Native American designs and motifs - student art display, kids and adults, children's drawing class, 11/28/17

Native American Heritage Month. We did eagles, totem poles, ceremonial eagle dancers, birchbark tipis, a birchbark canoes, and painted ponies

Native American designs for November is a commemorative month. Adult drawing class, 11/27/17

November is Native American Heritage Month
Student art display: 

We started with several design or graph color play exercises. 

Four panes. Divide them into graphs of equal sized squares in the following divisions

#1. 8x8  create a symmetrical design in one darkish color

#2. 6x6  do as #1

#3. 7x7.  Create a symmetrical design, touch each edge. (Two colors ok - I don't remember)

#4. 5x5. As #3

Full sheet - set up a 12 x15 graph, leaving a border or margin around it.

Create 4-6 free standing designs or motifs in this sheet. Use colors as you wish.

Final piece:

Fold a sheet of paper so you have as large a square as you can out of it. Cut away that excess paper. (Assuming all know how to find a square in a rectangular sheet of paper). Fold in half each way, and then again both ways. You should have 16 squares in the overall square. Fold in half on the diagonals as well. (You should already have one from making the large square.) Create a two color design in your big square by coloring in the folded boxes and triangles as you wish. 

How does this apply to Native American design? Just imagine their bead and quill work.... All based on cell and graph design. The Seminole and Miccosukee Native Americans made cloth and clothing by sewing long strips of cotton together then cutting these and piecing together to make repetitious cloths to sew together as larger materials. 

My google searches and some resulting links:

seminole indians skirts cloth patchwork quilt

miccosukee clothes

http://ushistoryimages.com/seminole-indians.shtm

https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/sflarch/collections/seminoledoll/patchwork/

Thanksgiving cornucopia crayon demo drawing to color

Happy Thanksgiving! Cornucopia

Black Crayon demo drawing, digitally colored
Next post you will find the black crayon drawing to color!

December Adult Art Workshops with Catinka Knoth, at Rockland Library, 2017

Holiday Cards, Ornaments, & Scenes December Adult Art Workshops with Catinka Knoth, at Rockland
Library, 2017

Press Release:
Rockland - Catinka Knoth will  lead an art workshop series for adults,
on drawing and making holiday cards, scenes, and ornaments,  11 a.m., most Mondays, December 4-18, (no class 12/25) in the Community Room, Rockland
Public Library, 80 Union St.  Led by Knoth, participants will  create
their own art for the holidays. Knoth provides the  classes  free of
charge, with materials supplied. Friends of Rockland Library host the
workshops, which are open to the public. FMI Knoth at 691-5544 or
Rockland Library at 594-0310.

Knoth will provide instruction and guidance in drawing and creating
December's holiday  themes. Participants will work with colored pencil,
crayon, and paper cutting, with a focus on drawing in color.

Knoth paints watercolors of Maine and whimsical animal scenes, which
she offers as cards and prints. She teaches a free weekly children's
drawing class at Rockland Public Library, sponsored by Wendy and Keith
Wellin. For more information about Knoth's work visit
www.catinkacards.com.

Attachments: Holiday art by Catinka Knoth

December Children's Drawing Workshops at Rockland Library, with Catinka Knoth, 2017

December Children's Drawing Workshops at Rockland Library, with Catinka Knoth, 2017

December Children's Drawing Workshops at Rockland Library, with Catinka Knoth, 2017

"Let's Draw Pictures and Cards for the Holiday Season!" 
 
Press Release
Rockland - Children will explore motifs from the traditional
celebrations of December in the free drawing classes at Rockland Public Library led by Catinka Knoth. Classes meet every Tuesday, 4-5pm, in the Community Room, Rockland Public Library, 80 Union St. Children 10 and under need adult accompaniment. The program, sponsored by Wendy & Keith Wellin, is free with all materials supplied, and hosted by Friends of Rockland Library. Contact Jean Young, children's librarian, at 594-0310 for more information.
 
Christmas, Winter solstice, Chanukkah, Kwanzaa, and the New Year offer lots of imagery for creative fun. Students will create images such as holiday wreaths, trees, gingerbread houses, ornaments and decorations; Santa Claus, toys, & elves; reindeer and sleighs; gift giving and more.

12/05    Gingerbread houses & holiday decorations
12/12    Christmas & holiday cards
12/19    Holiday cards & winter solstice
12/26    New Year's, Kwanzaa


Class often starts with a period of guessing and brainstorming ideas 
for the session's drawing. Knoth then leads children age 6 and up in "follow along" drawings.  She expects children to work independently and encourages adults to participate by making their own drawings. If time allows, Knoth takes group photos of the students' work at the end of class.
 
Holiday Motif Demonstration Drawings  by Catinka Knoth

Turkeys and Cornucopias for Thanksgiving - adult and kids' drawing classes, student art displays, 11/20-21/17

Both classes started w looping and 'penmanship' style exercises. Then we created the turkeys using that calligraphy style. It is wonderful fun to do. Happy Thanksgiving!

Turkey drawing for Thanksgiving!

'Script' loops practice.
Turkey drawn in loops.
Turkey line drawing in orange - just the basic areas from the reference art, a Victorian 'scrap' from Dover publications.
Then color in the line drawing as desired. Be as wild or as realistic as you want! Have fun.

Woodland animals 2017 demo drawing to color

Mouse, chipmunk, raccoon, fox, lynx, bear, snowy owl - have fun coloring! Its a big mouse and a small coon in this scene. The small bear we can get away with - he is in the distance!

Woodland Animals art classes - squirrels, chipmunks raccoons foxes Canada links LYNX, student art, kids and adult art classes, 11/13– 14/17

Adult art classes started with exercises of interpreting photos as spiral figures like slinkies just to get a feel for the form. Then we did a page of continuous line drawings of four different animals. At last the students drew as they wished working from the reference photos.

The kids' class followed along with
with me. We had brainstormed a list of woodland animals. We got a lot of them. We even got a snowy owl in there, and tried a badger, which really had to be from imagination because we didn't know what it looks like.


Bobcats and candida links are very similar The Canada lynx has a tail that is completely black at the end of it. The bobcat tail is white underneath .our reference picture was of a Canada Lynx judging by the tail.

Deer drawings and exercises, student art display from kids' and adult drawing classes, 11/6 &7/2017

Both adults and kids drawing classes started with the same exercises. We made four rectangles on a sheet of paper.

1) crisscross perpendicular lines, 11 lines. 

2) crisscross diagonal lines, 13 of them
3) crisscross arcs, seven of them
4) draw overlapping triangles of varying sizes - nine of them.

Now, in each of those rectangles see if you can create or find some kind of figure. Color in in one color. Use a different color for each figure. You can either find a figure or make something up as you go along -doesn't matter. You might want to mark it with an eye or dark spot for an eyeball. Also good to make a note on each box of what the parameters were – i.e. how many lines, what kind of lines.

Then we turned to the drawings of   KEN HULTGREN as references for 
drawing deer running in the fields. 

Kenneth Hultgren was an animator for Disney. He wrote a book on drawing animals which is a wonderful reference for practicing animal drawings. The book was written around 1951.

https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Art_of_Animal_Drawing.html?id=BBt4OzW_wV4C&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button

I do a follow along drawing and the students draw with me. 

Quickie apple dessert with corn tortillas, 11/2/17

Oh my - can't believe I only today thought of this combo. The other day a friend brought me some large corn based cookies. Got me wondering how one could adapt corn tortillas into something similar.

Oohh so much better:
Heat the cast-iron frypan.
Two corn tortillas together.
Dab thin slices of butter on to the corn tortillas.
Cover with plain slices of tart apples.
I keep the skin on them but that's personal preference, (and it is better for you).
Sprinkle apples with a teaspoon of sugar.
Sprinkle cinnamon.
Transfer this tart onto the frying pan. No fat needed in the pan.
This is pan baking or roasting essentially - cover the pan, and let it cook.
I don't know how long I let it cook. I was off getting washed up and ready to dive into my new dessert.
Once I saw that the apples had been affected by heat, I turned the heat off and let it sit in its own heat some mor.e
Then I took the pictures.
Once I had pictures I could take a taste.
The two tortilla crust is crackly. Yhe apples and the tortillas together taste really good. What an easy way to make a fruit dessert! Didn't even need any salt. Usually these corn tortillas need some salt but this was fine.

Now, I want a Spanish name for this -
Manzanilla con maiz tortillas