A Class All About Cats

The newly turned 11 year old student who created the Irish Setter and her beagle, George, in chalk pastel has now a long list of commissions from family and friends for pet portraits.

And so asked if she could work on the white cat below for a family member.

chalk pastel, 11 year old

And since the other two students in this class had not tried their hand at this project before, I asked if they would like to do it too. Since it involved cats, the answer was a resounding, "YES!"

(although the subject matter could of been anything they wanted to choose.....)

9 year old

The student below decided to take me at my word when I said that you could leave the drawing incomplete and as long as the eye was complete, the project would look finished.

I really love the half cat.

10 year old

When we started, I told them that wherever they were at the end of class would be considered a finished piece.  I did this not to rush them, but to show them that with the eyes finished it wouldn't really matter if the entire cat was on the paper.

What happened is that there was this sense of urgency from all three to be "finished".  Lesson #134, do not EVER give a deadline unless you want to hear "FINISH" a bazillion times during an hour and a half.

So after coaxing them several times to continue working their "finished" piece, with 15 minutes to spare they were all truly finished. If I had made one more suggestion that they were not, I would of had a full blown mutiny on my hands.

And so I brought out my tried and true "fill up the rest of class" project and told them to try drawing the same cats using blind contour drawing with continuous line.

I then put out some watercolor pans for them to fill each line with a different color.

They LOVED the results once they added the color.

We also focused on how to add our signature as part of the design. You'll notice a big difference in how the artist signed their work in relation to the chalk pastels above.

awaiting color....

I'm such a sucker for the quirky nature of the blind contour drawings. I'd love to have students created a full blown landscape drawing using this technique one day.

By the time their mothers showed up for pick up, the girls had completed a full day of fun focusing solely on cats.

If I'm not careful, I'm going to be known as the crazy cat lady art teacher instead of just the crazy art teacher. Even though I am owned by three hooligan dogs and not even one live cat!