Artful Prompting, 7

[wayfaringwordhack]

(16 March 2024)

This "week's" challenge was Birds! (Weeks in quotation marks because we are doing a "painting birds" class together as a family and it is taking us longer to find days when everyone can paint and learn together.  We still have one more segment, but we have finished the bulk of the lessons now.)

Enjoy a sampling of family fun exploring feathered friends.

Lots of playing with mixed media happening.😊 One of the most freeing things about this process is learning that I do not have to be married to a decision I make and can always paint over it and try something else.

For example, I painted a bird out of my composition because I wasn't happy with it.  I don't like the resulting colors on the background.  And that is OK because I can either move on or paint over the background again and then draw or paint another bird.  

My daughter is loving the theme and even got bold enough to paint in a background!

 

Comments

[eller]

Ohhh, very nice birds! :D I'm glad your family is having so much artistic fun!

[michaelboy]

These are all great and very creative! Bravo!

[mallorys_camera]

These are all so fabulous! ❤️

[asakiyume]

Love how S did the eye of the bird, so glistening and sharp.

With the first set of birds, are those offerings from all of you? You up top and husband and children below? But there's one too many for that....

The owls are all great--I like that someone decided on a pine woods background instead of bare deciduous trees. I like the pink at the bottom of the sky in that one too. All the owls have such distinctive expressions!

[wayfaringwordhack]

We have had many more bird drawings since this day!

[wayfaringwordhack]

What I found a lot of fun was the exercises I didn't actually post, the warm-ups. We did a lot of blind contour and drawing with the non-dominant hand. All those gave wonky, charming results. :D

[wayfaringwordhack]

Yeah, looking at them makes me want to draw more.😃

[wayfaringwordhack]

So the very top images was the result of me playing around on a paper that was prepared in the fashion we learned in our class. I just drew it all out of my imagination with no plan. I just tried to "see" the birds in some shapes I could perceive. There was actually a third shape I tried to call forward but it looked too busy/crowded with the bird on the right.

Below that is all of our efforts from the actual class. It gave mixed results because, sadly, I felt it was not explained well at all before embarking on it. We prepped a big piece of paper and then we knew we were supposed to do four birds (or four lessons) because we had the references for them all (in different lessons); however, the teacher, under the lesson "painting the first bird," drew in four birds (only the 1st ref bird was respected) and then drew in three others from our wonky, warm-up lessons. So at that point, I told the kids they could do the same or draw in other birds. Then, in the subsequent lessons, she used the colors and plumage patterns from the other reference to paint the other three birds. Well, that meant putting woodpecker "dress" on a sparrow, etc., and that a) didn't go over very well for my nature-loving, -observing family, and b) it wasn't explained at the outset that this was what she was going to do. So we thought we would prep a new paper for each reference bird . Anyhow. Don't know if that makes sense, but I wanted to type it up to articulate (for myself, really) what frustrated me so that I could see how best to have a redo with my kids or share the idea with a friend who wants to do a similar activity with her kids.

For the owls, the boys finished after I took the photo. So three are mine, two Sprouts, and one J's. I did the "change" of scenery one because it was so fun, but I wanted to vary it a bit.

Re: class and owls

[wayfaringwordhack]

Again, the teacher started the owl painting and then towards the end decided to transform it into a night scene. This wasn't announced, but I had LOOKED AHEAD and was prepared this time! So, I did two in "her style" to have a day and night, and then did the third to change it up. J followed the teacher because he didn't care to do more, but S was thrilled to paint another, too.

[asakiyume]

Wow, dressing up a bird in a totally different bird's feathers would bother me too! I guess I can see it if one is regarding "bird" as just a shape and the feathers just as, like you say, dress-up: it's not bird-the-creature the teacher is interested in but bird-the-shape. But bird-the-creature is so inherently interesting that that rankles! And bird-the-creature wears a dress unique to its kind!

Re: class and owls

[asakiyume]

*nodding*

It really seems like one of those things that requires a lot of preparation ahead of time to get the most out of the lessons. I mean, it sounds like the way you're able to make sense and better understand what she's aiming for is by reviewing the videos in advance. I wonder how many people realize that. I wonder if other people do the self-prep that you're doing.

[rimturse]

You're creating artists. :)