"Happy Things" Art with the kids - Inspirational Sunday

It's been a while since I showed you some of the art projects that Ashley and I completed through the art program at her school this year.

For those of you who are new readers to the blog, I volunteer at my daughter's school as an art teacher.  Art was taken out of the curriculum due to budgetary issues and it is only through PTA funding and parent volunteers that our kids have art now.  We only have 6 projects each year, and I shared them with you last year and want to share this year's projects too.  I find these projects very inspirational, even though not all of them can be applied to the quilting arts.  Just search the label "art with kids" on the bottom right for last year's projects.  OR you can go to the official South Bay Hands on Art Blog.

Now just because I volunteer as a docent, does NOT mean that I am any good.  But as I said, I do find the lessons inspirational and I hope you will too.

The project I am going to share with you today was based on the work of Romero Britto.   We were instructed to think of something that made us happy and try to draw a rough sketch of it.  We then segmented the page and colored it in with different bright colors.  The kids really enjoyed this project because of the bright colors and the coloring with pastels.

The dividing of the page, makes me think of the stack and slash methods out there.  It would be cool to try to figure out a way to make a quilt like that with an actual picture of something and not have the seam allowances mess it up.  I suppose it would depend highly on the picture.

The beach makes me happy, so that is what I drew.

But I think Ashley's "good thing" makes me even happier, especially since I received it as part of my Mother's Day gift this year.

So sweet!  Next week, I will show you our attempts at Picasso.

Speaking of painting like Picasso and in other art news, Craftsy announced yesterday that they are adding a Fine Art category of classes to their library.  There are several classes, but I think I might try out the Perspectives in Landscape Drawing class.  Who knows, I might want to start with just trying to draw a little every day.  I hear people really improve themselves just by doing that simple thing.

I've also been listening to a bunch of podcasts lately.  I'm a regular subscriber to Katie's Quilting Corner, but also recently found Quilting for the Rest of Us, and Hip to Be Square.  Do you know of any other good AND current ones?  I found some good ones, but they stopped podcasting or haven't had an episode in a really long while.  I am in the car a ridiculous amount of time during the day, driving the kiddos around to their activities.  Seriously!  So much time, I now have a "trucker tan", one arm and one side of my neck are a different color than the other sides.  I found audio books would make me zone out a little too much, but quilty podcasts are just right!  So tell me which ones you like and why.

Thanks for reading,

Jen