Cedar waxwings with berries, drawings and exercises, adult art class, 6/17/19

The first exercise was to practice a row of the black mask, eye and beak facing to the right across the page. The next row was to face to the left across the page
And then we did a series of the mask, beak, dark feet, and tip of the tail as whole birds going across the page. That meant you had to keep them lined up in order to be a whole bird. That was the challenge of it.

We made a series of boxes creating neutralized complementary color mixes using crayons so we were getting somewhat grayed or neutralized colors. First one was orange and blue. Next was purple and yellow. And then red and green. Each box of crayons has several Hughes of each color. So every combination is going to be a little different than the others. Students were to also put a little patch at the top of their window of the two colors they had used and write the names down. There will be variations even just with which color is laid down first. The last rectangle was to be a gray crayon. I should've said to try a gray crayon and a black used softly. One student did try that.

On top of these neutralized color rectangles we drew the birds using just the dark parts as in our practices. But then we used one of the colors of that rectangle to color in background without actually outlining, and thereby bringing out the whole bird better.

Finally the students could draw their own versions of Cedar waxwings with berries as they wished.