Rumriver Art Center - Art Projects and News

My students just love drawing dogs, for this project I use a work by Ron Burns as our inspiration. Ron is known for his colorful dog portraits. Ron begins each portrait with the eyes. "Their eyes hold nothing back, whether it's love or fear, heartbreak or admiration. Every portrait begins with the eyes, they have to because from there all the life and personality radiates outward," he says. In our lesson we are inspired by Ron’s painting “Amigo”. We focus color and space, I encourage the students to have fun with the color. We use sketching pencils, and oil pastels or mediums such as acrylic paint to create our work of art. Step #1: Draw light guidelines across the center and down the middle of the page. Draw a egg shaped oval for the head. Step #2: Draw the dogs eyes and snout. Step #3: Now draw his large ears. Step #4: Draw the body as shown below. Step #5: Draw the floor and add your own details. Step #6: Finish your colorful dog and have some f...

I just finished a summer camp all about mythical beasts and one of my favorite was "The Kraken" a giant sea creature. Probably no legendary sea monster was as horrifying as the Kraken. According to stories this huge, many armed, creature could reach as high as the top of a sailing ship's main mast. A kraken would attack a ship by wrapping their arms around the hull and capsizing it. The crew would drown or be eaten by the monster. What's amazing about the kraken stories is that, of all the sea monster tales we have, we have the best evidence that this creature was based on something real.  Materials: Heavyweight sketching paper, sketching pencils 2h and 2b. Step #1: Draw guidelines down the center and across the middle of your paper. Draw a oval shaped football for the body of the Kraken. Add a line down the middle of the oval and across the bo...

I needed a animal drawing for one of our programs and I came across this fabulous Picasso Rooster from 1938. I fell in love with the line, shape and color of the this Picasso pastel. Pablo Picasso was one of the most famous and prolific artists ever. Picasso had tremendous diversity and abundance to his career. The Rooster is a work from 1938 when he was experimenting with color and line. Picasso had a great love for animals and birds, he even named his daughter Palamo which means dove in Spanish. We find several works where used chickens, roosters, sheep and goats. Picasso used line, color and shape to create emotion and movement in this work. Our lesson works with shapes, lines and color to create our rooster, we use combination of watercolor pencils with pastels. Materials: Heavyweight paper, sketching pencil, water color pencils and pastels either chalk or oil. Step #1: Draw guidelines across the center and down the middle of the paper. Start with a oval for the mouth and sm...

Ron Burns is an Ohio native whose professional life started in Los Angeles where he founded the graphic design company, Ron Burns Design. Burns is advocate for animal shelters and donates to many animal causes. Ron is known for his colorful dog portraits. Ron begins each portrait with the eyes. "Their eyes hold nothing back, whether it's love or fear, heartbreak or admiration. Every portrait begins with the eyes, they have to because from there all the life and personality radiates outward," he says. In our lesson we are inspired by Ron’s painting “Frenchy”. We focus color and space. Materials: sketching pencils, and oil pastels Step #1: Draw guidelines across the middle and down the center of the page. Draw a large oval for the dogs head near the center of the page.  Step #2: Draw the dogs eyes, snout and ears (note that the ears should come off the page or near the edge). Step #3: Draw the muzzle and mouth around the nose as shown below. Step #4: Draw ...

I am always searching for interesting ways for students to create a self portrait. I found a fauvist/expressionist artist Marianne von Werefkin (1860-1938) as perfect inspiration. She was born in Russia, she studied in St Petersburg and Moscow. She came Munich and soon belonged to the circle around Kandinsky and Der Blaue Reiter. She had contact with the Fauves and her portraits are among the most succinct of this style. Fauvism emphasizes emotion rather than intellect and color instead of form, it attempts to externalize what’s internal. In our lesson we are inspired by von Werefkin fauvist self portrait. We focus on creating a real self portrait using unreal colors and space.  Materials: Mirror, sketching pencils, and oil pastels or acrylic ink Step #1: Draw light guideline down the center and across the middle of your paper. Use a hand mirror or any mirror and draw the shape of your head Step #2: Draw your eyes, nose, and mouth. Step #3: Draw ears, neck and...