MORE SUMMER FUN!!! Stencils and mixed media ROCK!

Still in progress!

The best part of summer is being able to recharge your creative batteries...and getting to sleep in. This past weekend fellow art teachers, Patience and Mary and I took a weekend workshop at Small Studios in Westlake, Ohio. The mixed media workshop was  over mixed media collage techniques and was taught by artist Lynne Perella. We used lots of fun materials that are easily accessible and cheap! Portfolio water soluble oil pastels, cheap acrylics, gel medium. The only pricey materials were the stencils. The whole process is a perfect for our classroom applications. The techniques of layering different materials and mediums is applicable in many levels and classes. My students will use these techniques in my classroom for journals, covers, the social commentary piece in my printmaking class and also the mixed media work in my drawing fundamentals course. A fabulous way to explore composition, color theory and communication. After the workshop, we shopped in the studio, grabbed dinner at Fathead's and then went to our hotel to stay up most of the night finishing our pieces


Unfortunately, I didn't remember my photocopies so while I now have all of my backgrounds completed, I will finish the portraits in the foregrounds over the next few weeks. Laving me just enough time to get ready for the next workshop!

Our post workshop hotel work space

Dinner from the amazing Fatheads Brewery

Patience's piece in progress

Mary's work in progress

My spooky background

Summer is over?

mutt and mutt 2

I had a discussion the other day with a fellow educator. She said that she had been given the evil eye by many of her peers one evening when she said summer was over and it was only the 1st of July. BUT, I think I might agree. I spent the entire month of June trying to get caught up on all of my side projects that I needed to finish from the end of the school year. Procrastination strikes again. T-shirts, banners, invitations and marketing designs for a local company, trying to get caught up on the mountain of laundry, yes it is a mountain, boxing up my classroom and deep cleaning the house.  I didn't start my summer off like I had planned. I had originally planned on being in my studio for 3 hours a day working on my small sculptures. I had originally planned on spending an hour a day working on sketchbook and project samples as well,  house cleaning for 2 hours a day and I wanted to try at least three new recipes a week for dinner.....I had planned to be motivated. I had planned to be on a schedule and then I remembered Netflix and Pinterest, and long morning coffees on the porch, watching the garden(which is all weeds right now) spending time with family and friends, hosting another monster mayhem workshop and all of those fun things that make summer so relaxing. I probably could have finished all my side work in less than a week but I spread it out over the entire month.

Mr. M brewing away.

And now July is here and summer is really almost over and I really do need to get all of those things done because fellow art teachers Patience, Mary and I are headed to Small Studios in Westlake, Ohio for a weekend workshop with artist Lynne Perella. Mr. MUTT and I are heading to Miami, Ohio later in July to participate in the New Crafts on the Block, a showcase of new craft breweries from Ohio. (He is the head brewer at one of those new breweries)  and suddenly that mountain of laundry has turned into a mountain range, the house is still not deep cleaned enough,  and my lessons are still rattling around my head.....and because  because school resumes on August the 18th. ... I will need to start all of that right now!!!....Well,  right after my first cup of coffee.... and an episode of House of Cards on Netflix....and of course I need to find that recipe for a watermelon salad on Pinterest.............