Saturday, January 9, 2010

Cheerio's

"He sang into the Sky" is this week's creative challenge for Mr. Toast's Creative Tuesdays.

I always like to sketch out my ideas for a painting in my sketchbook first.

The color studies for the cheerio challenge.


I had mentioned last week that my painting class was starting a unit on Watercolor.
I thought, Mr. Toast's challenge was a wonderful opportunity to teach by example.
All week long I have been sharing my creative process with my students and thought my blog friends might enjoy too.
Once I came up with the concept for the project and had drawn it on watercolor paper, it was time to think about color scheme. My first watercolor sketch seemed to blue, so I decided to create a color study sketching out nine little versions of the original drawing. The funny thing about this was that everyone had a different favorite.
I decided to go with contrasting colors for the bird house and cheerios.
I also gave myself another challenge. Over the past few weeks, I have admired the witty writing style of many of the other participants, many of which write lovely poetry, something I have no experience with.
I went to my favorite creative writing teacher, John Edwards for his help. Having seen my drawing, I expressed my desire to include a piece of writing. John suggested a limerick and was kind enough to send me the guidelines for developing one.
It was much harder than I thought. In the end, my daughter, the elementary teacher, helped connect the pieces. We are very proud of the finish piece.
Hope you enjoy, and remember never stop learning.

13 comments:

  1. Wonderfully illustrated, Karen. A great concept.

    I'm with you on the never stop learning....

    ....which brings me to...how in the world did youget the little white dots to float around? Or am I seeing things?

    happy New Year!!

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  2. Fun! And it's interesting to see your creative process from sketch to finished painting. Thank you for sharing this with us readers.

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  3. Karen, ohmygoodness, this is not only lovely and whimsical, happy adn carefree, it also shows so much effort put into it--well thought out in every way. I love your 2nd version as much and your sketchy liquid lines. It feels bouncy and alive. Brilliant. thank you so much for doing this. I love the limerick too and will be excited to add this to the side bar. I hope lots of people come here to se you work.

    Yes, you are quite right/clver to tie th etheme into some other project you are doing too. Makes sense as these thigns can take a fair bit of time.

    I love too how you show the initial colour studies and your thought process. Truly, you are an art teacher as each of us can learn something from this.

    Thank you again for your lovely contribution. It will be fun to ad to the montage on Tuesday as well.

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  4. This was fascinating, I really enjoy seeing the color sketches.

    and your daughter teaches at your school, that is really nice.

    I'll have to do check out more of the Tuesday challenges.

    x..x

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  5. What fun! I love your work and limerick. Thanks so much for sharing your process. I always love seeing that!

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  6. Hello Karen! I love this!! What a marvelous job you've done! This is my first visit but I will most certainly be back! Good luck with your personal writing challenge.

    Happy Monday,
    Jen

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  7. Lovely to see your small working drawings with your finished art work.x

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  8. cheerios really is the focal point in this lovely piece. interesting to see your preliminary sketches.

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  9. Way good. I love watercolors. I am a 2 year art student. I will keep going to art classes as long as I am able. I love this Tuesday Creative project. Glad to see a new entry.
    QMM

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  10. I think it is great that you combined drawing with writing...very creative!

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  11. Wow! WOW! Did I say, wow?!!? :) I love what you did and how you came about your colors. Rock on! :D

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  12. I am just following up on 'Creative Tuesdays' offerings and loved yours ... especially loved how you used it for your lessons ...

    Very Cute!

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  13. I love your "story board" here ..It's great to glimpse into the creative process like this.

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