It’s been a month of technical delays, but it looks like we’re up and running again. DSL was touch and go for a little while there but it’s all good again.
Everything else has been rolling along nicely, I’m happy to say. We’ve been keeping up our Friday afternoon art days – I always think of them as the Ruth Days, after my neighbor and mentor, Ruth Bowen. She was a brilliant mother, teacher and artist who also relished having people, kids and grownups alike, making art in her home. I wish so much that she could join us; I think she’d really have fun with this gang. I still use her materials though, and try to channel her great optimistic spirit every week. So the Ruthies benefit from all that talent and kindness one way or another.
Still Life Abstracts
For our second session, we kept things pretty open with some still life abstract paintings, touching on negative space, composition and layering. I asked the girls to look at a few basic forms – a teapot, a vase, some scientific glass – and do some sketches of those forms intersecting on the paper. We played with leaving out sections of line, looking for shapes that appealed to us, and I encouraged them to think about the whole page. That is always such a tough thing to do.
Once they came up with sketches they liked, they penciled their compositions onto watercolor paper and drew in some of the lines with crayon to act as a resist for the watercolor. Then it was time to paint. We looked at limited palettes and balancing color across the page.
After working on these paintings for a while, they branched out into all kinds of painting.
I’ve known these kids for years now, but it amazes me how different it is to be working side by side with them. By trying to keep the concept simple – exposure and experience – I think we’re getting into a nice groove.