Play

Sniff sniff. Last night was the final session of Artful Play, a new class I've been teaching for the past six weeks at Salem Art Association. For our final evening, we Collaged Up a Storm, using techniques I learned from Karen O'Brien while at Artfest last month. It was a bit challenging to get through the process in two hours, but the ladies did it, staying on task and following my directions. As their pieces went through some kinda ugly stages, I kept telling them to "Trust the process." They did.

In the end, everyone was pleased with their creations.








I even joined in and did a demo during the class to illustrate some of the techniques (that's my piece at the beginning of the post). Chirp chrip.

All Dolled Up

Last night was week five of my class at the Salem Art Association, Artful Play. The ladies took a very bare and plain Bendi doll like this:

And transformed the dolls into these little beauties!

Introducing the ladies.

Joanne gave birth to Loretta (she even made Loretta a matching purse!).

Shelby created Flora. What can I say? Yes, her hands are tied behind her back.

From Kathleen's generous heart, came Trumbalina.

Anita made Sofia, in honor of her granddaughter of the same name (with a bit of a Hannah Montana theme going on). Sofia has the sweetest little face!

Beth couldn't join us, but she had her grade-school friend, Suzanne, take her place. Suzanne (did I spell your name correctly, Suzanne?), created LoLo, also named after a granddaughter.

And finally, dear Terri created Corina. Terri ran out of time and needs to finish drawing a face for Corina, but she is so fairy-like and pretty, we hardly noticed.

Mandalas on Vinyl

Thursday night: Artful Play.

Location: Salem Art Association.

The project: Mandalas. On record albums.

Idea for project: Christine Claringbold of Eye Pop Art.

Ready to go.

Hands, lovely hands:

The (nearly) finished mandalas:







And Joanne took her mandala home to finish so I didn't even get to post a preliminary photo . . .

You roll it, and pat it, and mark it with a B . . .

Thursday night was Artful Play at the Salem Art Association and we played artfully with clay, Paper Clay, a very cool medium that air dries light as a feather. During our session we made Life Plaques, little squares that represent who we are (some just made cool little tiles, but I still think they represent the person).

You know how I love hands doing art:




Here are their lovely creations (we missed you, Beth!) - oh, and we've added a clue so Destree will know which tile is Shelby's!






We had a little time to spare, so we just played until our time ran out.





Oh, and in the upcoming weeks we'll be adding paint! Watch out . . .

Artful Play - Makin' a Mess

Last night was week two in my six-week series: Artful Play. It is being held at the Salem Art Association, which is nestled in Bush's Pasture Park (I wrote about SAA and the location last week, so click here if you want a direct link to that post). Since Howard is my wonderful art supply schlepper, we arrived early and ate our dinner in the park at a picnic table just outside the studio. After I got the room set up, I played around with my supplies outside.




We started the evening by doing a little blind contour drawing. In blind contour drawing, you keep your eyes on the object you are drawing, never looking down at your paper (oh, and you also can't lift your pen or pencil). It's tricky. We started by drawing the jester featured in the flowerbed above, moved to a self-portrait, then drew each other. All of these ideas were created by Gretchin Lair of Scarlet Star Studios in Portland and I loved them so much, that I have incorporated them into this class. I didn't take photos of the first two rounds of drawings, but did manage a shot of the drawings they did of each other. They are playful and fun.

After our series of blind contour drawings, we moved into Touch Drawing. This is a technique developed by Deborah Koff-Chapin (those are Deborah's Soul Cards sprinkled on the table in the photos showing our work space - Soul Cards were created from Deborah's touch drawings). I had the privilege of taking a one-day workshop with Deborah back in February, so it was fun to teach her methods after having heard her speak directly about the process (and to spend an entire day creating images myself).

One of my favorite things is images of hands doing art. Here are the ladies immersed in the Touch Drawing process.

Beautiful, beautiful pages of drawings, images, and color. This is a very small sampling of their work.