Creative Elements Watercolor Scholarship

I will be offering at least one scholarship for the Introduction to Watercolor class being held at Lake Hazel Elementary. I would like for this scholarship to go to a child who shows an interest in art and otherwise would not be able to afford the class. To apply for the scholarship, send an email to:

Creativeelementsinfo@gmail.com

Please include a brief explanation about why you feel your child should receive a scholarship. All entries will be kept confidential and those who are awarded scholarships will be notified by email on or before September 22.

Bounce Scholarship Available

Creative Elements and Bounce have teamed up to make possible one full tuition scholarship to the "Art with Bounce" fall 2010 classes. Several years ago, my husband lost his job. It was a stressful and scary time. There were a lot of things that we couldn't do during that time because we just didn't dare spend anything that wasn't absolutely necessary. I know there are so many out there right now dealing with financial stress. Now I know most of you will think, "There's probably someone out there who needs it more than I do." So you won't apply for the scholarship. Please do it anyway! If you would like for your child to be able to take this class, but you just feel that it is beyond your budget right now, please apply!!!

To apply for the scholarship, just send an email to: creativeelementsinfo@gmail.com

Include a brief paragraph about the child or children you wish could take the class and why you feel you deserve it. All entries will be kept confidential and the winner will be notified by email.

It could be that you are a stay at home mom with several kids and there's just not enough money to go around. Whatever the reason, if it's not in your budget-- APPLY! :)

Winner will be chosen Friday September 10th.

Check out the Fall 2010 Schedule!!!

Go here to see all the fun things we will be doing this fall. I'm excited about this schedule because it really offers a little something for everyone. If you don't see what you are looking for, please email me and we will see what we can work out. Also, we can always do a customized class or private lesson if these classes don't quite fit your needs.
I'm really excited to be trying something new this fall. We are teaming up with BOUNCE in Meridian to offer some fun art classes coupled with "bounce time" for preschoolers and children who are home-schooled. If you haven't been there yet, you've got to go check it out. I have four boys and let me tell you. . . we NEED some BOUNCE time once in a while! :)

Fall Registration Deadline is September 17th.

What did we do?

Just wanted to post a little summary of what we accomplished our last two days of Drawing and Design and World Tour.

In drawing and design we learned about perspective. We talked about how things appear to look smaller, more faded, and softer lines and colors in the distance. On day two they worked on a one point perspective drawing that had to include some kind of road, path or river that went to a vanishing point, one cube like structure, and three objects each a little further in the distance. On day three we learned the proportions of the face. Eyes are in the middle-- not the top half. That is probably the most common mistake in drawing faces. The head is about five eyes wide. The edges of the nose line up with the inside corners of the eyes. The corners of the mouth line up with the middle of the pupils. The kids did a wonderful job on their self portraits. They are pretty young to be learning figure drawing, but there have actually been studies done that show that if you don't understand the body proportions by about fourth grade, that it becomes very difficult to change those incorrect images in your mind. That's why so many adults are "stick figure artists."

In World Tour, we finished up our relief carvings in Greece and then moved on to Tibet for some sand painting. We learned that in some cultures art is created as part of religious ceremonies and then swept away when it is done. On day three we were in France learning Impressionism from some of the masters. The kids looked at pictures of nature and then created Impressionist artwork using oil pastels and pointillism using tempera paint and a Q-tip. Kids are so used to using line to make their pictures. This was a good activity to set the lines aside and focus more on the colors.

Thanks again to all of the kids who participated and your hard work! Keep asking the magic question, "What if?" and exercise that creativity!!!

Thanks to all my Wonderful Students!!!

Today was the last day of the second summer session. We had lots of fun and learned a lot. I feel like I probably learned more than the kids this summer. Being the first year of Creative Elements, I'm still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work as well. I truly appreciate everyone who participated and hope that it was a positive experience for everyone.

I generally post pictures as soon as the class is over to add to our gallery, however, due to some unexplainable lack of preparation :), my battery pack went dead on my camera. Thanks to Jacque, we have pictures of our World Tour art work and I will post them probably on Monday. In the drawing and design class I took pictures with my phone, but will have to see if they actually turn out good enough to post or not. I will post about how we finished out our week another time. We are going on a family backpacking trip tomorrow and I'm pooped! :) Thanks again everyone!

World Tour and Drawing and Design II Underway

Today was the first day of our second session of classes. Rather than post pictures each day, I've decided to choose one or two from each child and post them at the end of the class. Here's a quick update of what we accomplished today.

World Tour: Our first stop was Greece and then a quick trip over to Rome. We learned about how the Romans took over Greece and kind of took over their art at the same time. We also learned that in the Greek and Roman cultures architecture was considered art. They would include relief sculptures and mosaics to make their buildings beautiful. The children then tried their hand at a mosaic. They found it took a lot of patience, but did a great job. We just barely got a start on our second project-- a relief sculpture carved out of sheet rock. We should have time tomorrow after that to swing over to Tibet to learn sand painting from the Tibetan Monks!

Drawing and Design: Today was a tough day for our drawing class. We talked about perspective and the different rules that we have to follow to create the illusion of distance in a picture. Then we learned one point perspective. It can be pretty confusing, but after some erasing and reworking, they are really getting the hang of it. At their age this is all just an introduction and will really help them to be more observant and aware of perspective. Tomorrow we will do some follow up exercises with perspective and then introduce some beginning concepts of figure drawing.