Adriana began her life-sized self-portrait last week by allowing me to trace the outline of her body on a piece of paper against the wall.  It tickled and was just a little creepy, she told me, to be outlined.  Although Adriana is a bundle of expressive energy, she did not want to hold her arms out to be traced, but kept them straight at her sides.  "I'm not really that tall," she said when looking at her outline, and pointed to the half-inch soles of her flip-flops.  Using tempera, we worked together on the background, and we experimented with various skin tones before we were satisfied.

This week she finishes her picture by adding flowers - tall and straight and spare, as she is herself.  She debates on whether to add a sun or clouds with rain, as flowers need both to grow.  She settles on sun for this particular painting, pushing the yellow paint to the edge of the sun with a straight brush.  "My mother showed me how," she says.  "She is an artist, you know!"

She is engrossed in this project and insists on drawing each flower and then the sun with pencil before painting them.  After starting each flower and then the sun, she is dissatisfied, saying, "Oh it's ugly."  Fortunately, though, she presses through her dissatisfaction until she is happy.

"Your flowers remind me of you," I tell her.  Both stand simply, straight and straightforward, and seem to meet the world without wavering.

No, Paula is not drinking from what looks like an orangeade spill.  She's blowing onto a wet wash to move the paint around.  There are other techniques for moving paint around on a wet piece of paper, including using paint brushes of course.  Dripping is an option, and spattering, as is holding up the wet paper and letting the paint run.

Today we explored the world of the wash.  What happens when you get a piece of paper wet and add color to it?  And what if you add another color?  They blend!  And if they are colors next to each other on the color wheel, (as Paula's orange and yellow above) they make new and beautiful colors.

Skyler has made a lovely pastel blend by letting her colors run, then blotting them with paper towels when she was satisfied.  When dry, she can use this as background for a painting or drawing.

Sofia accidentally discovers what will happen if you swipe the water on with a brush that has a bit of paint on it.  "Oh, it looks like the ocean," she says, and decides to add blue.  Cleverly, she holds the paper up so the paint will run.  It truly does help to stick out your tongue.

Later, when the wash is dry, she will add a boat and a fish to complete this picture.

Riley first came for art lessons two years ago, when she was in the third grade.  Now she's back at age 11, almost ready for Middle School!  At left are her three phases of the art project called "Finish the Drawing" I've been doing with my students this week.

"You're kidding, right?" is what Riley said she felt like saying when I told her what we were going to do last - a full-page painting of the drawing we'd been working on from the inside out, so to speak.  Once she started, though, she found it a lot easier than she had supposed, partly because she was so familiar with the drawing already and partly because she used a nine-part grid to get the proportions right.  A sizable drawing is a lot easier when you take it one small portion at a time.

I showed her how to make a wash and she took to it right away and was delighted with the results.  Watercolor is not a forgiving technique, but Riley used it well.  Because of the color work we've done, she was able to choose colors that blend well.

When I have only one student, I enjoy working alongside her with my own similar project.  Children know how to learn by asking questions, but also by watching others work.  As we work, we chat about school, family, and friends - and also about watercolor paper and why it's rough and thick, and about what kinds of hair and fibers paintbrushes are made of.

Because of school vacations and scheduling conflicts, my weekday groups won't be back for three weeks.  I'll miss them!

Along the lines of "guerrilla art," my friend Erin and I did a quick wardrobe change for our church's patron saint (St. Stephen, whom everyone is now calling St. Patrick).  We vowed not to tell anyone, but everyone knew anyway - especially David, my other guerrilla-buddy.  We arrived at the church at 5 am Sunday morning and were done by 5:30, but not before the arrival of two police cars who parked side-by-side at the parking lot entrance.  They weren't aware of us, though, until we left.  I wonder what they thought we'd been doing there at that hour.

Yes, that's right - St. Stephen has no hands.  No, it's not about a martyrdom you missed somehow, it's the result of vandalism.  He used to have hands.  Some wag broke off all his fingers but the middle one on both hands, so someone else finished the job.  Rather that replace the hands to invite more vandals, our current rector added a sign: "We Are St. Stephen's Hands."

Today I used the same activity for two classes - Paula, Sophia, and Nate at 9 am, and Adriana at 11.  It's called "Finish The Picture," an old assignment I was given in junior high school that has been used for many years with children of all ages.  It's been successful because it accomplishes several things at once.

First, it can be a rough gauge of a child's level of art development.  Does he sense proportion?  Can she form and execute a concept?  Is she ready to draw what she actually sees?  (Children begin by drawing what they know:  boats float on top of a line of water at the bottom of the page, for example.)  Second, it introduces children to the grid - so useful to artists through the ages for getting perspective and proportion right, and such a stretch for young artists to grasp.

I let the children choose two identical pictures lined with a nine-rectangle grid.  Identical except for one thing:  in one of the pictures the center rectangle is missing, and in the other picture, everything except the center rectangle is missing.  In stage one I am asking them to draw the one missing rectangle in the center of the picture.  In the second part I am asking them to draw everything except the one rectangle that is present.

Above is Sophia's drawing inside that one missing rectangle - the crucial center rectangle - of the picture she chose.  Sophia really challenged herself with this drawing.  Notice how she was aware of and correctly drew two lines - the line where the pond meets the wall, and the line where the lily stems meet the water and become reflections.  She was able to foreshorten the lily pads as well.

The next part of the exercise is even harder.  Looking at only the center rectangle taken from the picture, I ask the children to draw the bigger picture right out to the edge of the paper.  This really requires spatial awareness.

Here is Adriana's drawing in which she extended her small portion of a cat outward to fill the paper.  Isn't this cat charming?  In doing this drawing, Adriana was surprised at how big the cat's ears actually are.  She was also able to mimic the cat's tabby stripes, which bend around the curled-up cat.

The last part of the activity, should time and attention spans allow, is to use a nine-rectangle grid to draw and paint the entire picture - the same picture we have been working on - on a fresh piece of paper.  By this time we are familiar with it, having drawn it already in parts.

Here is Paula's watercolor based on her picture.  She used a faintly-drawn grid to get the proportions right, then used the wash technique we learned last week to paint the water and the sky.  I notice Paula's understanding of how objects appear to sit below the horizon, not on top of it.

Adriana spies something else she'd like to try.  She wants to turn over a small picture of a flying bird and trace it on the back.  Of course!  But she must then extend the drawing all the way out and fill the paper with nothing to guide her but her imagination. 

                                              

She did it!

Today was another experiment in color.  Starting last week, Riley and I have been overlapping colors to see how they mix.  This week she used transparent inks and masks made from tape and shelf paper to work out a variety of experimental designs.  In the design at left, she used a star cut from shelf paper as part of her overlapping process, working with the transparent inks and finishing with an opaque white.  She snipped out favorite areas of these designs to save for later collage work.

Experimental processes always result in lots of leftovers.  Instead of throwing these away, we decided to make creative use of my shredder, and we wound up with long, ribbon-like strips of colorful paper.  Riley experimented with braiding and weaving the strips, and we worked together intently, getting a start on a mystery object, more whimsical than anything else - something that may or may not be completed or changed next week.  It's freeing to know we can throw it away when we're finished having fun.

After Riley went home, I hung our whimsy on the on the studio wall.  Probably due to the season, it reminds me of an Easter basket - even more so when I tuck an "egg," a favorite part Riley cut from one of her color-overlapping experiments, behind it.

Sometimes play, including experimentation, is the best way to open up the intuition, relax the inner critic, and surprise ourselves with something new.