For the U.S. History Teachers teaching the Great Depression

A big part of what I think about on a daily basis, is how to use my new graphic design skills to

a) help people
b) make myself happy
c) be successful possibly working from home
d) incorporate my teaching skills

I created this Great Depression info sheet for my sister, who is a seriously awesome new teacher.  I asked her to try out this idea with her class to see if anyone liked it, and to see if it was helpful.  So I thought I'd post it here in case it can be helpful to any History teachers out there in the world! 

I know FDR looks pretty weird, but you know... any attention grabber with high schoolers is probably a good thing. 

Fingers are crossed that if you click on the image, you'll be able to print it full quality.  But if not, please let me know and I will gladly email you a high quality PDF.

Happy weekend!



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Abstract Pastel Self Portrait

Art teachers must love to have students draw self portraits, because this is my third one in my first year of school. 

If you missed my first two, here's my digital portraits here, and my painted/ stamped one here.

This one, we did with soft pastels, and it had to be abstract using complementary colors.

We were asked to take time studying our face in the mirror, and thinking about the planes of our face and what basic shapes each feature looked like.  Some of my shapes were just too weird... I hated making my nose like a triangle or rectangle, and even the basic circles for eyes were not doin' it for me.  I tried a couple close-eyed versions, and turning my nose to the side in profile, and that was better. 

So here are some of my sketches along with my first try which I didn't love. 

And here's the final version along with some close ups!

I blended everything on the face, smoothed the streaks in the hair to make them less dramatic, added some highlights and left the background streaky with a smorgasbord of lines.

What do you think?  Kinda creepy, right? 

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that one time i drew the unclothed mannequins

Here they are in all their glory.

Snicker, snicker... giggle, giggle... tee hee hee...

But in all honesty, I am so proud of this one (Though PLEASE ignore that horrible bottle!  I mean come on, Emma, ugh.)  I am incredibly happy with how much I've learned and grown in a few short months. 

I was nervous to draw "humans" because I haven't taken the life drawing class yet, but I ended up loving it.  My favorite part is the speckled front mannequin, I like the dimension I think I was able to give her, especially in the collarbone area and head.  I also like the left side of the drapery and the antlers. 

In other news:  this is my 100th post!  Perfect.

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the saga of the pastels

I mentioned in my last post that I've been struggling somewhat with using soft pastels in drawing class. 

Well, here's how it all started. 

I spent a whole day doing this drawing, my first pastel drawing, and then about 10 minutes after finishing and cleaning up, I was hit with the worst stomach flu ever of my life.  I then spent the next two days feeling sorry for myself and for my also-sick husband.  And I began associating my horrible nausea with my pastel drawing; therefore scarring me for life. 

Seriously, I couldn't even look at my art supplies or those cups or reindeer or any part of that still life for days.  When I had to go to drawing class 3 days later, I was practically horrified. 

But alas, me and pastels are working on our relationship, and I think it's about back to 100% okay with each other. 

Sooooooo, back to this assignment.  We had to set up a still life with an analagous color scheme and draw it using pastels, with some parts realistic and some parts abstract.  We could pretty much decide how it would all work together, but it was practice for our next 3 big in-class pastel drawings, which are to be realistic, then abstract, then non-representational. 

Here's how the drawing went.  I decided to simplify and abstract the tulips, ornaments, and apples.

And a side by side for my mom :)

I'm happy with how it turned out, but ARRRGGHH that was a bad day!!!




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Illustration Friday- WOOL

This week's illustration topic was wool!  Fun!  I couldn't wait to try out something new, and here's how it ended up. 

I love the look of a mix of traditional and digital techniques, and I've really been wanting to play with it more to see what I can come up with.  So here's how I got this particular look.

We've been working with soft pastels in drawing class, so I thought I'd give them a try this week to draw some sheep.  To be honest, I've been struggling with them for some reason, so any chance to use them more is a good thing.  Then I added a streaky sky with my watercolor pencils.  And here's the image I started with:

Not too pretty yet.  But I knew I was going to just use it to play around digitally, so it didn't have to look great or finished at this point.  So first I scanned it and deepened the colors a bit in Photoshop.  Then I took it into Illustrator and tried the different live trace settings to see how I could get it to look. 

I ended up liking parts of the Color 6, Simple Trace, and Comic Book versions, so I saved each of them and then took everything back into Photoshop.

That's when I got to have fun, cut apart the images, use the parts I liked & delete what I didn't like, mess with the layer modes, rearrange, flip, duplicate parts, change the colors, and basically collage everything into my final image!

How do you think it turned out? 

You can go check out all the other "wool" themed illustrations at Illustration Friday!




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Illustration Friday- Wheels

Pinwheels!

As soon as I saw last week's topic of wheels, this image almost immediately came to mind after deciding to go with pinwheels.  Isn't he cute?  I sort of think he's my husband as a kid. 

The stomach flu chewed us up and spit us out earlier this week, but I had to get this entry in just at the buzzer!

Happy weekend, everyone!

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Illustration Friday- Wings

I've been seeing some bloggers and artists mentioning the website Illustration Friday and I thought I'd go see what it was all about. 

It's a fun weekly art challenge that anyone can participate in.  Each week there is a theme, and you can draw, paint, create, doodle, etc. your interpretation of the theme, and then link up your image for all to see! 

I think this is a good chance for me to try new techniques and topics that I may not do for myself or for school work, and it will be a good way for me to learn more and experiment without any pressure to make it 'perfect.'

This week's topic was WINGS.

I drew this in ink in my little 7x7 sketchbook, and I didn't even plan it out right and it ran off the page, hence the obvious break in the page right at the swan's head. 

Then I scanned it, painted it loosely in Photoshop and then ran the sponge filter on the paint layer. 

It's actually based off of a bird called the whooper swan I found in an article in National Geographic magazine.  The pictures were so beautiful; the swans are really plain bright white with black feet, and the setting was a snow covered wonderland. 

Are there any other art/ drawing challenges I should know about? 

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