The Lilting House Archive

Some Questions about Art Supplies

Martha asked:

I have a question... Why use watercolors? Do you also use other art mediums for painting? Oils? Pastels? Also what about lead in the pigments? After all the issues with products from China, I'm being more vigilant about this and it's nearly impossible to find non-china art supplies in my price range! thoughts?

Wow, good point about the question of where our art supplies are coming from. I've been on the toy watch for a long time, but it honestly hadn't occurred to me to look at where our paints were made. I know you can get German-made watercolors from Stockmar, but as you say, those are pricey, and I have an uneasy feeling about Stockmar anyway. (Edited to add: There's a long story here! This is a shift for me. I have enthusiastically recommended Stockmar many times in the past.)

Hmm, this bears looking into.

As for "why watercolors"—for me, there are lots of reasons. I've never used oils, but my sense is that they're expensive and messy and harder to clean up...don't you have to clean your brushes with turpentine or something? You see how ignorant I am on that subject.

We do use tempera paint sometimes, and my kids love the little jars of acrylics for painting those unfinished wooden things you can pick up cheap at Michael's. (More made-in-China stuff? Probably. Sigh. Hadn't occurred to me.)

But we like watercolors best for painting pictures, because of the luminous, swirling colors, the easy blending, the pleasure of watching the heavy paper absorb the translucent paint.

Oil pastels are a rare treat: again, their mess factor is too high for regular use.

My three oldest girls are taking an art class right now, and the medium for many weeks has been chalk pastels. They are really enjoying using them, and they've learned an awful lot about tone and shading and texture. I think chalk pastels are an easy medium to use for experimenting with shading techniques. And the cleanup is a snap.

(You can see where my priorities are.)

On the same post, Amy asked another excellent question.

Where and how do you store/display the finished artwork? I find this even more daunting than the creative process. How do you (any of you) respectfully manage the output of your oh-so-productive junior artists? I'd love to hear any thoughts.

Ha! On this topic, my thoughts amount to a dull buzzing in the head. Our current storage method is: pictures hung on the fridge, and a large and ever-growing pile of beautiful finished work on the laundry-room counter, waiting to be hung or stored or something.

When we moved last year, I had to sort through boxes and boxes of such treasures. I tried to pare down to the best or most adorable work, but it was sooo hard to part with any single painting or drawing, you know? The masterpieces that made the cut are now languishing in a box in the closet, most of them.

So I'd love to hear other people's answer to this question.

Related post: Watercolor Painting: How It Happens Here.

Of Fowls and Fun

Yesterday my three oldest kids went to a workshop at the San Diego Museum of Art. A docent gave a short talk about elements of art—line, shape, color, etc—and then they split into small groups and went to look at four paintings up close. Afterward, they did an art project focusing on copying details from the paintings they'd viewed. I missed most of the workshop, because I was outside with the little ones. The girls had a splendid time, and Beanie was especially impressed by the dead chicken.

"Huh?" I asked her, ever so articulately, upon receiving this report.

"A dead chicken! In a painting! I saw it, and I drew it!"

I do remember seeing a painting with a dead fowl in it when we first visited the museum. I think it was a duck, not a chicken: Merganser by William Michael Harnett. (I don't know if that link will work—the URL says "index." I don't think the SDMA site has direct URLs to the paintings. But if you're really interested in seeing the deceased bird, you can click around to get there. Beanie thinks it is worth the effort. Me, I prefer a nice landscape with haystacks.)

During the workshop, a couple of the other mothers and I walked down to the Science Center with our little ones. There's a kiddie room upstairs where a mama can park herself on a bench and watch her younguns play with all the interesting toys. Wonderboy loved the air chute made for putting balls in: whoosh! Up goes the ball and pops out the top of the tube. Rilla enjoyed filling the toy shopping cart with plastic fruits and vegetables. It was so easy and pleasant to sit there chatting with my friends while our toddlers and preschoolers bustled around. I remember when I thought tending two little ones in a children's museum was a tiring day's work. Now it's a mini-vacation.

One thing I'm really enjoying about our proximity to Balboa Park is that we can drop by for short, frequent visits without feeling like we have to do and see everything all at once. We've barely begun to explore all the park has to offer. After I picked up the girls, we were strolling back to our car and we passed the little Timkin Museum, a small, free-to-the-public art gallery next to the big SDMA. Erica had mentioned that it's an incredible collection. Jane and I noticed a huge sign advertising a special French Neoclassical exhibit, which is exactly the movement we've just been reading about in Young People's Story of Fine Art, so that was a pretty exciting discovery. We'll have to squeeze in a visit sometime soon.

Jane is also keen to see the Journey to the Copper Age exhibit at the Museum of Man—she wondered aloud whether her daddy could take a day off and take her. And I'd like to get to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Natural History Museum while it's still there...but tops on the girls' wish list is to go climb a certain enormous, low-branching tree they spotted on the way into the park. And when I was watching how happy my wee ones were yesterday in the kiddie playroom, I made a little mental note to remember that as important and wonderful as all this cultural stuff is, it's even more important to allow ample time for Climbing Very Big Trees and Dipping Fingers into Fountains. Sometimes the dead chicken really is the best part of the art museum. Even when it's a duck.

Free Mark Kistler Drawing Lessons on YouTube

Remember how much fun my kids had at Mark Kistler's drawing class this summer? Mark has begun to put free 8-minute drawing tutorials up at YouTube. Very cool!

Watercolor Painting: How It Happens Here

I have often remarked to close friends that for me, logistics make or break everything. I can have the best idea in the world, but if I can't figure out how to pull it off on a practical level, it is no more useful to us than a cloud: something pretty to look at, but impossible to take hold of.

Painting is one of those "nice ideas" that floated airily overhead until I worked out a system to make it feasible on a regular basis. My pal Sarah asked me for the details, and I thought I'd share them here. There's nothing earth-shattering here, but you should know that I am the easily frazzled type who really must think things through on the most basic level or else my plans go all kablooey.

I use high-quality watercolor paints, the kind that come in little tubes. These are very rich pigments and a little goes a long way. We used to use paint jars but they took up so much storage space, and the lids fell under the table and rolled away, and there was always mess involved.

Then I found these cute little plastic paint palettes at Michael's for 99 cents each. They have six wells, perfect for mixing colors. I put a dab of the three primary colors in one well each, and a smaller dab of each in two more of the wells, so the kids can mix their green, orange, and purple. Each child gets her own paint palette.

I have written before about investing in good watercolor paper and brushes. (Here's my long art supplies post from Bonny Glen, and its sequel.) These tubes have lasted us for over a year.

For painting boards, we use some markerboards (dry erase boards) I bought on clearance a long while back. I had actually ordered an official painting board from Paper Scissors Stone, and when I arrived I smacked my forehead because it was—a markerboard. But way more expensive. Doh.

Here's a tip from a Bonny Glen reader for another inexpensive kind of painting board. Whatever you use, they sure do make painting a lot easier to clean up. The boards wipe right off, and we stack ours near the closet when they're not in use. Voila—nice clean table.

We use pickle jars for water and a cloth diaper for drying brushes. Oh! And here's a great tip from—I think—Donna Simmons of Christopherus Homeschool Resources (whose First Grade Syllabus I'll be reviewing here later this week, by the way, and whose work I praised in my Waldorf series in the spring). If this wasn't Donna's suggestion, it was a speaker from a Waldorf homeschooling conference on a DVD I watched a while back. I should tell you more about that, too, sometime. But I digress. The great tip I was getting to: it's a sweet way to teach children to properly care for their brushes. You take the brush and tell a little story about a gnome who doesn't like his beard to stay wet. We never leave the brush sitting in the jar of water because that beard will be soaked and oh, what a sad little gnome. And we mustn't push too hard and bend his beard every which way. He doesn't like that at all.

Ever since I told this tale to Rose and Bean, they have treated their brushes with special care. No more leaving them soaking in the pickle jar. They carefully dry the "beard" on the cloth and smooth it into a point. It's nice.

I explained to the kids about the expensive paper, and how in order to use it for our paintings, we have to take great care not to squander it. They understood. They've painted on plain white copy paper, and they can feel the difference.

Rose says she "needs to paint at least two pictures a day" or she just doesn't feel right. She finds it a calming, peaceful activity. Here's a painting she says was inspired by a poem called "The Little Rose Tree" by Rachel Field:

(As you can see, we don't bother to tape our paper down flat, as most watercolor technique books recommend.)

When they were younger, I usually wet the paper with a sponge first, per the wet-on-wet watercolor technique you'll hear about in every Waldorf resource. My very little children, like Wonderboy now at age three, loved touching a brushful of paint to the wet paper and watching the paint swirl around the page. But past the age of five or so, I find that they much prefer to have more control over where their colors go. They know how to use water (either before or after applying paint to paper) to help the paint go where they want it to go, and to blend colors. They love to keep wetting the brush and "pulling" paint from one darker section across a wider area, making a rich blue sky or a lush green meadow.

Sarah had some great art-supply advice of her own to share:

Here is the address for the discount art supplies I was telling you about:

www.millerpadsandpaper.com

The company reminds me of Rainbow Resource only it is (nearly) exclusively
art supplies.  I have bought things in person at conventions and ordered by
phone and online.  I highly recommend them.  The prices are hard to beat.  I
purchased my class supplies for VBS this summer from them.  Even with
shipping they were the least expensive alternative (and I always love
supporting a small business anyway).

One of my favorite items is their sketchbook journals.  They have all sizes
in both 60 and 80# paper.  They are $3 for a 6x9 size which are perfect for
little laps in the car.

Always good to know where to stock up on more supplies. We get very excited about painting around here, as you can see. (Kindly ignore the girls squabbling in the background.)

(This clip doesn't keep replaying every time you load the page, does it? It isn't supposed to.)

Amazing Art with Mark Kistler

I've written before about how much Jane has enjoyed working through the drawing lessons in Mark Kistler's Draw Squad. When I saw that Mark Kistler himself was offering a summer art camp right here in San Diego, I jumped at the opportunity.

"Hey, Jane," I said, ever so casually, "would you be interested in taking an art class with Mark Kistler?"

"WHAT??????!!!!!!!!!!!" she shrieked, puncturing my left eardrum. (I think I counted the number of exclamation points correctly, but there may have been more.) "REALLY????!!!!" :::pop:::: There went my other eardrum.

"I take it that's a yes?"

I couldn't hear her response, but fortunately I have learned a lot of sign language. I interpreted the jumping-up-and-down and maniacal grinning as a yes, and signed her up.

On Day Two of the camp, Rose demanded to know why she wasn't part of this experience. She fit the age range, so I'm not really sure why I didn't think to sign her up as well. Perhaps my powers of thought were thrown off by the shrieking and the ruptured eardrums and whatnot.

Happily, Day Two was "Bring a Friend Day," so I was able to sign Rose up for the rest of the week-long camp.

We could have signed up for two sessions—"Draw! Draw! Draw!" and "Beyond Pencil Power"—but I had some scheduling conflicts with the larger chunk of time, so we (to the children's disappointment) limited our participation to Draw! Draw! Draw!, a one-hour session five days in a row.

They have had the most fabulous time.

They love Mark Kistler. He's a great guy, every bit as engaging and funny as his books. My girls love his sense of humor and his energy. They come out of class full of laughter and stories—and the drawings, my word, the drawings.

Mark teaches the basics of 3-D drawing. His style is cartoonish, which appeals to the kids. His technique is rock solid, and the concepts they have learned will serve them well for a lifetime of drawing: foreshortening, shading, finding where light would hit the object you are drawing. The kids walked out of the very first class with impressive and delightful drawings. They are thrilled. They are bubbling over with excitement. They are distraught because today is the last day of class.

Never fear!, I told them. We can take Mark Kistler home with us. Of course we already have the cherished copy of Draw Squad, and now (thanks to a little bartering action, heh heh—Mark has a young daughter who is just the right age for Little House) we have his Imagination Station book as well, along with a couple of his drawing-lesson DVDs, which contain episodes of Mark's popular PBS show of the same name.

And then there's his website, which is loaded with good stuff.  You can download art lessons and even sign up for Mark's online drawing school. There are some free lessons to give you a taste of how it works. It's a nifty format, with animations to walk you through each step.

My girls couldn't wait to try out the new DVDs, and I have to tell you, I was blown away by the drawings Beanie—six years old, you know, and the only one who did NOT attend Mark's workshop (next year, I promised her, if he offers the camp here again)—produced after watching the show: a whole page of 3-D cartoon ghosts chasing each other around.

My point being: Mark's methods are highly effective, probably because they are so much fun. I only wish I could sign up for the class myself next year. (Actually, parents can sit in on the classes for free, and there's a kids-and-adults mixed session in the evenings. I couldn't swing it, what with the baby and the toddler, but the opportunity was there.)

I'll just have to content myself with watching the DVDs. These kids are having too much fun. I've got to get in on the action.

This Guy Gives New Meaning to the Term "Performance Art"

This YouTube clip of an artist at work is amazing.

Hat tip: my old friend Pam T. of the Always Learning list.

Saturday Morning Rabbit Trail

I was catching up with my friend Silvia's blog, Po Moyemu, and saw this post about her brother's Google Sketchup tutorial.

Google SketchUp? This was new to me. I liked the sound of it (probably because it rhymes with ketchup) and went to check it out. Ooh, fun. It's a 3D drafting program. You can draft buildings, furniture, all sorts of stuff. You can even plunk your buildings down in Google Earth.

This, I thought, might be useful for Alicia's Architecture for Kids blog. Have you visited that yet? Gorgeous photos, interesting links.

Every time I visit it I mean to ask Alicia (aka Love2Learn Mom) if  she has read our favorite kids' architecture book, Round Buildings, Square Buildings, Buildings that Wiggle like a Fish, which I wrote about on Bonny Glen a while back.

Back to SketchUp. I wanted to read Silvia's brother's tutorial, and that clicky-click introduced me to Make Magazine. Wow. Who knew? It's a quarterly magazine full of techie projects. You can subscribe to the paper edition or a digital version (or both). You can also purchase single issues, if there is a particular article that catches your eye on the website. (I was able to watch Silvia's brother's SketchUp video tutorial for free, but I couldn't read the article.)

There is even a Make blog, the top post of which right now is a link to a video podcast of How to Make a Balloon Flinging Siege Weapon—guaranteed to make any teenage boy's heart go pitty-pat.

And! And! Are you ready for this? Make has a sister publication: Craft! (Did I just hear a collective Oooh... from the homeschooling mom crowd?)

What is CRAFT?

CRAFT is the first project-based magazine dedicated to the renaissance that is occurring within the world of crafts. Celebrating the DIY spirit, CRAFT's goal is to unite, inspire, inform and entertain a growing community of highly imaginative and resourceful people who are transforming traditional art and crafts with unconventional, unexpected and even renegade techniques, materials and tools; people who undertake amazing crafting projects in their homes and communities.

There's a Craft blog, of course, as well as a Projects page which includes links to project instructions elsewhere on the net, such as these gorgeous felted beads at Maryjane's Attic.

All this from one post at Silvia's blog. Oh, internet, you are a marvelous, terrible thing.

500 Years of Women in Art

Was mesmerized by this at my hubby's blog. He got it from Charlottesville Words. I imagine it'll be making the rounds, because it's fascinating.

One thing that struck me was how you get to the twentieth century and the dehumanizing begins. It was strange to feel so repelled by that, because I have always found cubism and abstract art to be interesting and often quite beautiful or striking. Something about seeing the fracturing happen in this progression, after so many lovely images celebrating the female face and form, is a shock to the sensibilities—perhaps a taste of what a shock those styles of painting were to the audiences who first viewed them.

I Stand Corrected!

Turns out dryer lint really IS valuable! Check out this comment from Jennifer (author of the wonderful homeschooling-on-a-boat blog, S/V Mari Hal-O-Jen):

You don't save Lint for Clay???
2 Cups Dryer Lint (firmly packed) 1/3 Cup Warm Water
6 Tbsp. White Glue
1 Tbsp. Clear Liquid Dishsoap
Tear the lint up into little bits. Mix everything in a bowl and knead until workable. Sculpt to heart's content. Airdries in a few days.

Who knew? (Not my daughters—but perhaps they felt in their bones that it had potential.)

Um, Kid, You DO Know You Could Just Do It for Fun, Don't You?

Shortly after one of her older sisters earned herself a chunk of copywork as a consequence for something-or-other, Beanie, aged almost six, appeared at my side with one of our Draw-Write-Now books.

"Mommy," she said, all bright-eyed eagerness, "if I do something naughty and have to have copywork, you could give me THIS book. See?"

Draw-Write-Now is primarily a drawing tutorial, but there are a few lines of simple text beneath the pictures, suitable for handwriting practice if you are so inclined. I never have been, not wishing to suck the fun out of my kids' favorite, favorite how-to-draw manuals.

But Beanie was all kinds of excited about her new idea. "I wonder how naughty I would have to be," she mused, "to make you give me some copywork."

Hey, don't look at ME, child—I'm certainly not giving you any suggestions!