ArT cLasS

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Art, art class, art tutorial, Children, collage, contour drawing, delight-directed learning, drawing, drawing workshop, homeschool art, Homeschool Journal, online tutorial, painting, portraits, portraiture, procrastination

Greetings! Today I am so excited to share with you all about a wonderful (online) portraiture and collage art class that my family and I have recently begun taking together! Before I give you the low down, here’s the link to Jane’s phenomenal class, which has already blessed and encouraged us in our creative endeavors, on so many levels.

PORTRAITS AND PAPERS: Gritty Jane’s 2011 Artist Workshop

Go check out the details of her latest workshop!
CLICK HERE

Art inspires me… it always has. However, I have found that art has also somehow been a subject that despite my best intentions (and planning even!) to do more of it with my kiddos, it has all too often gotten pushed aside in the hustle and bustle of every-day’s everything else. Fortunately, my self-motivated artsy twelve year old daughter has not waited around for me… she’s done plenty of art on her own, (even reading and studying from how-to drawing books, despite my slackedness) but even so, she has been begging me for awhile now to draw with her more often, to teach her how to do better portraits, and would I “please go through our New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book with her?!” It has been at the top of my list…

There’s also our 15 year old son, who hasn’t often had the initiative to pick up a sketch pad on his own (though he did tonight), but whom I know has a precious gift of perception (which holds such great artistic potential). When he does take the time to sit down and draw (like his Dad), he enjoys it, and creates these beautifully precise drawings with such strong feeling! I do not want him to lose that, before he’s even hardly begun… I have prayed that the Lord would help me not to miss these years; these window(s) of opportunity I have left to learn so intensively with them, to share in such wonderful adventures as creating art together! This workshop has been a timely answer to prayer for me, and I am enjoying see my kids respond so positively to Jane’s excellent teaching (and she certainly is a wonderful teacher)!

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?” ~Howard Ikemoto

Yes, we do… we forget. Of course I’ve agreed and intended a hundred times over to “do more art” in our homeschool, yet somehow, I just haven’t made it the priority that it ought to be, and sat down to do a whole lot of it yet… until recently. There’s just always something else, isn’t there? The terrible irony of my/our particular situation is that I love art. I too drew all the time when I was a girl, and then even went off to study and create art in college as a determined “Fine Art” major, making every bit of extra money I had off of selling paintings, pottery and sculptures. I have even wanted to do more art (again) myself!

Yet, for all of my zeal, there’s been something very daunting about the beginning of it (again) for me; the planning and preparation(s) necessary to do and teach it like I’ve wanted to, maybe? Maybe in some odd way that has something to do with my terrible procrastinating? Maybe you have absolutely no desire to do art yourself, but would like for your kids to take an accessible (and affordable) drawing and painting class? This workshop might even be perfect for such a situation, offering a way for you to facilitate a good art class for your kids, at home, with minimal involvement on your part. Or maybe your kids are too young for this, or just not even interested, but you’d like to learn more yourself? The class is for all ages, and is made up of mostly adults so far.

We have all been having so much fun learning and creating; doing these purposeful art lessons together here lately, thanks to Jane’s class!
You see, sometime last year my daughter and I ran across a beautiful painting by Jane Desrosier. We were both smitten, and spent hours perusing the gorgeous portrait-paintings of ladies and layered collage artwork on her blog and watching some videos she’d uploaded of herself painting (Tab was mesmerized)… Then, the more I followed her (because yes, I did!), the more I fell in love with not only her artwork, but her heart. Thus, I was thrilled when I recently found out that she would be offering an online workshop (for such a reasonable price!) to teach us not only step-by-step how she creates her collage paintings, but also lessons on portrait drawing. This has been exactly what I/we have needed to jump-start our own art program around here, and get us going it has!

Though I may have (once-upon-a-time had) the technical *know-how*, with life so busy all the time, I’ve (apparently) needed the framework/structure (and accountability) of a class like this to get to *teaching* and *enjoying* art with my kiddos. And yeah, with its being so long now since I’ve done much art, I’m a bit intimidated to get back into it myself- but oh-so inspired! My kids are enjoying being able to watch her videos, pause them, and draw along as she explains and illustrates her directives so clearly. I am just so boundlessly thankful for all the work Jane’s put into this, and to see how beautifully it’s meeting my kids’ need for “Art class” right where they’re at in a way that I simply could not right now!

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

~Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark, 1915

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together. ~John Ruskin

Note: I have not received anything for this promotion of Jane Desrosier’s workshop, and am posting this shameless plug for PORTRAITS AND PAPERS: Gritty Jane’s 2011 Artist Workshop simply because it has been such an answer to prayer(s) for me! I hope to bless anyone else out there who might be needing a fun, accessible jump-start to/for their kids’ or their own creativity by sharing this information/resource! I’ve been pleasantly surprised to hear the anticipation in even my 15 year old son’s voice over this new endeavor of ours (and it will make for a great art elective on his transcript too)!

My kiddos are really enjoying the interactive aspects of Jane’s workshop, from drawing alongside of her via the videos she’s made, as well as posting their artwork and getting feedback from her and others in the workshop via the private flickr group Jane’s set up for this class. It’s been a lot of fun (and quite encouraging as well as inspiring) to see the work of online students in this workshop so far (lots of adults). I’m going through it myself, along with my 15 year old son, 12 year old daughter, with our 3.5 year old (smiles), who’s even insisting on doing some of her own *work* here and there too. Chris (aka. Dad) has even done some drawings with us (though he’d originally said no way- hah!). How could he resist his youngest girl’s pleading, “Daddy, draw a pretty picture of me, peas?!”

This post was originally published over at The Homeschool Post on April 12, 2011.

Embracing the adventure,