Jr. High Portrait Class

My oldest daughter is an Art teacher at a local charter school. For years she has run the after school art program as a volunteer. When the Jr. High needed to hire an art teacher, they asked her first. This semester, she had them do self portraits and asked if I would come in and help. We talked about proportion, basic facial placement of features. Then we discussed value and the importance of drawing what you see, not what you think you see. I taught them to turn their pictures upside down to check for mistakes and think in terms of shapes working large to small. Talked too about the angle of the line, it's placement on the surface and it's length. All in all, it was fun and I hope informative for the kids. Here are the two portraits I ended up doing in class.

Colin Morgan has such an interesting face.

Fantasy Art Class

Last year, my oldest daughter asked if I would help her teach an after school Fantasy Art Class to 5th and 6th graders at the charter school nearly all my grandchildren attend. We had fun, even though I felt under-qualified to teach. The kids seemed to enjoy it though and asked for it again this year. Surprisingly, last year the kids had a hard time coming up with an idea for their painting so this year we gave them assignments, all in the fantasy genre. We had 5 ideas for an illustration that they could pick from. I'm really happy with what they have come up with.

We teach them about the importance of thumbnails and that's been the hardest concept to get across...especially the girls who can't wait to put in all the frilly details. Think shape, value, gesture....NO DETAIL!! We then have them decide on their favorite thumbnail, develop it and find photo reference to help them. My daughter and I have each chosen one of the assignments along with them and I took the opportunity to develop my Cinderella sketch further. Here is my developed sketch that is ready for more refining. Because of the fur on the cloak, I want to add more Russian influences in her surroundings and dress. I'll post the progress as we start putting down paint this week.