More mixed media birds, graphite birds, and a poppy

The Tuesday class was everywhere last night.

It seemed it was a good night to finish up several works that were 'in process', starting with a couple of mixed media birds.

The girls spent a long time painting their landscape in acrylic for the piece last week, so spent the evening creating the bird for printmaking to go on it.

They first worked out their line drawing on copy paper and to be frank, they stand alone as lovely art pieces.

When they were happy with their drawings, they taped them over the styrofoam plate and traced their lines. They then created their prints in white ink. 

Each girl did a couple of stand alone prints as they figured out just how much pressure they wanted to use to create their prints.  Again, lovely stand alone works.

Then came the moment to create the print on their papers including the landscape they had painted the week before. They took a deep breath and went for it and were both happy when they pulled the print and revealed their final artworks.

11 year old

11 year old

The hummingbird had so much detail in the line work, it took the artist until the end of class to get it transferred and printed.  The other artist finished a graphite work she had started a couple of weeks prior of a pigeon once she was done with her mixed media work.

11 year old

And finally, I had one student who missed class last week due to an overnight camp with school. Since the other two girls were halfway finished with the mixed media work, I asked her if she'd like to create a poppy for Remembrance Day. I then offered her a variety of different mediums to do the work with and she chose to use oil pastels.

She spent the full hour and a half class working on this piece, layering the colors and paying attention to all the details of the flower. She started at the center and worked her way out and it came out breathtaking.

11 year old

Seems an appropriate work to end on this morning since today is Remembrance Day.  To all those who have served, to them and their families who have made sacrifices the rest of us can never repay, thank you.