Pen & Mouse Club House Artists

Still Life

2012-01-26T22:12:00.001-06:00

We are trying something different with the Club House Artists. Still life drawings. I mean really measuring for the correct size, proportion, and relationships between the objects. The Club House Artists were a bit quiet as they used their pencils to measure every line.

The homework project was titled: Two people with their pet using a still life. Here's their solutions:

And here is the first still life drawing the class worked on. I only got one image from the class as many didn't finish their drawings.

Animals

2012-01-19T21:59:00.000-06:00

Just some fun horsin' around at the barn drawing horses and barn cats.

Elf On the Shelf

2011-12-07T21:09:00.000-06:00

The kids had a great idea tonight when I asked them if they had something in mind to draw. The Elf on the Shelf! How fun!

November Drawings

2011-11-16T23:48:00.000-06:00

I'm hoping not to go this long again without a post. It took a long time going through all the wonderful drawings the club house artists have been working on. Check out their awesome work! (Remember you can click on the images to see them larger.)

October Fun

2011-10-26T20:37:00.001-05:00

It's getting squirrely in here!

2011-09-29T00:01:00.000-05:00

A new member joined our Wednesday night club house artists so we started out with a quick warm up to get her up to speed. We move quickly here not to waste a single grain of drawing time. She did well and hang on till things got a bit squirrely. Tis the season.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a horse, it's a COW!

2011-09-21T21:32:00.001-05:00

Ok, so this is how it always happens. I go into class with a plan of drawing something and as we are drawing it turns into something totally different. The frog drawing was a warm up to show "surface." Then at the request of some of the Club House Artists we started a horse drawing, except it then turned into a My Little Pony drawing, but in the end it looked more like a baby calf than anything else. So we added a barn and lots of hay to cover "texture", and "Hey!"[pun intended] it turned out really cute. I think one of their best drawings and compositions.

Raising the "woof"

2011-09-15T00:03:00.000-05:00

Today we built a house. A dog house. The Club House Artists learned about size, shading, shadows, horizon line, and contour.

Hedgy the Hedgehog

2011-09-14T21:30:00.000-05:00

Hedgy the Hedgehog has been on my daughter's mind all week, so it was easy to decide the drawing subject for the night. It worked perfectly for the session on TEXTURE! Texture and overlapping were important tool box words tonight.

Fantastic Five

2011-09-08T15:37:00.000-05:00

We started a new Homeschooling Club House Artist group today. I'm going to call them my Fantastic Five as they are all awesome sweet talented artists.

Back to Drawing

2011-09-07T19:23:00.000-05:00

After a long summer break, the Club House Artists came together again. A bit rusty on the "tool box" words, but it slowly came back to them. One Club Houser even did homework before the first class! That's exciting. We also had my youngest join us for the night. She kept up pretty well. Enjoy.

Spring has sprung!

2011-05-02T21:32:00.000-05:00

Spring fever has hit the Club House Artists. Chicks and chocolate bunnies filled their heads so we did what any artist would do, we drew them!

Sandy squirrel was such a hit with my one class that we decided to draw her in all of my classes. And because we were thinking of squirrels it brought us around to talking about dogs and dog houses. The jelly fish are a perfect example of "size."

Under the Sea Fun

2011-04-13T21:10:00.001-05:00

Tonight the Club House Artists learned about "action lines" when we drew our kissing orcas. They started the drawing with an action line so the orcas would show lots of movement. I think they drew much better orcas than their teacher today. Secondly, we had fun drawing more jellyfish but added Sandy Squirrel, SpongeBob's friend. She's having a blast riding the jellies. Her body was a good example of a cylinder.

Rockets!!

2011-04-07T22:06:00.000-05:00

Let's celebrate our awesome rocket drawings with an awesome cake drawing! With each new group I always enjoy the cake drawing. It's such an easy drawing to teach and looks so advance and nice. The kids like drawing cakes for homework after they come back from this session. It's fun to see what types of cakes they come up with.

Still Life

2011-04-07T22:01:00.000-05:00

I gave the Club House Artists a test. I arranged a still life on the table and asked them to draw it without help from me. They did really well. :-)

More Bananas

2011-04-07T21:58:00.001-05:00

We had so much fun drawing bananas yesterday and the dragon in the mailbox that my Thurs. night crew drew the same thing. This dragon is being mailed to Germany!

Here are their drawings from the previous two classes. Two talented young ladies.

King Banana

2011-04-06T21:53:00.000-05:00

We had a fun little class today. We decided to get silly and draw a banana. The King Banana! He was happy he wasn't going to be eaten. Toolbox words: Thickness, Action Lines, Shading, Shadow

Then we tried to mail a dragon. Isn't he cute? Toolbox words: Foreshortened, Overlapping, Shadow, Shading, Texture

Dr. Seuss's Birthday

2011-03-05T20:50:00.001-06:00

I had other plans for our two drawings when I came to class today, but the Club House Artists tweaked them a bit and we ended up drawing to the theme of Dr. Seuss. Thank goodness for the iPad so we could quickly look up the characters to make sure we drew them correctly. They ended up being really cute drawings. Do you think you can figure out what my original drawing plans were? (Answer at the bottom.)

Answer: Magic Hat with Rabbit, Princess and the Pea

Point of perspective

2011-02-23T22:31:00.001-06:00

I read a sentence from a story and asked the Club House Artists how would they illustrate the story. We talked about what angle to draw our illustration according to the words in the sentence. Here's the story:

"Flynn look up at the tall tower where Rapunzel was waiting."

As you can see the Club House Artists drew the tower from the perspective of Flynn looking up at the tower. They made sure that you could see underneath the tower structure instead of from above.

Our second drawing the Club House Artists picked. Since they were studying about the Presidents for President's Day, they all wanted to draw Abe Lincoln. They were able to tell me all kinds of facts about the president and even details about his letters he would hide in his hat. So we decided to focus on his tall hat as if it were in a museum for all to see and as a reminder of his letters he drew a letter on the outside of his hat. It's always interesting to see what they come up with for our drawings each week. Sometimes I have ideas on what we might draw and other times it starts with a sentence and goes from there.

Personalized Andriod

2011-02-19T22:16:00.000-06:00

The current cool thing is to take the Andriod mascot and turn him into yourself by adding clothing, hair, and accessories to him. We thought we'd join in on the fun.

Then the Club House Artists had some fun drawing a block of cheese with some furry friends.

Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T22:11:00.001-06:00

These Valentine's Day drawings are too cute for words. Enjoy!

Three, Two, One, Smile!

2011-02-09T21:13:00.000-06:00

We continued to talk about breaking down complex objects into three basic 3D shapes so that it makes it easy for the Club House Artists to draw ANYTHING! The bug viewer box was such a cute drawing that I decided to have this group draw it as well. They had fun drawing the little bugs inside and giving them food and friends.

Then we drew my camera that was sitting on the table. I asked the Club House Artists what were the basic shapes of the camera and which one we should draw first. We ran out of time to completely finish our Valentine Camera drawings, but they did an awesome job! Enjoy!

New Club House Artists

2011-02-07T00:12:00.000-06:00

I was really excited about our new Club House Artists. In fact, two of our artists are return members, so it was a treat to have them back in the class. We have a lot of talent in this group which makes my job a bit easier. I'm looking forward to some great drawings with this group since it seems like I can try some more challenging drawings. Check out their first two weeks of drawings!

Crazy Mac n Cheese

2011-01-19T21:39:00.000-06:00

It was a fun night with the Club House Artists, although half of them were out sick. I hated that they missed because we drew such cute and fun drawings. They also learned a new "tool box" term. Grouping.
Here I thought drawing simple macaroni would be quick and easy as a warm up drawing and it turned out to be very frustrating for them. The angles were hard to grasp, but they finally got it. The noodles were supposed to be jumping, singing, and dancing. Then we decided they were dancing because they were trying to get out of the hot bowl before the person ate them!
Next we tried a grouping of frogs. We discussed how a grouping should be similar objects that go together.

Value Scales and Practice

2011-01-12T20:25:00.000-06:00

The Club House Artists needed a review on the value scale and shading practice so we practiced on a simple cylinder and also created a value scale to show the value steps. I'm also posting some Christmas manger drawings from the holiday season. Enjoy.

December Catch Up

2010-12-09T18:24:00.000-06:00

Here are drawings from the past couple of weeks.

These are my students from my homeschooling group.

Presents Galore!

2010-12-09T18:16:00.000-06:00

For the holidays both classes drew gifts. One class learned how to stack cubes and the other focused on putting objects inside of each other.

Super Letters

2010-11-17T21:48:00.001-06:00

Today we focused on creating 3D letters. We've spent a lot of time in the past on objects but have never really touched on how to draw letters. I showed the Club House Artists how to create two different styles of 3D lettering. One was the chisel look the other we called Super Letters, much like Superman style lettering. I also introduced a new tool box term, Perspective.
In the past our perspective of most of our objects has been beside or slightly above the object, but today we tried drawing from underneath the object. Our perspective changed and instead of seeing the tops of our boxes we could see the bottom.

Legoman Army

2010-11-04T18:26:00.000-05:00

This week was full of hundreds of drawings by my students. It was overwhelming to see so many kids draw so well with one lesson. There were three themes, presents, tiki huts, and Lego people.

My Wednesday class had a special challenge this week. I had them take the same basic drawing of the Lego man and change it into a different object. They choose a newspaper stand. This was a great exercise to show them how easy it is to draw anything by using the same basic 3D shapes.

Long October, Lots of Halloween themes

2010-11-03T00:18:00.002-05:00

Having five weekends in October created a multitude of Halloween themed drawings. It was almost hard to come up with ideas. . .it I asked the students. That's how we came up with a snake in the cheese and Dracula's empty coffin. I'm playing a bit of catch up so I'll just post all the most recent drawings by the Club House Artists. Enjoy!

Halloween Fun

2010-10-16T22:18:00.000-05:00

Today we decided to draw some Halloween fun. We warmed up by drawing some Halloween candy falling into our trick or treat pillow case bag. The Club House Artists are going to finish this drawing and fill it with as much candy as they can create in 3D! We all remember the dum dum sucker with a tissue wrapped around it so that it looks like a ghost, right?

Dino Town

2010-10-03T23:45:00.000-05:00

It's DinoTown fun. We have flying dinos and racing fast dinos. We focused on the sphere and cylinder again to demonstrate how you can draw anything from the basic 3D shapes.

Under the sea with three

2010-10-03T22:59:00.000-05:00

The Club House Artists learned how to draw cylinders today. We started off with a basic cylinder and then they learned how to stack them to create a sand castle. To keep with our ocean them we drew half spheres and created a jellyfish family. They learned about size and overlapping when creating their totally awesome jellyfish drawings. Good job Club House Artists!

Barrels of Fun

2010-09-22T19:59:00.001-05:00

Today we talked about overlapping, size, and contour. We discussed how to make an illustration more interesting by adding overlapping objects instead of drawing them side by side.

Next we took this drawing from a Disney artist and recreated it. Again we talked about overlapping, contour, and adding folds to create more 3D looking drawings. I think they did pretty well!

5 IMPORTANT LESSONS

2010-09-19T21:56:00.000-05:00

A PENCIL MAKER TOLD THE PENCIL 5 IMPORTANT LESSONS JUST BEFORE PUTTING IT IN THE BOX :

1.) EVERYTHING YOU DO WILL ALWAYS LEAVE A MARK.

2.) YOU CAN ALWAYS CORRECT THE MISTAKES YOU MAKE.

3.) WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS WHAT IS INSIDE OF YOU.

4.) IN LIFE, YOU WILL UNDERGO PAINFUL SHARPENINGS,
WHICH WILL ONLY MAKE YOU BETTER.

5.) TO BE THE BEST PENCIL, YOU MUST ALLOW YOURSELF
TO BE HELD AND GUIDED BY THE HAND THAT HOLDS YOU.

We all need to be constantly sharpened. This parable may encourage you to know that you are a special person, with unique God-given talents and abilities. Only you can fulfill the purpose which you were born to accomplish. Never allow yourself to get discouraged and think that your life is insignificant and cannot be changed and, like the pencil, always remember that the most important part of who you are, is what's inside of you.

A new session, a new group of Club House Artists

2010-09-19T15:01:00.001-05:00

We had a new group of Club House Artists join the club. Another talented group! They learned how to draw a cube and learned the following "tool box" words: foreshortened square, horizon line, shading, shadows, and contour. Lots to take in on the first day but as you can see they did great!

Jellyfish World

2010-09-15T20:57:00.000-05:00

Today we talked about size. I had the Club House Artists put their hand on their face. I asked them if they could see much in the room with their hands covering their face. They said no. We then pulled our hands away from our faces and watched how our hands got smaller. This helped them understand how objects appear smaller the farther they are away from us.

We also talked about overlapping. One object in front of another. Both of these tool box words are important in drawing in 3D.

Next we have Marshmellow. He was trying to multitask. Painting the ceiling at the same time as the floor, but he got carried away and started to lose his balance.

Circus Peanut

2010-08-25T20:24:00.001-05:00

The Club House Artists pretended they were at the circus watching the amazing elephants do tricks. We talked about overlapping and adding wrinkles to help make our drawings look more 3D.

Summer Camp: Castles

2010-08-18T22:31:00.000-05:00

The Club House Artists rose to the challenge. Castles was the theme and the Club House Artists mastered it and were knighted by the Queen pencil. This was another three day drawing that the Club House Artists worked diligently on to complete. It was really complicated with all the walls and angles. They learned that they have to be good architects when drawing buildings as well as good artists.

Sorry for the darkness of these drawings. I wanted to make sure you could see all the details.
Did you think a 5 yr old could draw something like this?

These Club House Artists ROCK!

The Queen Bean

2010-08-18T20:41:00.000-05:00

Today a new Club House Artist joined our little group. She did really well for her first time and first drawing. We started out with a cube and turned it into a simple box throne for the Queen Bean. She's ordering her artist subjects to draw a more comfortable throne, perhaps one with a cushion and lower arm rests. . .

The Manor

2010-08-04T20:13:00.001-05:00

The Club House Artists haven't drawn too many houses or buildings in the Wednesday class so we decided to draw the same manor that the summer camp artists drew. We talked about how you can easily build houses by thinking just like a construction worker. One block at a time, then building on to each object, and finally adding the details to make it a house/castle/or a whatever.

Summer Camps: Wacky Neighborhoods

2010-07-29T22:14:00.000-05:00

What a delightful group of Club House Artists. It was nearly impossible to get this group to stop drawing at the end of class. They even drew through their break! The theme was wacky neighborhoods which indeed turned into a "Where's Waldo" super drawing page. Keep in mind the sheets of paper are poster size and not regular letter size. Spend some time and enjoy all the great details the artists drew in their wacky mountain neighborhoods. (Click on the images to see all the great detail!)

The following are details.

I'm lovin' the awesome skyscraper that was giving to my art classes. Cool!

Monkey Business

2010-07-29T22:00:00.000-05:00

The Club House Artists were craving icecream. Craving it so much that they wanted to draw ice cream. So I went to the freezer, scooped the last scoop of ice cream and placed it in a tall glass. I had them draw the ice cream and then when they weren't looking I gave it away. Next week after reading this post they're going to come to class with angry looks on their faces. It was only fair, but their drawings of their ice cream sundae's look good enough to eat!

Then we had some fun playing with a jack-in-the-box som to sock monkey toy. I wanted to test them to see if they could copy a still life using the tool box words and skills they've learned so far.

Howdy Cowboy!

2010-07-28T20:24:00.001-05:00

In honor of Toy Story 3, the Club House Artists tried their hand at drawing toys. They find it difficult drawing faces, but I like the character they put into their version of Woody, which we're calling, Woody's cousin and our own aliens. Enjoy!

SUMMER CAMP -- Space Stations

2010-06-30T20:13:00.001-05:00

The Club House Artists explored space for their three day, 3D art camp. We have everything from pencil rockets to little green aliens. We had a fun time creating our space worlds. The Club House Artists learned how to plan a drawing, divide it into smaller sections, and even divide each object into smaller building blocks. I recall the looks on the eyes of some of the Club House Artists when I told them the plan for the three days. After the first day one artist exclaimed that it was much easier than he thought. He agreed that breaking down each object into simple shapes is the best plan for a successful drawing. They now realize they can draw anything in 3D using a basic cube, cylinder, spheres, and cones as building blocks. (click on the image to see details.)

Character Fun

2010-05-29T00:59:00.000-05:00

For our last class of the session we had some fun drawing two different creatures. A mouse in a teacup and a dragon on top of a castle tower. Both drawings required the same basic shapes to start. Foreshortened circles.

I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream for ICECREAM!

2010-05-15T23:34:00.000-05:00

It just sounded so good today to have a HUGE ice cream sundae. We talked about how to use boxes to create vehicles, like an ice cream truck. I mentioned it was like we were sculpting a truck out of a block of wood. One Club House Artist got really excited as he started to notice how the box was turning into a truck. He said it was "COOL!"

The ice cream sundaes were delicious! Thanks Ice Cream Truck!

Magical Places

2010-05-13T22:46:00.000-05:00

The Club House Artists took a journey into their imaginations today. I let them give the direction of the drawings with no end in mind. One artist wanted to draw a squirrel so that led us to drawing a magical tree with a squirrel hanging out in the hole. We talked about how nature is asymmetrical and we have to retrain our human brains, that like things symmetrical, to think asymmetrical. (I mention how difficult this was for me after I drew the roots symmetrically just by my human nature and had to add an extra root to the right side to change it.)

Trees are very hard to draw so I give 5 pencils up for their great efforts! [You should have seen mine!]

The next drawing we started off practicing drawing four pencils going in different directions. The Club House Artists took it from there and turned it into a space drawing. So much fun!

A Club House Artist and I were working on drawing princesses. Here's her drawing of Ariel. We talked about "S curves" when drawing Ariel's hair and also on the cheek and face.

A cake for Mom

2010-05-08T15:20:00.001-05:00

We practiced our foreshortened circles by drawing tables. Then we decided to learn how to stack the tables. First we stacked round tables and then we tried square tables. The round tables started to look like a cat tree, so we that's what we turned it into. Meow!

After practicing stacking our cylinders we tried making a special cake for Mom for Mother's Day.

Magic for Mom

2010-05-06T15:36:00.001-05:00

The Club House Artists made a request to draw the brooms and buckets from Mickey's Sorcerer's Apprentice. The buckets are a great way to practice cylinders. We enjoyed the gumball machines so well from the other class, we decided to also draw the Mother's Day gumball machine.

Last but not least a homework assignment. Check out the space machine!

And it's only their second class!

2010-05-06T01:13:00.001-05:00

I love it when a new crop of artists join. I love seeing how fast they catch on to the whole 3D idea and run with it. After one class, our new members were already trying their best to apply the 3D techniques to their homework drawings.

Can you believe this is their second class? We have another talented group of Club House Artists!

Things can change on a dime.

2010-05-06T00:59:00.002-05:00

I'm thinking of changing the name of the class to improv drawing class. Sometimes I let the Club House Artists guide the direction of the class by a group brainstorm. I might start the idea by naming an object that we could draw and then ask for a story. As the Club House Artists start mentioning things they like, somehow I get these crazy ideas for drawings and we go with it. Example, today, I had in mind we were going to draw the most beautiful snow globe for our Mothers for Mother's Day. Half way through the drawing while drawing the base of our snow globe I looked at our drawing and said it looks like a gumball machine. Then one of the Club House Artists mentioned something else about gumball machines and I thought it would be cool to put little sayings on each gumball for Mom. So we turned our snow globe into a gumball machine. One artist was still wondering how we went from snow globe to gumball machine and I just smiled and said,"We all came up with the idea together, right?" (Really the truth is my brain won't stop thinking so if I get off track, sometimes I just keep going that direction. Snow globe. Gumball machine. . .same thing right?)

Here are a couple of the Club House Artists Race Car Dinosaurs. They didn't finish them in class and took them home.

The big race

2010-04-29T23:08:00.001-05:00

We talked about Overlapping and Size today. Two great tool box words. I loved the dinosaur race cars that we drew in class today. It was so much fun creating the story around the big race. One Club House Artist really got into and showed great action in her drawing. Which dinosaur do you think will win the race?

For the warm up drawings I let the Club House Artists experiment with stacking their cylinders and cubes to see what they could come up with.

Paint and Pencils

2010-04-24T14:41:00.001-05:00

Upon arrival to the Hain House today I noticed a lot of people carrying painting supplies. Because it was painting supplies it confused me at first since I was about to teach my drawing classes. Then when I walked up to the front door I began to notice that we had a problem. They were not there for class, but to paint the entire building. Schedule conflict! Eeek! So I want to thank the parents of my new students for being very patient and understanding of the scramble to find a space that we could draw in. It really helps in situations like these when everyone has a cool head.

As though that wasn't enough to cause confusion, I later found out that each of my families were directed to go to the the Village Hall for the class and not the Hain House. If it wasn't for the Kindermusik instructor, we would have had a mess. She was able to direct everyone to the location of the class. In the end, the new Club House Artists were able to draw their two drawings and did quite well. I believe we have another talented group that makes it even more fun to teach.

Former Student Wins Art Contest!

2010-04-24T14:17:00.000-05:00

A former PMCHA won a local art contest. We were so proud to see her drawing announced as the winner for the LITH Arbor Day poster contest winner. Awesome job Brooke! Check out the article here!

Wack-A-Drawing

2010-04-22T19:39:00.000-05:00

Class drawings sometimes come from a quick brainstorming session with the Club House Artists. Today we combined several ideas into an arcade game, Wack-A-Mole. Such a fun idea to practice our foreshortened squares.

Fuzzy Life Drawings

2010-04-21T21:43:00.002-05:00

The studio has a new mascot. A ferret named, Zula. The Club House Artists drew Zoola in her cage and then having fun with a box. They were distracted by the fun of the ferret, but still managed to copy her cage pretty well in 3D. I like the idea of having them learn how to draw from life. Zoola will probably be the subject of many more drawings for the Club House Artists.

Space the final frontier. . .

2010-04-15T16:14:00.002-05:00

Today was the last day of the current session. It was a beautiful day outside and many kids were out flying kites and playing with balloons. We were inspired by all the activity and decided to do flying objects as well. For the warm up drawing we drew a quick drawing of a hot air balloon. We spent the rest of the class drawing our bubble space villages. I let them come up with their own drawings and only instructed if someone had a question. They came up with some great ideas that we all added.

I had so much fun that I decided to post my sketch as well this week.

Characters

2010-04-14T22:10:00.000-05:00

The Club House Artists can be a bunch of characters, but this time they drew them. We have everything from Princesses, SpongeBob, and even ELVIS!

Can you guess where one of our Club House Members went during her Spring Break?

Let's take a Vacation!

2010-04-08T14:08:00.001-05:00

It's April and it's snowing so the Club House Artists and I drew the good old family truckster and loaded up the top rack with our luggage and we were OFF!

Warm Ups and Homework

2010-03-25T14:18:00.001-05:00

Always a fun warm up drawing, the sunken treasure.

These drawings are brought to you by the Letters, E, M, and L.

Dragons!

2010-03-25T14:10:00.003-05:00

The Club House Artists worked hard on their 3D castles. They learned how to combine their boxes, cylinders, and cones to create more complicated drawings like the castle in the sky. No castle is complete without a dragon, knight, and perhaps a princess in need of rescue.

I think the Club House Artists really enjoyed this project.

Here's a really awesome homework.

A Princess Night

2010-03-24T19:51:00.003-05:00

A last minute change of plans created a night of princess drawings. The Club House Artists needed something different for once.I showed them how to start a drawing for a princess or any character, hopefully it will help when they try on their own. They did really well!

Here's an example of how a Club House Artist used the base drawing to create a different princess.

Roundtable Sale

2010-03-18T15:20:00.000-05:00

While walking into the building where we meet to draw, I noticed a row of picnic tables all stacked from winter. The first one was just placed normal, but then the rest were standing like a row of elephants on the first table. Then there were two men eating a picnic lunch on the one half of the first table. I wanted to take a picture, but it gave me an idea for our warm up drawing. Our theme was castles and dragons so for a quick warm up to practice our foreshortened circles, shading, and thickness I had the Club House Artists draw King Arthur's round table. Then we stacked as many round tables as we could on top of each other. This was a great exercise to get us warmed up for our longer drawing. The second drawing was not completed in class today. We're hoping to finish it next week and we can't wait to share.

One of the completed homework assignments was this Flying Dragon by M: This dragon is not one to mess with as he's flying high in the sky to capture his lunch. . .a HELICOPTER! Check out the great textures and details.

Luck of the Irish

2010-03-17T23:36:00.000-05:00

The Club House Artists had a test today. I asked them to draw the pot of gold for the lephercaun. They all did really well except one thing was missing from each drawing to really make the pots look 3D. Thickness. They all forgot to add thickness to the rim of their pots. This was a good exercise so I could see what we need to focus more on. I may do this more often.

I love the next group of drawings. We haven't explored much with vehicles, so I thought it would be fun to start to show them how to draw 3D cars, vans, trucks, etc. We started out with the easiest -- the bus. The Club House Artists added character to them with eyes and mouths.

Here are the homework drawings for this week:

A message from God by A: God told the princess she needed to eat more fruit in her diet. That night the princess decided she would try but she wasn't too happy about it. The painting in the background is of the princess and her prince and their little baby.

Phil was left in charge by E:Phil was left in charge of his little sister. He decided to go and drink all the Sprite cans, a glass of milk, and then the cookies. He forgot to feed his dog.

What was in the present?

2010-03-12T00:30:00.002-06:00

Last week we drew "The present I always wanted." So what was the present that they always wanted?

I love these drawings. Each one has such personality.

I only had one taker for the homework assignment in this class.

Homework: Flying Presents for ME! What a great thing to have dozens of flying presents all for me, me, me! The horizon line is no where in sight as the page is filled with presents. I like how he used different sizes of presents to really make the drawing look 3D. Great job!

A Lucky Day

2010-03-12T00:16:00.001-06:00

Homework. Dare I say the word? Homework? In art class? Yes. And now, I'm offering incentives to motivate the kids to practice their drawings. I had two takers for the first week's assignment. I'm using homework as a chance for the students to teach their fellow Club House Artists what they have learned. This will also teach them how to be presenters and how to be a good audience. I would like to spend more time having the students critique and compliment their fellow artists drawings, but right now we don't have time in class. We are also focusing more on the story behind their drawings. No longer just drawing something for the sake, but putting a story behind it. We already do it without thinking as most drawing ideas are created during class. (Remember to click on the drawings to view them larger.)

Homework One by S, age 6: Zhu Zhu pet land. She said her drawing was based on a still life of her toy set that she set up for the drawing. She made sure to use contour lines around her tunnels and shadows to help give the 3D feel. I like how she used placement on the page to show depth and also making for a nice composition. Awesome job!

Homework Two by A, age 6: St. Patty's Day Cake Explosion. Homework is the chance to use color. We spend the class focusing on the skills and techniques and don't have time for color. The story is poor Mom spent a lot of time making this special St. Patty's day cake and her daughter decided to jump inside it. Mom was not very pleased. To make the cake look 3D she said she used her foreshortened circles, shading, shadow, and a horizon line. Very creative.

Great job Club House Artists! Moving on with our upcoming holiday, St. Patrick's day, we decided to plant some lucky clovers in hopes of finding gold. In fact, we placed a small gold piece in the planter hoping it multiples for us soon! The Club House Artists did really well adding thickness to the rim of the planters and making sure to stagger their plants around the soil. Their shading techniques are improving as well.

Something a bit more challenging, aligning two objects on the same space by using guidelines. Then they learned how to use a cube and turn it into a piece of furniture. The stories that went with each artists drawings were great! See if you can imagine their stories?

A fresh group

2010-03-04T21:08:00.000-06:00

Today we had a couple new Club House members join the club. We quickly reviewed a handful of "tool box" words to get them started. When I asked for ideas for what we could turn a cube into the first idea was present. This is a good practice drawing to start with when first learning how to draw in 3D so I always like this choice.

I love the details in these drawings. It's fun to see the patterns they come up with and who will they put on the gift tag? Next, we continued a cube discovery journey and decided to draw a birdhouse. Drawing the cube became easier to this time around. They also learned how to put a roof on a cube that looks stable enough to hold the rest of the house in the tree by it's tiny little hook.

Zhu Zhu Land

2010-03-03T19:38:00.000-06:00

The Club House Artists learned three new "tool box" words tonight. Overlapping, Density, and Repetition. We practiced drawing small rocks in water and overlapped the rocks. As the rocks went further away from us we drew lighter lines and less detail.

Then the fun began as we drew our Zhu Zhu pet land.

Olympic Drawings

2010-02-24T22:38:00.000-06:00

These kids are Olympic Artists! We decided to do our own Pen & Mouse Club House spin on the Olympics with some turtle shredding snowboarders. Then of course, they took the gold. The Club House Artists used their foreshortened circles to draw the turtles shredding up some snow. They made sure to tilt the horizon line to indicate that they where snowboarding down a steep slope.

In their medal ceremony drawings they had to pay careful attention to alignment on their podium steps so their athletes wouldn't slip off.

A little bit of love

2010-02-03T20:56:00.003-06:00

As we roll into February we couldn't help but to think about that special holiday, Valentine's Day. The Club House Artists started class out with designing their very own Valentine's Day cards complete with a rose in a glass vase. They learned how they could make flat every day objects 3D: a card that is slightly opened, a card standing up, and a card on it's sides like a tent.

Then the girls decided to draw some love birds in our little nest of baby birds. Some are not so lovey as they seem to be starving! "Mom, bring us some foooooood!"

It's cold outside, part 2

2010-01-29T21:19:00.002-06:00

Here's part two of the igloo session. The Club House Artists seemed to have fun with this one.

It's cold outside!

2010-01-20T22:55:00.000-06:00

It's January. It's cold outside. It only seemed fitting to draw an igloo. Perhaps a fire and a sled. The Club House Artists worked hard drawing all the elements to their winter drawing that we didn't have time to shade and add shadows. They promised me that they will for homework. Here's a glimpse of their warm up drawings. I can't wait to post their final drawings next week!

Three weeks ago during a snow storm we only had two Club House Artists. I had chocolate cake on the brain so we drew a nice still life of cake and ice cream. Here's one of the Club House Artist's still life.

Yum!

Hello Lego Friends

2010-01-13T22:08:00.001-06:00

Hello Pen & Mouse Club House Artists! Blogging has been hard lately because the blogging software has been acting funny on my computer. I can't figure out if I have a virus or if my web browser is not liking the idea of blogging? So please be patient with any wacky layouts or weird looking entries.

The Club House Artists explored Legoland today. They took their knowledge and I had them tell me how to draw a 3D lego block. We used our basic 3D shapes that we've been drawing for many weeks now and it was very easy for them to draw a realistic looking lego block on their page. One Club House Artist even said, "WOW, it's like it's just sitting on my sketchbook!"

Next, we drew our Legoland friends. For homework the Club House Artists are to draw more Lego friends. I'm interested in seeing what they come up with.

Gingerbread Treats

2009-12-17T11:59:00.000-06:00

The Club House Artists finished out the year with some gingerbread treats. They learned how to turn a 2D object into a 3D object by adding thickness and shading. We used the gingerbread person as an example. First they drew a flat 2d gingerbread person. Then they added thickness to the left side. To finish the drawing they added shading, shadows, and the horizon line.

Next we practiced our house building skills by drawing a Gingerbread house. They really enjoyed coming up with the different candies to decorate it with. I believe this was a low calorie, less mess way! Enjoy the holidays and keep drawing!

Everyone's dream holiday machine!

2009-12-05T14:30:00.000-06:00

It's every parent's dream holiday machine. A present wrapping machine! The Club House Artists focused on making sure the objects they place on their boxes followed the contour lines of the box. Contour line was an important tool box word today. Oh, and Grandma must love these kids because she sent five more packages by post.

Our First Art Show!

2009-12-05T13:47:00.000-06:00

The Club House Artists have worked so hard to prepare for the first Club House art show. They were all pleased to see their artwork matted and hung at the Village Hall. The parents were excited too. We're hoping to have many more art shows to come. This will most likely be up for the rest of this month. Go check it out if you haven't!

Holiday Spirit

2009-12-03T00:02:00.000-06:00

Boy, it was sure nice drawing with the Club House Artists again. I missed them during the Thanksgiving break. We decided to get into the holiday spirit by warming up with a drawing of the present that grandmother sent us. All wrapped up in brown packing paper sitting on our doorstep. Can you imagine what she sent?

While we were in the present drawing mode we switched over to the North Pole and checked out how the Elves wrapped their presents. They use a super cool wrapping machine to wrap all the presents for santa.

The machines were having technical difficulties so the repair Elf had to step in and correct the issue. See if you can find him in the bottom of the machine?

(Remember to click on the drawings to see them larger)

Are you my mother?

2009-11-14T13:10:00.001-06:00

When looking at today's baby dinosaur drawings, I'm reminded of the book, "Are you my mother?" We used foreshortened circles to draw an egg that had been cracked opened by our baby T-Rex.

Most of this class has never drawn a foreshortened square. The Club House Artists learned how to use their guide dots to start their foreshortened square and they turned it into a stone. They also learned about "size", another tool box word. They also created a Flintstone inspired drawing. To demonstarte size, we drew a large dinosaur that took up most of the page. Then we drew a much smaller dinosaur behind our large one creating a sense of space.

Some super awesome dinos Club House Artists!

StoneAge Dinos

2009-11-11T20:45:00.001-06:00

The Club House Artists learned a new tool box word tonight. They learned how "size" can help they drawings have depth which creates 3D space. We decided to go with a dinosaur theme and tried drawing a baby dinosaur hatching from it's egg as a warm up. Then we discussed how to use size in a drawing. We drew a dinosaur right in front of us and made him take up the whole page and then drew a dinosaur much smaller behind him to make him look further away. We created a "Flintstone" world with our dinosaurs so we could also practice our forshorten squares and cubes. (Don't forget to click on the drawings to enlarge them.)

A Salute to our Club House Artists

2009-11-07T18:15:00.000-06:00

A couple of our Club House Artists are on vacation visiting a tropical paradise. We decided to pretend we were there too with our pina coladas and coconuts. The Club House Artists learned about overlapping to help make their still life more interesting and 3D!

Then we also jumped into Super Mario Land and drew our own version. The Club House Artists had a lot of fun with this project. They loved adding all the characters and 1 UPS!

Pipe Dreams

2009-11-04T22:35:00.001-06:00

Our 6's gained another 6 to the group this week. Boy, she didn't miss a beat with this group! We kept telling her throughout the class that by her drawings it seems like she's been with us since the beginning.

A previous student wanted to draw Super Mario Bros. after a class on foreshortened circles. I had him do it for homework since we didn't get a chance to in class. When thinking about introducing foreshortened circles to new students I decided that we would finally do our version of Super Mario Bros. It worked perfectly for our new students to grasp the idea. We had a lot of fun creating our version of Mario land. Enjoy! (Click to enlarge drawings)

A new session

2009-10-31T13:43:00.002-05:00

The first class is always the best in each session. I love the transformation from their test drawings to the two drawings they complete in class. The parents have this look of shock on their face when they see how their son/daughter's drawings look so real. This group was no different and just as talented. We introduced foreshortened circles to the group by learning how to draw a hat box for grandma. Grandma would be proud.
(Click on the image to enlarge.)

Grandma enjoyed her hat box, but was quite surprised to see a frog popping out of the candy caudrin on Halloween! Eeeeek!

Check out the extras and details the Club House Artists added to their frog in the caudrin drawings. J added the frog's and the bird's shadows. T wanted to make sure her frog had it's last supper before. . .well, you know. Great job Club House Artists and Happy Halloween!

Halloween Still Lifes

2009-10-29T20:30:00.000-05:00

My six's tried something different tonight. Since they've had about ten sessions I thought they could tackle drawing from an object. They've learned by now that every object can be broken down into simple shapes. So I tested them. Here's the two still life objects. The mouse in the mug (my favorite!) and the frogs in the cauldrin.

There are several challenges still with shading. One, shading with the sides of their pencils and two, shading from light to dark.

We also talked about the importance of "Overlapping" another tool box word. We made sure the handles on our mugs were overlapping the side of the mug to make it look more 3D! (Don't forget to click on the artwork to see a larger version.)

The Club House Artists did a fantastic job with the still life drawings. Way to go girls!

Arrgh, where's me treasure?

2009-10-22T19:36:00.000-05:00

Arrgh, where's me treasure? There it is in the deep blue ocean. I'll put me fins on and take a dive.

The Club House Artists started session two with a treasure hunt. We drew our treasure maps and then the treasure! They enjoyed adding all the extras and details to these drawings. We even included a baby clown fish named Zebe with his Mommy. Did you see the artists dive into their treasure boxes? Only their legs and fins were sticking out because they were so excited.

Drawing with a Magic Hat

2009-10-17T12:45:00.000-05:00

For the last class of the first session we drew a magic hat for our warm up drawing. We stole Mickey's Sorcerer hat so we could draw our very best. The Club House Artists have been fantastic as we've travelled through their imaginations creating all of these great pieces of artwork. I hope to see them again in future sessions.