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