Drawing with Children, Lesson 5, Chalk Pastels

This week we used Chalk Pastels as our choice of mediums from Chapter 5.  We are a week behind, but I could not fit in DwC because of Drama Camp and VBS.

I was able to get a set of Chalk Pastels for less than $5.00 at Walmart, and they met our need.  I did buy the really nice Pastel Paper, and it was fun choosing different background colors.  I would recommend it if you can afford it.

We moved away from Nature drawing this week, and the girls all made still life pictures, and Joy-Bug did her own thing, as per her anxiety level.  Barb on her Squidoo site, has a great video on using chalk pastels.  They blend, layer and are very forgiving.

Gracie Girl's Christmas Still Life.  She added some fruit and veggies from the fridge.

Kae-Kae's china doll, Emily and her straw hat.

Joy-Bug's Chicken Coop at night.

The good news is, if your child colors the entire page black, the pastels do wash out of clothes and off tables!

What have you been doing in your Drawing with Children?  You can link up and show us where you are in the book.  These meme's don't have closed dates, so they are open forever, and whenever you chose to hop in, you can!  I have had some people say they are considering participating in the fall.  I will be moving forward with some different art options then, but the Meme's and comments will continue to be open. 

Heather

Drawing with Children, Lesson 5, Colored Pencils

 This week we were to practice using Colored Pencils for drawing nature.  My kids decided to bring nature inside and draw.  Right now they are on a flower kick, I think I need to take them somewhere else to practice drawing other items.

During our nature time we are practicing drawing birds, Killdeer this past week.

Now the special treat this week is the kids did not have to use these...

I let them use these....

My special Prismacolor pencils, which ROCK.

Two of my daughters wanted to practice with my watercolor pencils.  To use them, just color as normal like a colored pencil, then get water on a paintbrush and do a wash over what you drew.  They are a fun change of pace and still easy to stick in a backpack. 





13 year old


So, what did your family do this week with Drawing with Children? Link up with the Linky at the bottom and let us all know how you are progressing.  Did you enjoy colored pencils? 

Next week we will be doing chaulk pastels.  I found a cheap set at Walmart for less than $5.00!

Heather

Drawing with Children, Lesson 5, Drawing Pencils

This week we used drawing pencils.  In the book Drawing with Children, she explained all the different codes for pencils- HB, B, 2, #5, etc.  This was very interesting to learn. 

We were to work on shading and layering using the different types of pencils.  Barb's squidoo page also explains this. 

Only my 13 year old really liked this medium.  But, I have committed to drawing one thing in my nature journal this week using only pencils.  The pencil drawing I did, was not well suited to shading.  Another great thing to note, is that if you have 4-6 pencils, they are lightweight for carrying on a hike and still great for capturing what you see. 

My family really is into color, so the pencils were a stretch for them. 

Here is a little stuffed Eagle Kae-Kae drew.

Here is the original.  See how he lists to the side?

Here are flowers in a vase.  Joy-Bug wanted to make sure we knew the light source!

Heather






All this week is the Great Reveal Blog Hop, hosted by Kingdom Arrows and Olive Plants.  Write up your plans for the new year and link over here with the linky and hop!  Olive Plants has an awesome giveaway this week and I WANT TO WIN!!!

Drawing with Children, Lesson 5, Oil Pastels

For this lesson I had told you we were going to be using chaulk pastels. Well, due to the fact that I did not drag out my supplies until last night, I found we only have Oil Pastels. Seeing that we live 45 minutes from Hobby Lobby, I will have to plan ahead on that one.

So, we are trading chaulk pastels with oil pastels. This means we will do Chaulk Pastels on June 22.  Make sure to check out Barb's Squidoo page on Drawing with Children!!!

If you already did oil pastels, link anyway! Remember this is a come and go meme, and even if your fearless leader has some foibles, it will be OK!

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Barb's youtube for using oil pastels. So, for our warm-up, we just used what she recommended.  We used hairspray as a fixative, but do plan on buying some fixative. 

Here is Joy-Bug's warm ups.

We went outside and took a nature walk specifically looking for things we could draw with our very awesome oil pastels.

Kae-Kae's Dandelions.  She has decided this is her favorite medium. 

Joy-Bugs landscape scene.  They LOVED blending.

Gracie Girl drew a wildflower arrangement.  Notice her red spot on the Queen Anne's Lace.



This pastels book is what Barb suggests for further study and I can promise it is on my bookbuying list!



Heather


PS:  Kingdom Arrows and Olive Plants is sponsoring a Great Reveal of all our curriculum for the next schoolyear.  Write a post and link up with our blog hop next week, starting on June 6!  Click here to read about it.  As usual, I am having trouble getting the widget to post here:)

Drawing with Children, Lesson 5

Whew!  We have finally reached Lesson 5.  Where have you gotten in your book? 

Lesson five is completely different than all the previous lessons.  I have decided this is how Kingdom Arrows is going to do it, but please tell me if you have a different plan.  I would love to incorporate other ideas. 

Lesson five is much more fluid, the book offers six mediums of art supplies and wants your students to be able to experience all of them.  So, I plan to spend one lesson a week on each one. 

Here is what that schedule looks like for us:

• June 1, chalk pastels
• June 8, drawing pencils
• June 15, colored pencils
• June 22, oil pastels
• June 29, watercolor

You will  notice two interesting things....

1. Our schedule does not start until June 1, since we will be out of town for the next several weeks.
3. 2.  Our schedule does not include conte crayons, unless I can find them cheaper.  Hobby Lobby has a set, that even with the coupon, would cost $14.  They are tiny and I am sure we would speed through them.  Also, I read Barb's concerns about Conte crayons on her squidoo site, and I am bypassing them.

Please visit the Squidoo site, for Youtube videos for using these mediums.  Barb also does a great job reviewing all the products.  This is an amazing resource for us using this book.

If you have not bought any of these products, you can click through here to my Amazon site.  It does give me a little money for purchasing- you guessed it- more nature journaling supplies.  Thanks to all who have already bought through me!  Most of the resources are inexpensive, but I would suggest the Prismacolor pencils.  They are the only colored pencils that I use.  I love the way they blend and overlay.  Also, if you can only afford one extra art supply right now, it would be these!

If you are working through Drawing with Children, please link with Kingdom Arrows and let us know how far you are progressing.  This is a come and go meme, and if you take a few weeks off, we will still be here!  I will be posting linkies the next 2 weeks, even though we will not be participating- we will be off in Williamsburg!

Heather

Drawing with Children, Lesson 4 (cont'd)

This week we completed Lesson 4 in Drawing with Children.  We were to draw the Tiger Lilies that were shown on page 154, but using our own colors.  The main focus was learning how to "block" lighter colors first and then add the darker colors over them.

This is the first time where I have really seen the difference in using these awesome markers. 
I know they are expensive, but Amazon does have free shipping over $25.  They made a world of difference while making the Tiger Lilies and none of the colors bled as we colored over them! 

I would say this was the hardest lesson we have done, but my girls understood copying the Tiger Lilies.  I think they did better than we at this point.  Harmony Art Mom calls this type of exercies Art Copywork and she does alot of it with her older children and the Masters.

Remember, you can jump in at any time to this Meme.  In fact, you can participate even if you do not have a blog.  If you do have a blog, write a post about however far you have gotten this week in Drawing with Children and link to Kingdom Arrows.  If you don't have a blog, you can upload your drawings to Flickr and we can all see what you have done.  Remember to visit Barb's Squidoo Page to get Lesson plans to go with this study!

6 year old

13 year old

7 year old

Heather

Drawing with Children, Lesson 4 (cont'd)

You may have figured out I am on Blog Hiatus right now.  Between recitals, music competitions, company visiting, end of school, trip planning, and illness, I am basically taking a leave of absence, except for Wednesdays!!

After reading Barb's Squidoo page, I realized this lesson will take more than 2 weeks.  Well, that and because my kids seem to be having a hard time with the light/shading/positive space study.

Here we are drawing our iris', practicing what direction the sun comes from. 

Oh, you don't see any kids?  Like I said, they seem to be a bit uninterested in shadows.  Maybe they were more interested in this....

Little Man's bike he got from Nana & Poppie for his birthday.

Only Kae-Kae, 13yrs and I were interested. 

Here are mine.



We will practice again next week on drawing more outdoor nature things, but we have to wait for a sunny day.  Sometimes that is easier said than done around here.  I also plan to have us draw something other than flowers.  We still need to do the additional drawing exercise in our book for Lesson 4. 

Remember, this is a drop in Meme, so just post on your blog as you go, wherever you are on your Drawing with Children lessons.  You can sign up with Linky at the bottom.

Also, remember that the end of April is coming up and it is almost time to Tweet and See! 

Are any of you readers going to the Atlanta Curriculum Fair in less than 2 weeks?  Homeschool Dawn and I will be there.  Do you want to come??

Heather

Drawing with Children, Lesson 4

This week we began Lesson 4 in Mona Brookes, Drawing with Children.  We are using Barb's Squidoo lesson plans to help us transfer what we are learning into our nature drawing.  This week's lesson were the most challenging, by far. 

BTW, where ever you are in the book, you can jump in and write on your blog about your experiences.  We would love newcomers.  A linky is on the bottom of this post. 

First, we started out learning about positive and negative space by doing the exercises included in the book.

This is how well my 6 yo was able to do. 



This is my 7 yo

Practicing with shading.

She shaded with pencil.

Here we were supposed to learn shading and layering using black and 2 different shades of gray marker.  We did not have gray markers, so we chose similar colors to practice with.



Shading of the daisy.


Heather



Drawing with Children, Nature-Style

All of my kids were sick last week for 8 days total, so we did not draw.  I have to say that I am itching to draw the dogwoods and tulips that are out, and hope to carve some Nature journaling time out of this week. 

We will be beginning Lesson 4 this week.  This is a come and go Meme, just post how much you have done this week with your kids. 

I have included a Linky here, since I hope ya'll aren't as crazy-busy or sick like we are!  Oh, and I am just-sayin' that curriculum shopping for four kids can be a little much.  Especially since I was not  planning anything for Little Guy and he has decided he wants school.  I was assuming that he would not want to read until he was 8, at least that is what I heard from Ruth Beechick......

I want to remind you of Sketch Tuesday at Barb's.  One of my children has been participating in that fairly regularly.  This week coming up is "Tails".  Draw anything with a tail. 

Heather

Drawing with Children, Lesson 3 (cont'd)

This week we continuted on DwC Nature-Style, Lesson 3.  The lesson plans that Barb has written on Squidoo extend the idea of the still life we learned about in the book.  I also encourage you to nose around on Squidoo and see all the other wonderful lenses she has written to help us in studying nature.  They are all free!

We were to take a nature walk and find some things we wanted to use in our drawings. 

Here are the results:

Gracie-Girl,6

Kae-Kae, age 13

Joy-Bug, age 7

I have to confess we were strapped for time this week, so I did not draw, nor did we do our warm-ups.  I am not sure what it is about this time of year, but it barely feels like we have enough time to school!

Remember, this is the LAST DAY to leave a comment here, in order to enter the giveaway for the Your Backyard DVD from Crowe's Nest Media.  You can buy it for $12 until Saturday with the discount code, "Tweet."

Heather

Drawing with Children, Nature-Style, Lesson 3

This week our task was to draw a still life on Lesson 3, wether you were on Level 1, 2 or 3.  For each level, you just added extra features. Remember this is a jump in meme, so whenever you are ready start and tell us your progress.  Also, if you do not have a blog, you may scan and upload your drawings to our Fliker group.  I will link to let everyone know you are there.

 Here is my Level 1 child:

Gracie Girl, 6yo

Here are my Lesson 2 kids:

Joy Bug, 7yo

Kae-Kae, 13yo

Now I can say from personal experience that this was the most challenging drawing yet.  I am learning to draw with my kids and doing all my own lessons and additional drawing.  It took SO MUCH BRAINPOWER for me to follow through on the the drawing and then additional focus to color them in and texturize them.  I loved how all of us chose different ways to decortate our vases and pots.  Also, the original photo we were drawing from had an oriental flavor, but each of my little artisits was able to tweak it to what they wanted. 

Visit here to see the lesson plans that Barb has made up for this lesson.  They include building your own still life from nature items.  I plan to try to draw at least 2 different type of still life items this week. 

Heather

Drawing with Children, Lesson 2 (cont'd)

Welcome to the Drawing with Children- Nature Style Meme.  This is a jump in at any time Meme.  Post on your own blog what you did for your lesson for DwC in your family. So far, we have only had two participants, Olive Plants (she has not had a camera to post)  and Learning All the Time.  I know there are at least 5 other families that have contacted me, and I want you to know you are welcome at any time.  I always post on Wednesdays, but you can post anytime. 


We pretty much finished up Lesson 2 this week of Drawing with Children.  It seems to be taking 2 weeks for us to complete a lesson, with some extra drawing practice during the week.  We did our actual "lesson" in about an hour.  BTW, we usually do ours right after circle time/breakfast on Friday morning.  This week week all drew Level 2 Tropical Birds.   All of us are on Level 2, but I did not feel we were good direction followers, so we did Leo the Lion last week, even though it was on Level 1.

Parrot in Rain forest, 7yo

Parrot in Cage, 6yo

Dr. Doolittle and Polynesia, 13yo

Barb's Scribd Plans included the Nature part of this lesson.  We were supposed to draw one object in each of the following categories:

1. Tree
2. Flower
3. Animal
4. Insect
5. Bird

Here is a flower and vase my 6yo drew on her own.  I was shocked at the detail!

The way our family incorporated this additional drawing was to go to a local Garden Center (Nursery) on Saturday afternoon and practice these categories, "live."

Hints: Remember to photocopy the pencil drawings from the book BEFORE it is time for drawing class.  I still don't have that down pat:)  My printer was broken all week.

We did the Abstract Design Warm-up, pg 68.  Here is one example.

I am also getting the idea that our family is going to continue to the last lesson and then go back through with the Level 3 activities.  I am sure we will all be ready for Level 3 by that point. 



Heather