What was in the present?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's cold outside!

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

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.