their ears, what about their neck, and how wide would their shoulders be?

After much dialogue and a wee bit of modeling, the artists drew themselves from behind, adding ears, hair, a neck and wide shoulders.  Off to one one side of the face the artists traced around  their hand and added an arm.  Once the drawing was finished they went over their pencil lines with a black sharpie, just to make the lines easier to see when painting the portrait.

Paint was applied in layers, beginning with the darkest color then gradually dabbing and stroking lighter color on top for texture and highlights.  As the artists painted I took pictures of them.  The images were cut into a circle and glued onto a mirror shape.

The finished portraits of fine artists looking at themselves in a mirror - a reflection of line, color, texture, shape and talent!

SNACK TIME!!

 For snack we headed into the kitchen to create everyone's favorite dessert - cupcakes!  Each artist put on their pretend chef's hat and took part in the creation.  First adding the cupcake mix....

then one, two. three eggs with a little egg shell thrown in for any vitamins and nutrients that might be lurking within...

 a little bit of water and some yogurt to sweeten the batter, mix thoroughly, pour into cupcake tins, cook until done...

and devour with great gusto followed by smiles of a satisfied chef!

PROJECT 111

Photoshop Portraits

The last project involved the artists, a camera, a computer, a little photoshopping, crayons and the artist's imaginations.  First the artists pretended they were participating in an activity they love - ballet, boogie boarding, rollerblading and yoga - then posed in that position.  I took their posed pictures, worked with photoshop to make their portraits look like a coloring book image, cut out the figures - which the artist colored with crayons.  Lastly, the artists drew and colored a background scene and we modge-podged their portraits onto the background.

ART SHOW

 The end of the week art show is always a joy to see as proud parents, grandparents and siblings gather around to view the incredible art created by a talented group of artists.

And the artists walk away knowing a little bit more about art, a little bit more about themselves, and with some awesome portraits created in various mediums.