Mardi Gras masks, adult art class, 2/24/20

At this link to my Mardi Gras page from long ago, you will find several coloring pages to print out:

http://catinkacards.tripod.com/coloring_pages/mardi_gras.html

Lesson description and student examples of previous works here:

https://cknotes4.blogspot.com/2017/03/mardi-gras-masks-kids-and-adult-drawing.html?m=0

Masks from 2/24/20

Photo courtesy of Chris Sady

Valentine’s Day swans papercut and drawing, 2/10/20

...Or ducks? This is actually a drawing or tracing from the papercut - laid out on the card stock sheet as a template. After tracing, I colored with our standard set of 24 crayons, of which I probably only used 6(?) colors!

Valentines papercut swans cards, adult art class display, 2/10/20

Students drew their own templates following along with my demo drawing. They made extra templates to use as a future reference.

After cutting out their kissing swans templates, students either made a background card for the papercut and/or made a larger full sheet design on card stock. They tipped their papercuts onto the background sheet using either glue stick or tape, (masking), rolled sticky side out to make a kind of double stick tape.

What a beautiful array here. Especially against the library's new paint job.

Chinese New Year - of the Rat, 2020. Adult Art Class student display, 2/3/20

Chinese New Year of the Rat - 2020

We worked from reference pictures of the decorative designs created each year. This year's celebrations began on Saturday January 25 and continue for about fifteen days.

Exercises included practicing a Rat drawn in a few calligraphy strokes. We had cut a sheet of paper into quarters. Color a piece all red, (crayon). Now turn it red side down against a clean quarter sheet. Draw a rat on the back using a good bit of pressure with a number 2 pencil - or use a colored pencil. You have to draw firmly and directly. No futzing and sketching. You should have a kind of carbon copy on that clean sheet. Decorate as you wish.

We did simple papercuts too. Color a quarter sheet red. Cut out a rat figure so that you have a nice papercut and you have the background piece as a papercut. Arrange your quarter sheet creations onto a full sheet and attach. We used masking tape turned into double stick tape just by forming a short section of tape into a loop - sticky side out

Winter barns in snow scenes - adult art class, 1/13/20

Winter barns in snow scenes - adult art class, 1/13/20

We worked from two reference photos. First we did a set of exercises in effort to try to see the photos in a different manner than we are used to. The first exercise was to color in the dark shapes without using outlines. The second exercise was just the same thing color and shapes, but use two colors. The next exercise was on the second photograph. Draw the sky shapes by just coloring the shapes. Working around a tree, a bare winter tree, you might find imagery in the branchwork such as elephant heads, old-fashioned shoes, and other critters.
We also did a continuous line drawing for one of the exercises.

For the final drawing they did as they wished - as the large drawing working from either photo or both or whatever!

Evergreens in Snow - papercuts, adult art class student display, 1/6/20

Class worked hard trying to follow my instructions for this yet untested idea. We have done variations on it over the years. The difference here is that the foldover flap with the cutouts stays attached to the background panel. Before I write out or draw up instructions, how about treating this as a puzzle to solve!

There must be a way to post answers - in the comments! Do try it!

Holiday cards and ornaments, adult art class, 12/9/19

Class started by practicing with two colored pencils taped together to create a double line drawing tool. One pencil should be forward of the other a bit. Practice straight lines, loops, circles, ribbon like swirleys... and curlies. Try looping around to make a wreath. We should have tried trees too.

Then we practiced imagining spheres as we drew. A simple round circle with a circumference can turn a flat disc into s sphere. Try the atom symbol. Try winding up virtual yarn to make a bigger and bigger ball of yarn. Try an orange with the peel scored. Finally try drawing a sphere by coloring in the imaginary outlines but leave a white belt as a white ribbon.

Write a simple greeting onto any spaces you want on your card.

We drew our cards on folded card stock. Either as two cards from a sheet or one full sheet. I trimmed off one end of the full sheet folded. It is a bit better proportion that way.

Here they have arranged the display of the class work into a tree shape.  

Woodland animals and turkeys, student drawings, adult art class, 11/18/19

We warmed up with a set of drawing exercises working from reference photos.
1) draw a critter in white by just coloring in the background.
2) draw a blind contour drawing of a critter - keep your eye on the reference image, tool on the paper, and don't look at the paper. Go slowly and quietly. It is not supposed to look like anything!
3) draw a continuous line of the reference image, keep tool on the drawing
4) draw the forms of a reference image. Egg shapes? But imagine their 3D form how it takes up space.
Turkey - half a sheet drawing script like scribbling. Each line should be connected script forms repeating a mark like a letter. Hmm - would this work as the actual letters of the name?
The other half of the page is to translate the elements of a turkey image into the scribbles of script/calligraphy.

St. George Grange, Wiley’s corner. Adult art class drawing display, 9/23/19

Once you notice that a simple building almost appears as if it is a face,  faces start staring out at you from so many buildings you see. Hard not to see them. I see this building as a kind of jack-o lantern face. That porch is the jagged toothed grin.

Students worked from color photos of the building. We practiced isolating and trying to capture the various dark shapes of the roofs. One can imagine them as little origami creatures with wide open triangular mouthes. 

Class  also worked from copies of the photo converted to an outline image with superimposed grid.

Sailboat passing Rockland Breakwater lighthouse - student display, adult art class, 8/19/19

Students did some torn paper and negative space exercises before tackling the reference model. This is a little painting I did years ago. Sketching sailboats racing can only be done quickly in real time. I painted in my little drawing the next day.

Back then I had no camera that could see so far out. I could only see through binoculars. My phone camera still can't see that far out. One must draw moving objects quickly and make up the rest.

Rockland Breakwater lighthouse - student display adult art class, 8/12/19

We started exercises with drawing the image in continuous line. Keep your drawing tool in constant contact with the paper. Backtrack if you must.

Next we drew the image stencil style using a dark crayon. Color in to an imaginary outline. Separate the areas and shapes by keeping white channels.

Final drawings we made, again from my ancient instamatic photo of the lighthouse taken on a ferry ride to North Haven quite a few years ago.

Lupine coastal landscapes, adult art class, 7/8/19

We started with a series of exercises:
Draw clumps of stalks of lupine in a variety of
scribbles or textures. Each clump should be different than the
previous. Fill the sheet.
Rough in two horizontal panes/frames/rectangles on a vertical sheet.
First box create some shapes like areas in a landscape.
Second box make the same but fill it in with the textures practiced earlier, and
any other coloring desired.
Final drawing make up a scene on a full sheet. Use
reference photos if you want.

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.

Spring Flowers - daffodils and tulips, adult art class display, 4/29/19

We started with several schematic structural versions of daffodils. These are to practice the basic structure and form of the flowers. Then we worked from photo references, (found on the web), as inspiration for the final drawings. Even the simple structural drawings colored in have their own beauty.

Photo courtesy of Deb Collemer:

April adult drawing programs, 2019

Press Release: 

3/22/19 

Free April Art Workshops for Adults, with Catinka Knoth, at Rockland 

Library, 2019

Rockland - Catinka Knoth will lead a drawing workshop series for 

adults, on creating 'April Art'. Attendees will explore themes such as papercuts to celebrate  fairytale author Hans Christian Andersen, Easter themes and cards?

Cherry trees and the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival; spring flowers such as tulips and daffodils; and frogs. Classes meet 11 a.m. Most Mondays, April 1, 

8, 22, & 29, (the Library closes for Patriots Day, 4/15); in the Community Room, Rockland Public 

Library, 80 Union St. Led by Knoth, participants will create their own art. 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 593-6085 or Rockland Library at 

594-0310. 

Knoth will provide instruction and guidance in drawing and creating the 

April themes. Each week is a different subject. Participants will work 

with pencil, colored pencil, and crayon, and sometimes scissors, with a focus on drawing in color. 

4/01 Papercuts and fairy tales in honor of HC Andersen 

4/08  Easter eggs and cards

4/15 No Class - Library closed for Patriots' Day 

4/22 Cherry trees and the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival  

4/29 Spring Flowers - Tulips, daffodils, Frogs and lilyponds

Knoth paints watercolors of Maine and whimsical animal scenes, which 

she offers as cards and prints. She also 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: Art/photos by Catinka Knoth

Attachments: Art/photos by Catinka Knoth

 

 
 

Valentine swan paper cuts cards, adult art class display, 2/12/19

Template drawing:

Swan papercut pattern for kissing swans Valentine card

F = the fold. I did not leave enough room to really show the frame here, but I like to cut it w a frame. We made our  papercuts from copy paper then tipped onto either card stock or copy paper folded in half, (just dab glue in the 4 corners instead of trying to glue it all down flat). We had colored the background as desired before mounting the papercuts. Depending on which card format you go with you adjust how wide to cut the swans. And, you can use these as templates to trace around and just draw on the card.

Year of the Pig - Chinese New Year, student adult art display, 2/4/19.

We started right in on the project without exercises. We used references of New Year Pig images and art. Some of the references are papercuts and would have been cut using a craft knife. Scissors would not be able to cut such designs within the figure. So we drew our designs using black crayon over red colored pig figures. One reference creates a pig figure by incorporating the year numerals into the figure's structure.

Penguins and sports figures - adult art class, 1/28/19

We started with black and white abstraction practices. Cut a sheet of paper into quarters. Color one of these quarters black, (crayon). Cut out a variety of teardrop shapes from this black piece. Make an arrangement of the shapes on another piece. Copy that arrangement by coloring into imaginary outlines. Make another arrangement that could be a sports figure pictograph. Copy/draw it just as you did before. Make an arrangement that could be penguins. Draw that too. Final drawings - work on a full sheet and use reference photos of real penguins.

Holiday cards and ornaments, adult art class group display, 12/10/18

We did practices for using lines just to imagine and develop the feel of the physical spherical form rather than just trying to make it 'look' like the form. It ends up 'looking' more like the form if you can imagine it or pretend it. One of these works is such a practice sheet.

Gingerbread and fanciful paper houses for the holidays. Adult art class, 12/3/18

I had a rough idea in my head of how we could make houses of paper to decorate. The plan was to demonstrate the instructions without words - miming and gesturing only. Unfortunately I had apparently forgotten to even announce what the subject would be - or no one had noticed. It wasn't long before people were throwing up their hands and threatening to give up and go home. They did get it through to me that I had not at least given the subject or overview.

I broke down and used limited words. That however gets me all confused. I can't figure out how it should work while simultaneously directing verbally.

Once I said what the subject was, I told class to just make a paper house however they wished. Decorate it of course - before cutting it out and putting it all together. Some ended up so called 'cheating' by making separate roofs. A couple made large house pictures.

The next question was how to take the picture. We did them both on the wall and as a little village setup.

They are so magical. Everyone oohed and aahed and squealed in delight. Someone noted that the lesson that provoked the most 'whining' had ended up pleasing almost everyone the most. It was a hairy ride for awhile though!