Snow Day

Having a snow day today meant that I had time to work on some teacher models for art projects.  My art class starts a week from today! It looks like I'm going to have to hold my class in the cafeteria for at least the first week of the semester, which means I'm going to have to be a little creative with my art cart.  Luckily our first two projects aren't going to require too many materials.  

I'm trying to teach the Elements of Art as organically as possible within each project.  Our first project will be to design sketchbook covers in the "zentangle" method,  the element of Line being most important.  

Zentangle squares on colored cardstock

Front & Back Sketchbook Covers

Unit two will be about Value (light and dark):

Value Scale

3D Geometric Form Observation Drawing

Thumbnail Sketches for an Observational Drawing

I've also been working on drawings to be used as the table cards (instead of table numbers) for my cousin's wedding in March.  I have 14 finished and need to do 5 more in the next two weeks, so that I have time to edit them to business card size, order them, and write out the guest names.  Here's what it looked like when Bekah and I worked on this for her wedding last year:

Here's a peak at some of the table cards for Danny and Amanda's wedding:

I've been doing a lot of work in bed lately since it's so cold in my apartment!

Grandma's house! She called me AS I was posting this and said, "I was thinking about the drawing of my house that you showed me the other day, and I think you put the address on the wrong spot on the door! I knew something was wrong with it!"

Working on some lesson plans at a coffee shop with my roommate now, but I'm excited to go home and do some more drawing for the wedding!

Student Art Show

On Thursday the art department at our school had a gallery opening at a gallery in Chelsea! The kids were really excited to be there and to see their peers' work up in a real gallery space.  It's also so exciting to think that anyone in NYC may wander into this particular gallery this month and see our kids' artwork!

One student who spends a lot of time in art club and helps us out with the school play sets had a lot of work featured in this show.  She wants to go to art school after high school, so it was really exciting to see her have an opportunity like this so young! She's very talented and such a hard worker.

I'm not going to post everything from my 30 day challenge, but I like how day 8 came out (Day 8: Be giving with your creativity)

Opposites Attract

Jesse and I are complete opposites in so many ways, which I think is part of the reason we get along so well.  He is very talkative and extroverted, and I'm much more reserved and introverted.  When I see a blank space on a wall in my apartment, I have a compulsive urge to put up a painting, print, or photo.  Jesse has left the walls in his room exactly the way they were when he moved in over 2 years ago…plain white and empty! He's had this pile of picture frames and prints on one shelf that drove me crazy, because you couldn't see any of them.  Yesterday I came over and he was all excited that he had bought some of those "command" stickies to hang things, and we got to work finally putting some color on one of his walls!

Before

After! The bridge and cactus are prints I gave him when we first started dating and I was taking a summer printmaking class at SVA.

Here's an update on my 30 day Create Daily challenge:

Day 2:

Hunt & Gather: Challenge yourself to find at least 3 things around the house that are not "traditional" art supplies, and create something with them.

Day 3:

Play with your Food: look for some food inspiration by sketching something you find in your fridge.  

Sacred Space

I'm starting off the year with a 30 day "create daily" challenge.

Create Daily Challenge Day #1: make room to create.

I've made a lot of excuses over the years that I don't do as much art as I used to because I don't have the space, but I've actually spent a lot of time over the past few days organizing my Grandpa's beautiful desk to turn it into a space to keep all of my art supplies organized.  Before I did this, I had art supplies in shoeboxes stashed under my bed and in random corners of my closets.  Now I have a space to sit down and draw or paint something small, and I don't have to spend hours searching for the right shoe box.  

When I first moved into this apartment, my Dad took one look at this nook next to my bed and insisted it was made for my Grandpa's desk.  But really he had nowhere to put it and was too sentimental to sell it!

Left: All of the small compartments are labeled to prevent wasted time searching. Right: I put sketchbooks, paper, paintbrushes, and one of my favorite old photos of my grandfather on the top ledge.

Left: One of my favorite things to do in NYC or when I'm traveling is to browse record stores, although a lot of these are my Dad's old records.  Right: some of the drawings I've been working on for the table settings at my cousin's wedding in March.

My Grandpa was a good looking man!