Saturday, August 10, 2013

Egg Harbor Dovetail Gallery&Studio and WoodOrchard Market

We stopped for a bit of a break while driving from Sturgeon Bay to Ephraim in a quaint little place called Egg Harbor.  I enjoyed a visit at that Dove Tail Studio and Gallery.  Besides unique art items of tiles and metal sculpture, they also have an extensive bird egg collection and world wide egg art.   

http://www.dovetailgallery.com/contact.html

Dovetail Gallery & Studio



http://www.woodorchard.com/


Saturday, July 6, 2013

Painting with Anna

My young friend Anna is back at it for her summer reading lessons that also include bonus time for painting.  She has been inspired by fireworks on the most recently finished piece.




She does plan on giving both of these away to people in her family.  Surely they will be treasured keepsakes.  Next week she'll be starting a new canvas.  I'll try to remember to get some shots of her in action while she is creating.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Making Artist's Palettes

A recent assignment for the fourth graders in my art room has been sculpting clay artist's palettes.  It is of high interest since it involves using the earth clay and firing in the kiln.

The day that the project was introduced, we took notes together on the process of making the sculpture.  They knew that they had the opportunity to form the slab inside of a plastic lid that was lined with paper towel.  The towel liner was used to allow the clay to release easily from the lid.

 We formed the clay slab base and attached the paint spots in the same forty-five minute period.   The fourth graders usually had bits of clay left over from trimming the palette shape while it was in the lid to a "lake" or "pond-like" shape.  They often had a bit more if they decided to cut a thumb hole as well.   We left them to dry during the long weekend and they were fired over Easter vacation. 

Today was the big painting day!  We started by using watercolor on the bottom of the palette.  That gets them going and allows the children to realize the absorbency of the bisque clay.  It is unique that the paint dries so quickly.  It allows multiple layers to be put upon each other and the dots of color a clear and well defined. 

They could continue onto the top surface with the watercolor to make the palette look very painterly.  From there I encouraged the students to switch to the more opaque acrylic for defining the sculpted spots of paint.