I LOVE book fairs! I am a total sucker when it comes to buying my kids books. I try to volunteer for at least one shift every time the book fair rolls around. I LOVE visiting with the kids at the school, most of which I have witnessed grow up during my daughter's time there. They are sweet, goofy, fun, and just plain adorable! LOVE them.
So, this afternoon was my shift to work the book fair. I brought along my sketchbook, pens, and watercolors to play during the down times. I was totally inspired by
THIS amazing post by Alisa Burke. You absolutely must go check it out...now. Don't read another thing until you see it. Go ahead...I'll wait. Waiting....waiting....waiting.......
Unbelievable...I know! She totally amazes me. Here is the beginning of my Alisa inspired sketch.
I very much enjoyed working on this while there was no book shopping going on. The best part is, if you have a Koi waterbrush, you can pretty much do this anywhere. Everything I needed fit into a pencil bag. In fact, I think this page is calling me to finish it right now. So off I go. I show the finished product later. Go...get out your sketchbook...I'm telling you, this is great fun.
Remember THIS post. Well, I used some more of my painted canvas to make two more pencil/cosmetic bags and I just added them to MY Etsy store. I LOVE this piece of canvas and I am working on getting paint onto another large piece of canvas. I have a little project I have been working on for myself (I know, it's amazing, I am never working on my own stuff) to get me started on The Sketchbook_Challenge. It starts in just a couple of days. I've got my sketchbook, pens, watercolors, and whatever else, all ready to go. Just have to finish my project (it's so exciting). I can't wait to show it to you. But I had better get going...or I won't make it in time.
Brent has always been an inpiration to me when it comes to setting and achieving goals and his accomplishments this year have been amazing. Makes my little (big) list of resolutions look much less daunting. Thank you Brent! Love you!
My grandparents gave us a beautiful poinsettia for Christmas and I did a little sketch in my book of one of the flowers. I have been teaching art to my daughter's class at school so I decided to have them do a study on poinsettias. I had them do a quick sketch to understand the shape of the bracts and flowers before they tore the petal shapes out of tissue for their ornament project. They did great! I took my 4 year old with me and sat him down with all the supplies and just let him do his thing while I was teaching the class. I was shocked at what he did. His was every bit as nice as the rest of the class but I noticed something interesting. He just sat down and boldly did his thing while the majority of the older kids were somewhat panicked and critical of their work and not doing it "right" and using the word "can't". I HATE the word "can't". I had to ban the "can't" word from the classroom when I am teaching art. When do kid's develop this self critical attitude and fear of making mistakes? My little guy doesn't seem to have developed it yet but so many 9 year olds have. It is so interesting. What happens to them between 4 and 9? They had no reason to be critical of themselves, they all did wonderful art, but were so hard on themselves and some even seem paralyzed before they even tore a single tissue paper petal. I just found it so interesting, especially because when we become adults, we spend so much time trying to get rid of our fear of mistakes and critical attitudes. Apparently we didn't come into this world with these fears...when does this happen? Can it be avoided? I don't know but in an effort to combat this fear of making mistakes, I think I will go work on something scary...I think.