Art : Drawing a human face from the side - Profile

This morning my mom printed out some tutorials on how to draw a portrait of a human face from the side.

There are some great tutorials on a website called "Deviant Art"

Link to profile tutorial

I will upload my efforts shortly ...

Art: Tutorials

Today we were looking at drawing trees.

I found some good tutorials and some on other subjects as well.

How to draw all sorts of things including 2 types of trees:  http://www.radicalman.com/tips/main.htm
Different trees - (bottom of page)  - http://www.how-to-draw-funny-cartoons.com/cartoon-trees.html
Palm trees - step by step - http://www.how-to-draw-funny-cartoons.com/how-to-draw-palm-trees.html
Beautiful Unicorn and Dragon horns - http://www.carmenmedlin.com/tut_hornstutorial.html
How to do simple computer art trees - http://webclipart.about.com/od/clip101/l/aa091002.htm
How to draw the best tree logo - http://www.austinkleon.com/2009/07/23/how-to-draw-trees/
Manga trees - http://www.mangatutorials.com/tut/forest1.php


This art blog has some amazing detailed ink drawings on it.  Fantastic.  http://valentinaramos.blogspot.com/




How to draw comic books- http://www.how-to-draw-funny-cartoons.com/how-to-draw-comic-books.html

Artist course in Illustration and Design

Masks,Art & Drama

Today we are looking at masks and there are many different cultures that use masks.

There are wooden masks, half masks and painted masks.

Clowns use painted masks and you get many different kinds of clowns.

Happy clowns, funny clowns, sad clowns, scary clowns and embarrassing clowns and totally wierd clowns.

A lot of clowns use mime which silent with exagerated movements or noises.  Some use props like ladders, brooms, unicycles, buckets.  Clown performances are usually a bit embarrasing, humiliating and funny.  There are mock injuries and tricks they play on each other and or members of the audience.

You get solitary clown and clowns that perform in pairs or groups.

Here is a funny, embarrasing clown performance.  The best part I liked was when he ripped the guys shirt off.  The beginning was not so funny but there were parts near the end that had us howling with laughter.  In the end it turned out that the guy was not really just part of the audience but a performer too.



This one shows sad clown makeup.




This is one of the silly, embarrassing ones with some good bits:




Balloon Madness

ART: Painting - watercolours

I was working on my watercolour skills and painted 2 pictures.  For inspiration I looked at a really good artist called Susan Faye.  Here is a link   to her  http://www.etsy.com/shop/susanfaye.  She also has a fan page of facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/SusanFayeArt  and you can see more of her work here

CAFEPRESS: t-shirts, mugs, tote bags, note cards, aprons, magnets, mouse pads, blank books, calendars, and more! Http://www.cafepress.com/SusanFaye  and here Http://www.cafepress.com/SusanFayeNature

We also did a project art on "My favourite Things".  Its a multimedia collage with a self portrait in the middle and surrounded by either words or drawings/paintings.  We did the words "My Favourite THings" out of magazine letters all cut up and mixed about.  It was fun and I am just busy finishing off some of it.

Will post later.

Symmetry Artist - Mathematics and Art together!

Check this out - it cool....

Symmetry Artist

http://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/symmetry-artist.html

ART: Perspective (Vanishing point) and famous artists

Today we looked at vanishing points and perspective.

We drew a railroad and a city street.

It looks easy when you see it done but its easy to get confused when you do it by yourself.

We found a nice art website with art lessons and plans when we were looking up perspective:

http://www.alifetimeofcolor.com/

This led us to looking at their list of great artists.

We did a powerpoint presentation on our choice of 3 of the artists:

Some Famous Artists

A quill (natural feather pen)

Today we decided to make a feather quill, I have been wanting to do it for absolute ages now.

My gran taught my mom how to make quills when she was young. It's quite fun and if you are careful and patient you can use it for writing or art and it turns out well.

You can even dye the feather according to your own choice of favourite colours. (You can use a permanent dye like a little hair dye before washing it off with shampoo and leaving it to dry.)


I found a great feather walking back from the beach, yesterday.




To make your own quill, you will need:

- A suitable feather that is the right size.
- A sharp blade (use caution here and adult supervision if necessary i.e cut downwards not UP!)

*I have this great safety blade with my microscope set which is a circular one. My dad also bought me a safety pen knife which is great.

- A work space with good light and a cutting board.




1. Slice off the tip of the feather
2. Remove the central membrane of the feather
3. Remove an angular slice off the lower/bottom surface of the quill tip, leaving the upper surface.
4. Shape the upper level of the tip and angle slightly depending on wether you are left or right handed.
5. Test with some ink.

*You can even write with lemon juice and when its dry you can hold it over a safe heat source like a blow dryer or light bulb and the message will show up.

4. Make a central incision (slice) for about 7mm


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So we made the quill and we got the sepia calligraphy ink out.

Its a messy business and quite tricky to get your words to look good. Its a bit frustrating to have to keep dipping the quill in the ink. Afterwards my fingers were full of brown ink LOL :)

Then we tried out my dads calligraphy pens which use ink cartriges. The nib is shaped about the same as a quill but made of metal so it does not flex about and the ink is tidy inside.

I really liked the calligraphy pens and they come in different sizes of nib and the text looks really nice. I think I will look into calligraphy.

I also did some lemon juice notes. Its fun when the writing comes up and I wrote my little sister a note for when she gets home from school!

Off to get the brown ink off my fingers now..........

Other quill making links: http://www.bvt.org.uk/sellymanor/quill.html
http://unplugyourkids.com/2009/09/22/homemade-quill-pen/

Castaways of the Flying Dutchman

Just read the book about The Flying Dutchman. see my book blog - http://bookdragongirl.blogspot.com/

Doing a writing exercise by looking at other peoples reviews to improve my review skills.

Compiling a powerpoint presentation on the origins of the Flying Dutchman legend with some excellent images on google.com.

Also writing a poem and doing a short play. Art will be incorporated by doing a sketch and painting and maybe a sculpture of the ship.