I am very excited. I recieved a Grant from the Las Cruces Public Schools Foundation to purchase 3 Ipads for the Art Room at Columbia Elementary School. I plan on working with fifth grade students to create Stop Motion Animation videos. Thank you to the LCPS Foundation and their support! Grants were awarded at the Oct. 15th School Board Meeting. 14 different projects received grants from the LCPS foundation for this school year!
The Renaissance Faire is coming to Las Cruces! Good news: $10 per adult and kids under 12 receive FREE admission to the Faire. Check out the advance ticket admission fee! I hope to see you there! Crafting Castle Complexities! Students are applying the elements of art: Line, Shape, Texture details, and Creating Space through overlapping shapes.
Oct. 9, 2019: What fun I had teaching 6 lovely ladies how to draw a pastel landscape! We met for two hours and enjoyed making art and refreshments. Thank you to the Dona Ana Arts Council and to Lisa Carlson-McWhorter for hosting this event and inviting me to teach. I am so proud of my students! For most of them, it was the first time they had worked with pastel chalks! Here I am as the happy teacher! Some were able to complete their landscapes. Others went home with beautiful works in progress. Everyone went home with a 12 color pastel set and extra Canson Mi Tientes pastel paper. I had fun creating homemade booklets for them out of Mi Tientes papers for small quick sketches. Thank you ladies for coming to my class!
I will be teaching adults tonight at the Dona Ana Arts Council "Art-Rageous" program. Our subject will be a lovely scene from the Bosque Del Apache Wildlife Refuge. It is a Make and Take Art Project evening with fun and refreshments. This is my reference photo. Step One: Sketching in the Landscape Contour Lines while organizing the compositional shape spaces. I am working on toned Mi-Tientes pastel paper. I utilized an inexpensive set of the "Master's Touch Pastels" . The paper size is 11" x 14" taped to a masonite board with paper padding underneath the pastel paper. I worked with a reference photograph and marked middle of the edges coordinates on the top, bottom and sides of the photo reference and the pastel paper to act as proportional guideline references for placement of the horizon line and interior contour lines of the main landscape forms. Step Two: Laying in the Color Scheme Masses and Shapes while indicating Values. I always try to do this step quickly to set up color relationships to see how the colors will interact with one another. I always begin with the sky and work from the background through the middle ground to the foreground. I look for the darker and middle tone rich hues or colors and their values "beneath the surface" of the color to build up layers of pastel from generally darker value to lighter values and tones. Step 3: Final Stages: I always wonder or reflect on whether or not I "went too far" with my blending technique which tends to be my style. I will probably spray a fixative onto the pastel, and then go back into the pastel painting with pastel pencils to redefine some textures and light and shadow passages. This total process took about 90 minutes. Reflection: I found the "Master's Touch Pastel Set" quite limiting as far as my color choices for this painting. It was a 12 color set. It was challenging to use this limited Pastel Palette. This is the similar pastel palette my students will have to work with in this make and take workshop. I am sort of "flying blindly" as I do not know my students' skill sets nor background knowledge or experience in working with pastels. However, I look forward to meeting them all this evening and having some great Art Fun!
Fourth grade artists at both schools are in the middle of their Architecture Unit: Medieval Castles. They are applying the art elements of Line, Shape, Texture and Space. They are learning to draw" Implied Texture" by adding stone details to their castles. Students traced shapes with pencil to help them design their castles. They applied the following techniques to create a sense of space in their drawings: overlapping shapes, using curved lines to imitate a cylinder tower and turret, basic perspective by having the road to their castle lead the viewer's eye into the space, and applying perspective in the background by diminishing sizes and overlapping ground lines. Grade 3 Artists are Ink Drawing their Jousting Knights! Students "Think with the Ink" as they draw directly with black Ink, (No pencil first! No chance to erase!) If they make an "oops!" they apply the Growth Mindset of an artist and discover they have the power to come up with some creative solutions! Students drew with the elements of Line and Shape and created a sense of SPACE through the use of overlapping and size changes. They also reviewed Line Patterns. The Hero Knight rescuing his "damsel in distress!"
Later posts will show our progress as we employ multi-media: ink, metallic colored pencils, markers, tempera paint AND scratch art to design our shields! More to come..... Again, thanks to Deep Space Sparkle Art Through the Ages Curriculum! |
Here I am with my husband, Timothy, at the beautiful Bosque Del Apache wildlife refuge near Socorro, New Mexico
AuthorCynthia Smith teaches art at Columbia and Sunrise Elementary Schools in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Archives
May 2020
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