Rumriver Art Center - Art Projects and News

Sorry we did not post any projects over past few days, we were in Pasadena visiting our daughter. Today we are going to a fun animal project called Holiday Amigos. Materials: Heavyweight drawing paper, sketching pencil, sharpie, watercolor pencils and/or chalk pastels. Step #1: Draw light guidelines across the center and down the middle. Draw a large oval for polar bear head. Draw eyes, snout and ears. Step #2: Draw the polar bear body by adding a line from the ear. Step #3: Draw the bird with a circle for the head and a oval for the body. Add the eye and the beak to head. Draw wing and tail feathers. Draw talons on the polar bear paw. Step #4: Draw snow on the ground and your own details (falling snow can be added with white-out) Check out some our students work below.

I always try to introduce different artist for students to learn about portraits. Recently we used the Dutch master Vermeer as our Inspiration. Johannes Vermeer (1632 - 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings. Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours and sometimes expensive pigments , with a preference for cornflower blue and yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work. We use his most famous painting "Girl with Pearl Earring" (1665-1666) for our project. Materials: Heavyweight drawing paper 8" x 10" (this work is almost a square), sketching pencil, watercolor pencils or paint. Step #1: Draw a lig...

I wanted to do a project to warm up on this chilly winter day, a this little guy does the trick. The Vermilion Flycatcher, is a small passerine bird that can be found in the southwestern United States . The species grows to about seven inches in length, males are bright red in color, with dark brown plumage. These flycatchers feed mostly on insects such as flies , grasshoppers and beetles . These are usually taken from mid-air, after a short sally flight from a perch. In this lesson we use Vermillion Flycatcher to work on composition, overlapping shapes and color. The little guy is perched on a prickly pear cactus. Materials: Heavyweight drawing paper, sketching pencil, thin tip sharpie, colored pencils or watercolor pencils and chalk pastels. Step #1:  Draw light guidelines across the center and down the middle of your paper. Lets start with drawing the prickly pear cactus, draw a large half oval and attach four smaller ovals as shown below. Step #2: Draw the cactus bu...

Euphorbia pulcherrima, commonly known as poinsettia or noche buena, is a species of flowering plant indigenous to Mexico and Central America. It is commonly known as poinsettia, after Joel Roberts Poinsett , the first United States Minister to Mexico, who introduced the plant into the US in 1825. I used Sachiko Umoto Illustration School book for the our poinsettia drawing. With its red and green leaves and yellow flowers that look like bells,  its just perfect for the holidays. Step #1 Draw the flower and the leaves that are right at the middle. The center flower is like little bells. Step #2: Draw the red leaf parts of the flower. Step #3: Draw the green leaves peeping through the gaps between the red leaves.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853- 1890) was son of a Dutch pastor in The Netherlands. He was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. Little appreciated during his lifetime, his fame grew in the years after his death. Today, he is widely regarded as one of history's greatest painters and an important contributor to the foundations of modern art . Most of his best-known works were produced during his final two years in Arles France. He painted several studies of the Sunflowers as a deliberate experiment in color. Our project uses one of Van Gogh Sunflower still life to work on the elements of composition and color. Materials: I have used acrylic paint, oil pastel, watercolor paint, watercolor pencil and chalk pastel for this project. I like to have the students be like Van Gogh and try the project several times and then look at the results. Step #1: Draw the bottom of your flower vase. Dr...