Rumriver Art Center - Art Projects and News

Kids love to draw animals and Pablo Picasso being a kid at heart gives us our inspiration for today's lesson. He was one of the most famous and prolific artists ever. Picasso had tremendous diversity and abundance to his career. He loved using animals and birds as his inspiration. The bull was one of his favorite, using the subject in painting, drawings and sculptures. He did a series of bulls from very realistic to almost totally abstract. In this drawing we use a Picasso cubist bull for our inspiration. Picasso used color, shape and line to create his cubist drawing of the Bull. Our lesson works with shapes, lines and color to create our image. Materials: Heavyweight paper, sketching pencil, sharpie and your choice of mediums to finish. Step #1: Draw light guidelines across the center and down the middle of the page. Draw a large rectangle for the body and a small rectangle for the head a shown below. Step #2: Draw head with eyes, nose, mouth and horns. Step #3: Draw ...

One of my favorite artists for animal projects is Charles Wysocki. Wysocki (1928 - 2002) who was born in Detroit Michigan. From the time he was little, he always wanted to be an artist. He loved using cats and other animals in his whimsical paintings and prints. You may not have heard of Charles Wysocki, but you have probably seen his work. His animals  has been featured calendars for the past 30 years. Wysocki is known for his primitive folk art style. In our lesson we use Wysocki 1979 painting “Sugarplum” as our inspiration. We focus on the dog and her relationship to her house. Click here for information on Wysocki calendars . Materials, heavyweight sketching paper, sketching pencil,watercolor pencils and pastel chalk.  Step #1: Draw light guidelines across the center and down the middle. Draw a circle for head, add the eyes, snout, mouth and ears. Step #2: Draw an oval for the body. Then draw the front legs coming off the head and now draw the rear legs a...

Its been dog week here at the Rumriver Art Center, we have been inspired by dog artist George Rodrigue. The favorite dog has been the miniature dachshund with long body, head and short legs. Materials: heavyweight paper, sketching pencil, sharpie and your choice of materials to finish. Step #1: Draw light guidelines acroos the center and down the middle of the page. Draw the head, nose, eye, ear and jaw. Step #2: Draw a long narrow body and tail. Step #3: Draw the cute short legs. Step #4: Time to add your details, be creative have some fun.

The King Cobra can inject huge amounts of poison in a single bite, enough to kill a large elephant. The king cobra is the world's longest venomous snake , with a length up to 5.6 m (18.5 ft). This species is found predominantly in forests from India through Southeast Asia to the Philippines and Indonesia . In this project I use Japanese artist Sachiko Umoto King Cobra, here illustration books are available at Amazon.com . Materials: Heavyweight drawing paper, sketching pencil, sharpie and your choice of materials to finish. Step #1: Draw the forehead and the mouth with a "U". Draw the eyes, nose, and sharp fangs.  Step #2: Draw the cobra body with a broadly spread hooded shape. Then Draw the first coil.  Step #3: Draw the coiled body and tail (you draw as many coils as you want). Step #4: Draw you details, the cobra has a pattern on its head, but not its body. Be creative and have some fun.

The legendary Roadrunner is famous for its distinctive appearance, its ability to eat rattlesnakes and its preference for scooting across the American deserts. The Roadrunner is a large, black-and-white, mottled ground bird with a distinctive head crest. It has strong feet, a long, white-tipped tail and an oversized bill. When the Roadrunner senses danger or is traveling downhill, it flies, revealing short, rounded wings with a white crescent. But it cannot keep its large body airborne for more than a few seconds, and so prefers walking or running (up to 17 miles per hour). Our lesson uses The Roadrunner to develop texture and dimension. Materials; heavy weight drawing paper, sketching pencils, colored pencils or pastel chalk. Step #1: Draw light guidelines down the center and across the middle of your page. Draw a oval for the body and another smaller one for the head.  Step #2: Draw the eyes, beak and head feathers. Step #3: Draw the tail feathers and the wi...

Tutankhamun (1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty (ruled 1333 BC – 1324 BC. Tutankhamun was nine years old when he became pharaoh and reigned for approximately ten years. In historical terms, Tutankhamun's significance stems from his rejection of the radical religious innovations introduced by his predecessor Akhenaten and that his tomb in the Valley of the Kings was discovered by Carter almost completely intact — the most complete ancient Egyptian royal tomb ever found. In this lesson we focus on symmetry (each side looking the same) and about how the Egyptian artist created proportions for the head. This lesson can be a good supplement to a history lesson on Egypt. Step #1: Draw light guidelines down the middle and across the center of the page. Draw a large "U" in the middle that is centered on the vertical guideline. A line closes the top, and another parallel line is added below. Step #2: Draw the eyes, nose mouth and ears. N...

We are starting our Winter session this week with some new classes. We have added Paper Mache and Teen Art Journal classes. This week we will be inspired by a still life project by French artist Henri Matisse. A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, flowers, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, and so on). With origins in the Middle Ages and Ancient Greek/Roman art, still life paintings give the us more leeway in the arrangement of design elements within a composition than do projects of  landscape or portraits. For more information about what is happening at the Rumriver Art Center just click here .

The killer whale, commonly referred to as the orca is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family. Killer whales are found in all oceans, from the frigid Arctic and Antarctic regions to tropical seas. Killer whales are highly social ; some populations are composed of matrilineal family groups which are the most stable of any animal species. Their sophisticated hunting techniques and vocal behaviors, which are often specific to a particular group and passed across generations, have been described as manifestations of culture . In this project I use one of my favorite illustrators Sachiko Umoto's orca,  focusing on shapes and dimension. Materials; heavyweight sketching paper or watercolor paper, sketching pencil, sharpie and your choice of materials to finish the project. Step #1: Draw the whale body with a pointed nose and large body as shown below. Step #2: Draw the mouth, the body patches and the small eyes. Step #3: Draw the pectoral, dorsal a...