Anyone Can Make Art - Lesson 4

Here is a painting I did from a series about global warming. It's called Water Report 2. I did a number of paintings in this series about the earth, air and water.

My work is motivated by what's going on in the world and how it effects me, my family and loved ones. We are all a microcosm in the macrocosm. As an example of this my husband and I were supposed to be driving up to Big Bar Lake for our annual summer visit of swimming, family and lake fun at my sister and brother-in-law's cottage on the lake. This is the second year we were unable to go because of the wild fires in BC.

Areas near the town of Clinton, close to Big Bar Lake, have just been evacuated. In fact for the last month many towns in the Cariboo region of BC have been evacuated. BC has been put into a state of emergency because of these wild fires. Some have been caused by lightning and some have been caused by humans. These fires are destroying our forests, our towns and the people and animals that inhabit them. My series about Water reflects the importance of water. A passion of mine is how to talk about the earth through my art work.

Art is a visual form of communication. The viewer doesn't necessarily need to know what the artist's message is, but a successful piece of art will relate a message of some kind to the viewer.

Art crosses borders, cultures, beliefs and languages. This is one reason I love to teach art. When people start to make art they also start to look at art and often they see world in a new way.

Water Report 2

Lesson 4 I'll tell you how to make your stick figure look more human.

Yesterday my lesson was to draw a stick figure.

I've posted a link to a diagram of the stick figure with the arcs. This may help with Excercise 4 (description is below)

Stick Figure with arcs.JPG

Materials - Your stick person drawing from lesson 3. A pencil. An eraser.

1. At the bottom sides of your circle (head) draw a line on each side down to the line (arms) going across.
   This is the neck.

2. Around the lines extending out draw an arc over it and under it, on each side of the neck you just drew.

3. Now do the same on the outside of the line going down the middle of the stick figure.
   Draw a larger arc on each side of this line down to where the legs extend out.

4. On the leg lines draw two arcs going down each leg, on each side of the line.
   The top arc will be slightly shorter than the lower arc.

5. On the lines extending out to be the feet draw only on arc on top of each foot line.
   This art will be slightly bigger on the side of the leg.

Is this beginning to look a little more like a figure to You?

1. Now I want you to erase the straight lines inside the arcs.

Hope you're having fun!

I'll post more details tomorrow.