Art

Have I mentioned before how much I love taking art classes? For those of you who haven't taken an art class, in my experience, anyway, they're usually pretty long (3 hours) and there's often "studio" time where the students can work on their pieces while the instructor is there in order to get feedback and guidance. At least I'm assuming that's why they schedule them the way they do. When we're each working on our individual pieces, there's often at least one moment in the class where everyone's quiet and focused. I almost always catch it. The energy is hushed and kind of suspended. I love that moment. 

One of the assignments that spans the semester is what our instructor calls "color observed." We had to find a landscape or other "tableau" that we could observe live. I found this shack. 

I took the picture one day and then went back another day to observe the actual color, pick paper that matches the colors and then put it all together in a pretty picture. It looks different, of course, because the lighting was different and, well, it's a bunch of cut out paper!!

We have to do three of these. I'm hoping I can wait until it snows and do one then. The third one can be anything we want it to be. I might us origami paper or some other patterned paper to do mine. I also thought about getting a bunch of National Geographic and tearing pieces from there. I'm stealing that from Sarah who did an amazing self-portrait using NG mags. Pretty cool! She probably doesn't even remember I have it. I love the naked baby on her jawline.

 
We're also working on two other projects. They're designed to help us learn about mixing paint. For this one, we were to use one color, black and white and mix them to create a basic geometric piece. The one I haven't finished yet will be with the triads (purple, orange and green) and white, mixing them to create another piece with the same geometric pattern. I know, fascinating, right?! 

Whatever the final products look like (1st grade art?), I'm loving it!!