Paper Strips- 2D to 3D

Good Morning. The more I have to communicate through a screens the more I want to play with paper (or wax or paint...) I am going to try to focus on PAPER for the next while because it is so versatile!! Here's on way to make 2D paper into 3D.

You'll need colored paper (white is fine too), a glue stick, scissors and a piece of mat board or cardstock as a base.
1 Cut paper into strips (paper cutter, exact knife or scissors)
2 Play with a few strips experimenting how you can make it NOT FLAT- fold, roll squish, twist.
3 Glue parts of the strip, let the rest rise up form the page

Here's some student examples:

Accordian face!

Now that you know how to fold accordion book. Here is a simple use:

accordion fold 4 panels

book closed

book open

Accordion Book

An accordion book is an easy book form once you practice a bit. Here's a folding method that works with any strip of paper to produce evenly size pages. You can probably google it and get more elegantly drawn instructions. I am including photos and my attempt at doing origami type illustrations.

81/2 x11 piece of paper cut in half lengthwise then glued together

fold in half

cut edge joins folded edge

both sides

opened up view

cut edge meets folded edge again

both sides

reverse the fold

join the mountains on the 2 larger panels

Ready to open up and draw!

Melted Crayons!

Remember that melted wax form a few days ago? With a candle and a blunt knife I made some weird birds. The colors in the sheets of wax seemed feather like. I heated the knife in the candle and used it to cut through the wax. I used the hot wax from the candle as glue. As you see I am just making this up. The wax broke, I dropped a whole bird I made and it fell apart!  I learned something about what wax melted into a thin sheet can do and not do. It was really fun.

Exploded Square

This is a simple cut paper exercise that I like to do. you need scissors, two pieces of paper of different colors. I like to choose really different colors (opposite or complimentary) One piece needs to be quite a bit larger than the other, the smaller piece needs to be a square.
steps:

1 Cut out pieces from each side, any shape
2 Arrange them as if you had flipped them out of the original paper
3 Glue all pieces

(I didn't glue them down )

Here's what mine looked like this time:

Crayons

I tell the children in my preschool class that when I was a child there were no magic markers! We used crayons first, as our dry, go- to drawing medium. Now that I have my studio and its decades later, there are so many options of things to draw with! I have been given very generous donations of crayons! I have thousands!
Today I got some out to play with. (and learned- use lots of wax paper and fewer crayons and don't forget about them in the oven. Maybe 5 minutes? Watch them!!)

I put them in a pan with wax paper underneath

I put them in a pan at 250 degrees and then forgot about them

when cool the mass looked very brown from the top but...

Add but when I flipped the wax stuck to the paper over there was color

I peeled off the paper and have colorful pieces!

Sky

This morning running across the top of Robbins Farm I had a great view of the sunrise. I started thinking about colors gradually blending into each other like they do in so many natural places- a plant stem, a leaf, the sky, the skin of a frog or the fur of a cat.
On a clear day the sky is a reliable inspiration for this. I didn't capture it with my colored pencils but the the picture of Robbins Farm when there was snow a few years ago does! How delicate is the transition from blue to orange at the horizon.

Here's what I mean! Robbins Farm a winter when there was snow. 

Everything Looks Different From Another Perspective!

Drawing is about seeing. Drawing helps you see and seeing helps you draw. I love the exercise of taking simple object and drawing it from different angles. This is a lifetime exercise for artists really not an idea of the day!
The perfect story to accompany this exercise is the Blind Men and the Elephant, redone as the Seven Blind Mice. It is a book that should be in the syllabus of first year philosophy classes but speaks to all ages!

coffee cup

Now that it is Snowing

If you can find a stick and can get outside on your driveway, it's a great canvas! As you can see my colored water didn't freeze but it is changing the snow that falls on it!

Frozen!

Art Idea of the Day, well actually Night

The temperatures will be below freezing tonight. We haven't had enough snow and ice play this winter so why not make some colored ice? Find as many plastic containers as you can. Add water and food color. Put outside and see what you have in the morning. You may have elements for a sculpture, jewels for fairies or pieces to smash!

a set of colors in a big tray

forms made form freezing colored water in buckets outside a cafe in Montreal (a dependable place for ice and snow!)

Find Some Texture

Art Idea of the Day:

Crayon Rubbings
All you need is a crayon and a piece of paper. There are textured surfaces everywhere inside and outside. Fat crayons are the best for this but any will do. If the crayon has a paper wrapper, peel it off. You will be using the side of the crayon, the whole edge of the cylinder. Lay paper on top of a hard surface, drag the crayon across your paper repeatedly and watch the impression appear! Make layers with different colors! Become a texture hunter.

crayon rubbing on driveway, vinyl siding and door step

Watery Art

Hello to All! I hope you enjoy this warm day.
I spent the morning at Plum Island- big roaring surf, high tide and shorebirds blending perfectly with the waves. There were plovers, gulls and 4 surfers!

Two Watery Ideas:

1 Make Jewels from water droplets and a little food color. Go slow! One drop at a time.
(this careful dropping will get old but it's beautiful to prolong it! When it does watch what happens when the droplets touch each other. The properties of water are putting on a show!)
Dry off your plate and do it again!

2 Wax Resist:
 Another masking technique. Draw an invisible drawing with a candle or white crayon. Paint over with watercolor paint or diluted food color. Watercolor tape works the best but if you don't have any, try other kinds

First Day of Spring

Happy First Day of Spring.

Art Idea of the Day:
Masking! there is a reason masking tape is called masking tape. It can be used to cover an area of paper to protect the original color. Watercolorists do this all the time to keep some of their paper white as they add color.

1 Take a piece of heavy paper/matboard
2 Make a pattern with masking tape
3 Color the whole thing with markers or paint
4 Take the tape off
5 Since it was raining I put the paper outside to see what the rain would do to it! (not much- I guess the markers were permanent)

Time for Art!

Hello to All-

I hope everyone is managing this ambiguous time! There are so many things to worry about and so much time to do so! But there are some silver linings- the way so many people are using the technology we have to stage virtual meetings. I had a choir practice with Zoom last night, did a yoga class my teacher set up on Utube and have long text message conversations with teachers and my sisters. And we are spending more time outside! When I walk in Great Meadows, on the bike path or in the Brackett neighborhood I see so many friends and entire families walking together!

A Room for Art is closed with the public schools, preschools and most businesses. I am still taking registration for Summer Camp with the optimistic hope that the contagion will be resolved by June. But now we wait! 

Speaking of silver linings there is time to draw. It is so easy to think sweeping your stairs or doing the laundry or raking your leaves is more urgent than drawing an egg on your kitchen table!

Simple pencil drawing makes you look for what's light and what's dark. It's light that gives form! That is the essence of making something look like it has volume. I had a teacher that called 2D art trying to portray 3D as illusion making. Painters are Illusionists!

Idea of the day: (not a new idea) Go outside look at a tree, plant, a ball, a scooter. What is light? What is dark? what is in-between? Take a picture or do a drawing.

Yesterday's Idea: ( I am catching up!)

What can you make from T.P. rolls (as many as you like) , string, tape, hole punch and scissors? (maybe markers too) Send me your results!