Elephants and Art

There is a famous fable — maybe you’ve heard it before — of six blind men who come across an elephant.

The first man feels the leg of the elephant and says, “I knew it! An elephant is like an oak tree.”

The second man, a bit skeptical, grabs hold of the elephant’s tail. “Don’t be dumb, an elephant is like a piece of rope.”

“Seriously guys?” says the third man as he touches the elephant’s trunk. “Elephant is just another name for a snake.”

The fourth blind man, not a fan of snakes, approaches the elephant cautiously and touches the ear. “An elephant is like a big leather jacket!”

The fifth man, a fan of leather, rushes toward the elephant, slamming face first into it’s stomach. “You’re all wrong... An elephant is like a brick wall.”

The sixth man, laughing, touches the elephant’s tusk. “I don’t know why I spend time with you fools. An elephant is just like a pipe!”

As is human nature, the men begin to fight over who is right. Just as the fight nearly escalates into a blind boxing match, an artist who has been quietly observing the entire affair makes his way over to the men.

“Hey Guys, I couldn’t help but overhear the cause of this altercation and I would like to inform you that you are all correct. The elephant has each of those characteristics. You just can’t agree because you all have differing perspectives.”

What's that got to do with ATCsJr 

& your art?  

Easy.  You see things your own way.  It doesn't make it wrong - it just makes it your perspective.  And your perspective is just as right as each of those blind men who thought they each knew what an elephant was.  Your art is unique and represents how you are in the world.  So, no matter what comes out of your creativity,

YOU ARE RIGHT!

Today's my birthday

So, what am I doing with it?  ART, of course!  lol.  I'm finishing up the ATCs I started for the classroom trade we have going and I'm doing another large nebula.  It's not as large as the one I made for Daphne's birthday, but it's still 11x14!  That's a whole lot bigger than an ATC!  Hahahaha

As I'm doing it, I kind of have to wonder if I'm just being a glutton for punishment or if I really enjoy doing the large-scale nebula.  It's turning out better than I anticipated; partially due to a mistake I made.

I love mistakes!

They turn out so cool with art.  It's a clear way to see that mistakes are just another way of doing something a certain way that didn't work out.  But you get to learn a whole new way of doing something else.  ::grins::

So.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me!  lol

Popcorn Drawing

From a great post here: http://www.teachkidsart.net/popcorn-drawing-observation-imagination/

Popcorn Drawing — Observation & Imagination

by Cheryl Trowbridge on July 2, 2012 in Colored Pencil, Drawing, Imagination, Lessons, Process, Subject

Have you ever looked at a cloud and seen an ani­mal or some other ran­dom image?  Most every­one has used their imag­i­na­tion to “find” things in clouds, and pop­corn offers this same cre­ative expe­ri­ence!  This is a great les­son for 5th grade and up.  Make sure you cre­ate a sam­ple to illus­trate the steps… a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words here!  After doing this les­son, your stu­dents (and you!) will never look at a piece of pop­corn (or a bear sit­ting on a rock, wear­ing a red ban­dana!) the same way again!

Mate­ri­als:

• 9x12 black con­struc­tion paper
• pop­corn (at least 2 pieces per student)
• white craft glue (Aleene’s Tacky Glue is my favorite)
• white char­coal pen­cil or Pris­ma­color draw­ing pencil
• Magic Rub eraser
• 9x12 trac­ing paper
• No.2 graphite pencil
• fine point marker, any color except black (I like to use a col­ored “F” Sharpie or a Cray­ola water base marker.)
• 9x12 white con­struc­tion paper

Direc­tions:

1. Pass out 2 (or more) pieces of pop­corn to each stu­dent.  Let them choose one to draw and one (or more) to eat!

2. Squirt a dime size blob of glue near the top of your 9x12 black paper. (I went around and did this as stu­dents were “exam­in­ing” their pop­corn for the most inter­est­ing side to draw!)  Place pop­corn on the glue.

3. Use a white pen­cil to draw the pop­corn (as large as pos­si­ble) below the pop­corn you glued to the paper.  Press harder on the light­est areas and less hard in the shad­owed areas. (It can be help­ful to make a value scale using a white pen­cil on black paper to prac­tice mak­ing a range of val­ues. Explain to stu­dents that this is the oppo­site of work­ing with a graphite pen­cil, where press­ing harder pro­duces a darker value. You may also need to review con­tour draw­ing prin­ci­ples if you haven’t done any obser­va­tion draw­ing in a while.) 

4. Then, lay trac­ing paper on top of your white on black draw­ing.  Use a col­ored marker to trace the out­side shape (con­tour) and any impor­tant lines on the inside.

5. Next, turn your trac­ing paper over to the back.  You’ll be able to see your col­ored marker lines through it.  Trace over the top of these lines with a reg­u­lar No.2 graphite pen­cil.  Press hard so your lines will be nice and dark.

6. Now, lay your trac­ing paper, pen­cil side down, on top of your white paper.  Trace over your marker lines using your No.2 pen­cil.  If you used a col­ored marker for step #4, it will be easy to see where you’ve traced and where you still need to!

7. Lift off the trac­ing paper and you’ll see a faint copy of your draw­ing on the white paper.  Turn your paper dif­fer­ent direc­tions and use your imag­i­na­tion to find an inter­est­ing image in your pop­corn, if you haven’t already!

8. Finally, use col­ored pen­cils to fin­ish your draw­ing, adding any details you need so your viewer can see what you saw in your popcorn!

Free Video Art Creation Tutorials

I'm one of those monkey-see monkey-do sort of people when it comes to art.  At least initially!  I like to be able to watch someone doing their own art and have them explain why they're doing what they're doing and when they're doing it.

Sometimes, I even want to know why they're doing it that particular way.

With that in mind, I've got a resource to share with you for a lot of different tutorials showing how to create art with different mediums.  Videos are awesome...  They're out at ArtTutor.com.