C Knotes

Thursday, 27 April 2006

Birds - Kids Watercolor Lesson
Topic: Watercolor Class

Last week my kids' art class did sumi-e bird painting. We also tried our hand at painting from stencil designs. Stencils have clear shapes, but unlike a regular silhouette the shapes are broken down into smaller well defined areas. The stumbling block is that one may get confused and want to turn the white spaces in the stencils into black outlines. But notice the top right painting - this child used a 1/2" wide flat brush after he'd tried other ways. He concentrated so hard at twisting and turning his brush to make those shapes. I am really impressed. You will see it is the goose/duck with outstretched wings from the bottom of the stencil page below. See notecards of my bird watercolor paintings too. Update: Another lesson on painting birds.
Paintings by J.M.(u) age 7, S.C. age 10, J.M(u). age 7, Emily age 10, M.S. age 8, Emily age 10, M.S. age 8.
These were my demonstration paintings from which the kids worked. The sumi birds are after Takahiko Mikami, the swan is after a photo by Bruce Coleman, and the stencils come from, (available here at Amazon) Big Book of Nature Stencil Designs (Dover Pictorial Archive) or, at Dover Publications, The Big Book of Nature Stencil Designs

Find Sumi-e painting and birds at Amazon.com

Posted by Catinka Knoth at 12:46 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 9 November 2008 1:03 PM EST

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Wednesday, 26 April 2006

Spring on a Sheep Farm and a Lambs Coloring Page
Topic: Thursday Photo Challenge

Order cards and prints of my sheep farm watercolors.
Have fun with my Spring Lambs coloring page!
Here is a sheep drawing to color or draw from.

lambs and sheep Thursday Photo Challenge this week is Spring (baby animals, birds, flowers..) I have been searching for any decent bird or baby animal picture in my files and come up almost empty. My digital camera doesn't do well with birds. It makes small picture files and so doesn't do well with zoom shots. And, last spring I tried endlessly to catch the cardinals out back but every time they came in sight the camera had timed out.
This was a sheep farm in Cushing, Maine, that I used to frequent for some good lamb sketching until the farm packed up and moved north for more land. I did a series of watercolors of the sheep back then, some of which you can see below. This photo was taken with my old Instamatic camera, in 1998. It has been scanned and cropped. As for the sheep, they are wearing coats to keep their fleeces clean. Clean fleece get a better price than dirty ones

This is a card set from my series of sheep farm watercolors.
Order cards and prints.

Posted by Catinka Knoth at 10:55 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, 30 March 2007 6:46 PM EDT

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Saturday, 22 April 2006

My Family of Four
Topic: Thursday Photo Challenge

This week's Thursday Photo Challenge - Valuable. I completely forgot about it until yesterday. The theme of "Valuable", which I assume was chosen for its connection to our recent tax day, could range from money to children. I have no children. My cats have been my surrogate children, or family. In the past month or so, two of my six cats died. There are now four cats in my family. And finally all my cats are on the bed together, which is about as close as some cats of different walks of cat life will get to being a family. They have now also gotten to the point where they can forget their differences long enough to be a family for a short time when I come home. I open the door and find them clustered there in greeting. Then they rub against me and sometimes each other before they can realize what they're doing and give each other tentative sniffs and perhaps a lick on an ear. Just for a few minutes though. Enough is enough.

Posted by Catinka Knoth at 2:59 PM EDT

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Sunday, 16 April 2006

Happy Easter! and an Easter Coloring Page
Topic: Seasonal/Holiday

A Happy Easter Card - have fun coloring or painting my Easter Coloring Page!

An Easter Drawing

More Easter Coloring pages on Catinka's Maine and Animal Coloring Pages

Posted by Catinka Knoth at 12:01 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 1 April 2007 9:29 PM EDT

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Saturday, 15 April 2006

Easter Eggs - Watercolor Lesson
Topic: Watercolor Class

My painting of Easter eggs.
Try my eggs drawing template.

Watercolor Lesson and Student Work

easter eggs practice
Practice painting eggs with as few strokes as possible. Paint directly on multi-purpose paper using a large brush. Immediately paint designs with strong color using damp (not sopping) brush.

More practice painting.

kids Easter egg paintings
Easter eggs by the kids. Individual photos on my Flickr site or, the kids art set on Flickr

Easter Greetings from two students

Posted by Catinka Knoth at 11:54 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 9 December 2006 4:52 PM EST

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	Thursday Photo Challenge this week is Spring (baby animals, birds, flowers..) I have been searching for any decent bird or baby animal picture in my files and come up almost empty. My digital camera doesn't do well with birds. It makes small picture files and so doesn't do well with zoom shots. And, last spring I tried endlessly to catch the cardinals out back but every time they came in sight the camera had timed out. This was a sheep farm in Cushing, Maine, that I used to frequent for some good lamb sketching until the farm packed up and moved north for more land. I did a series of watercolors of the sheep back then, some of which you can see below. This photo was taken with my old Instamatic camera, in 1998. It has been scanned and cropped. As for the sheep, they are wearing coats to keep their fleeces clean. Clean fleece get a better price than dirty ones
This is a card set from my series of sheep farm watercolors. Order cards and prints.

Practice painting eggs with as few strokes as possible. Paint directly on multi-purpose paper using a large brush. Immediately paint designs with strong color using damp (not sopping) brush.	More practice painting.
Easter eggs by the kids. Individual photos on my Flickr site or, the kids art set on Flickr
Easter Greetings from two students