Sm'Arties: September 2010

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Getting Perspective

This week's Sm'Arties class is inspired by this little handout from Practical Pages (Now THERE'S an on-the-ball homeschool Mum! I love knowing that many many miles away (or kilometers?) another homeschool family is reaching out to share the wealth of their knowledge and resources. Thank you, Nadine!).

Now that we have our pencils sharpened, this week we did a few quick drawings to demonstrate perspective. As I was drawing along, I encouraged the children to do "kindergarten-style trees" - quick, quick!

Their homework is to bring back 7 little drawings on a sheet of 11"x17" paper, showing these seven laws of perspective. I hope they all "see" foreshortening better than I do :) I expect this little lesson to yield fruit in the way of better drawings and paintings all year long. I wish I had learned this when I was a child.

I took one single picture, and then my camera's battery quit. Here's the picture:

This Sm'Artie's line of trees show both principles that things nearer are drawn larger and further down on the page.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Pencil in a new schoolyear

I have so many plans and inspirations for this Sm'Artie year - many more than we can do!

Who wouldn't be excited to see these Sm'arties ready for art?

I want to enjoy making and exchanging Artist's Trading Cards (ATCs). I want us to paint on rocks. I want us to learn to draw a little better. I want to introduce the Sm'Arties to real oil paint from little tubes that stays wet for days. I want us to carve rubber stamps. And I want us to learn about art, artists, styles, movements.

I'm editing pictures so we can have a fresh blog header, and having fun with Picnik.com. I just love our last year's picture, but it's a new year! By the end of the week, I want a 2010-2011 picture smiling from the header.

Kathy at Art Projects for Kids starts her students with fresh pencils, and I thought we would, too! I bought a box of Ticonderoga pencils, gathered my Sharpies from their migratory summer homes, and let the Sm'Arties have at it. Did I tell you that I just love Sharpies? So do the Sm'Arties.

I offered little strips of yellow cardstock if they wanted to work out a design. (I don't like that cardstock anyway - I was glad to chop it into strips) There were tiger stripes, polka dots, some kind of marbly-looking design, just plain stripes - lots of fun; no wrong answers.

Once pencils were all decorated, they drew a still life - a little stone bird in a tall skinny cage - just a little something decorative Peg has sitting in the corner of her dining room.

It's kind of hard to take a picture of a group drawing a still life, and include the still life in the photo. What you get is mostly the space between:

During Science Geeks class, the group was divided into teams - girls vs. boys. Since our group is more heavily weighted toward masculine, JD was on the girls' team. He returned to character several times in the course of the afternoon. He is quite the ham.