Marc's Mares

I have recently redone this project to reflect a Wizard of Oz connection. What could that possibly be you may ask? Why it was "a horse of a different color" of course!

I also repost this today to ask for some help. If you like drawing horses, I am looking for submissions for a horse themed art show to benefit my local equine therapy group, Healing Horses. It is their mission to better the lives of all children, especially those with disabilities and processing disorders like Autism and Asperger's Syndrome through interaction with horses. The show will run from October 1st through 31st, so I will need your submissions no later that September 17th. You can email them to msjuliesartclass@aol.com or if you would like more information.
Be sure to include your first name, age, and email address. If you'd like you can include a picture of yourself, but that is not necessary. Prints will be made, framed, hung, and offered for purchase. All the proceeds go to Healing Horses. Those chosen for the show will receive a certificate of participation and a photo of the horses used for this therapy.

To learn more try these books...

Franz Marc was a German painter famous for his brightly painted animals that were slightly cubist in nature. To learn more about him you can visit my post about him at my other site Artist of the Week for Kids. For now, we will just delve right into a project. May was horse month in my art room(unfortunately so was the worst morning sickness I have had to date) so though I wasn't posting here, I was working on projects! Today you will see the first of these.

To begin you will need

Pencil
Paper
sharpie marker- black
oil pastels
Q-tips.

The drawing instructions look like this...

At this point you will want to outline the horse in black sharpie.

Then decide whether to use rectangles, circles or triangles
and then draw them in pencil over the outlined horse.
Be sure to overlap often and to make some shapes
smaller and other larger.

Here is what rectangles might look like.

Now you will want to use the oil pastels to outline all the lines. Be sure to use bright, bold colors like Marc did. He was not aiming for realistic colors but ones that would make a dramatic impact.

Keep all the lines inside the horse's head the same color, use a different color for the mane, and a third color to outline all the lines of the background.

Once that is done, use a Q-tip to blend the edges inside each shape.

Here are some student examples.

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Hoppin Down the Bunny Trail...

What in the world do the Easter Bunny and Cubism have in common?
Really not much at all except that I chose Fernand Leger to be my Artist of the Week in art class and it is also two days until Easter, so I chose to do a bunny in a cubist style.

What you will need
Paper
pencil
oil pastels or crayons
oval template

1. Start with a simple bunny drawing. You can follow these steps or create your own. I gave students an oval shape to create the head in the first step. It really had two purposes, one was to keep everyone in the same type of proportions and the second is that it will be used in the the second part of the project.

2.At this point, you will want to outline the pencil lines in a blue or purple marker. Black will be too harsh and just leaving the pencil may be confusing in the next step.

3. Take the egg and trace it over and over again all over the paper. Make sure to make lots of overlaps and intersections, but try not to make too many very small spaces.
Try to let some of the oval shapes run off the page as well

You will now be coloring the areas created by the intersecting egg shapes. You have a choice of using a very limited color palette or using as many colors as you can think of! How you color is key though. Use heavier pressure near the edges of one or two sides of the shapes- not all around. Let the other side get lighter and keep the sides fairly consistent with the pressure- if you start with heavy pressure on the left side and bottom of a shape, continue to do with most of the shapes. You can change here and there, but the consistency is what will really give you the effect we want.

Another Variation...

Add a layer of black oil pastel and then scratch off areas to make lighter and darker values as well as creating texture.


Student Examples

By Taylor- Age 10


By Ryan -Age 7

Have a Great Easter!

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The Shady Side of Picasso: An art lesson focusing on cubism and shading

In art class this week we studied artistic genius Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973). He co-founded Cubism and produced a monumental 20,000 artworks during his 70-year career. Picasso’s torrential outpouring of work was so extensive and complex that art historians have divided it into individual periods. A prodigy in his youth, Picasso enrolled in advanced classes at Barcelona’s Royal Academy of Art at age 15. The strong geometric forms of his groundbreaking Cubist works redefined art as a medium that could digress from literal images of reality. Passionately creative in every genre from primitive art to sketches to Surrealism, Picasso profoundly impacted 20th century art. This is from the short biography at allposters.com.

There are many otherwise good artists who can create a beautiful 2D line drawing, but when trying to give it depth through light, dark, and middle shading values, sometimes they fall short. An excellent exercise for any artist, whether beginner or expert is gray value study. Every color has a value. It can be thought of as intensity or vibrancy as well. If you use a crayon and color with a lot of pressure you will create a deeper value than you would have had you colored lightly with less pressure. The same goes for pencil and they gray values created. It applies to line work as well with hatching and cross-hatching, though the latter can create deeper value simply with more lines spaced closer together. Below you will see an excellent exercise to practice your pencil shading work with.


You simply start by making the first box as dark as you can and make each box subsequently lighter. There are only six boxes in each row. There are actually so many values in between these, but you can challenge yourself later by adding more boxes. For real beginners you may want to start with fewer boxes. Q-tips can also come in handy for blending and picking up some graphite from a heavy area and using it to shade as well. Hatching is simply a sequence of lines moving in the same direction. Like this //////. You can achieve lighter or deeper values based on the heaviness of your lines and the spacing between them. For a lighter value, use lighter lines space further apart. For deeper values, use heavier lines spaced closer together. Cross hatching is very similar to hatching except you use lines that cross each other like this XXXXX. The more layers of lines going in different directions the deeper the value will appear. The tip for hatching applies here as well with pressure and spacing. The final row is reserved for scribbling. Here is where you get to have fun and use any kind of lines you want, just make sure they get lighter as you go. The more pressure you use and the less white space you leave will result in deeper values and vice-versa. This acts as a good warm up for this next project though it is a great thing to practice over and over- just like scales on a musical instrument.

Project Picasso

Materials needed

drawing paper
pencils
sharpie markers
Q-Tips

Procedure

1. Have kids draw a large oval shape. It should take up most of the paper.

2. Have the kids draw curves down the middle of the oval to create a profile. There should be a forehead, nose, lips, and chin. We are creating a view of a profile and a full face. Two points of view to be seen simultaneously. This was often a goal of cubism, creating viewpoint from different planes to be viewed all at the same time.

3. Next have the kids draw in eyes. They can make the eyes shapes any shape they want because this is an abstract project, but to get a more realistic shape, I always tell the kids to start by making a "rainbow curve" on the top under it, to make a "happy face smile"

4. After the eyes are in, have them find the lips and draw a sideways "V"to define the edge of the mouth. Repeat on the other side.

5. Now they can add eyebrows, ears, hair, and a small "C", normally or backwards depending on which direction the profile nose points.

6. Now have them think of 2-3 shapes. I used figure 8's and stars for the slide show.
Have them draw these shapes right over the face. Have them make the shapes very large. The shapes should overlap each other. They can use the sharpies to go over the pencil lines they like, avoiding any they didn't like. When they are done they can erase any lines they don't like and it won't affect the darkened lines.

7. Have them color in each space that has been made from the overlapping lines. There are rules for coloring though. No two same values can touch each other. So no two white or black shapes can touch each other except at the corners. As well no two gray values that are too similar can touch. Encourage kids to put contrasting values next to each other to create more interest and drama. They can use any type of shading technique in this step. What matters is the value. They can use the Q-Tips for blending as I discussed above.

These projects look great mounted or matted with black card stock or mat board.

This is a great book for any aspiring artist. It says it's for kids but any artist could benefit from the lessons in this book.

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