I'm Doodling to Prepare for Teaching My Next Art Class!

A doodle dress I drew.*

Doodling. Playful sketching. A tool for focusing. Decoration for many notes, letters, and shopping lists created while listening on the phone, to a podcast, or a lecture.

And the first of many lessons in my upcoming class Relating Through Creating: A Parent-Child Mixed Media Art Class, offered through Gifted Homeschoolers Forum Online. In this class parents and students will explore art techniques such as extreme doodling, sketching objects and faces, lettering, watercolor painting, acrylic painting, and collaging. They will create individual projects side-by-side and companion projects as partners. 

My daughter and I are currently working on this extreme doodling picture. We're having so much fun creating it together!

I am excited to facilitate the connection of parents with their kids over the enjoyment of art! Won't you join me? Class begins Thursday, January 29 at 11:30 a.m. Pacific Time. Click here for more details and to sign up! 

*I drew this dress as part of a class I myself am taking (a teacher is a lifelong learner!). The class, offered by Joanne Sharpe, is called Doodle Arts & Letters. If you're interested in learning more about it, click here. You'll have to scroll down a bit to get to the class offering.

The Sketchbook Project

If you've read my blog over the past few years, you know that I've become enamored with art journaling. Recently, I've taken that love to a new level: The Sketchbook Project. The Sketchbook Project is an opportunity to create art and share it with the world. You send away for a 5"X7" sketchbook, fill it with art, send it back, and voila, your art will be on display at the Brooklyn Art Library. It will also travel in a Mobile Library, and if you choose the digitized option, it will be available online for anyone to view.

Personally, my participation in The Sketchbook Project allows me to cross an edge from keeping my artwork private to making it public. Up until now, I've created pieces mostly for myself and for people around me.  I've shared photos of some of it online (including in this post--these are two drawings from my sketchbook), and that has allowed people I don't know to see it. However, with The Sketchbook Project, my work will be physically accessible to a new and unknown audience. This is both exhilarating and somewhat intimidating. It certainly encourages me to create regularly and to take extra care and time to produce something I feel proud to share.

Would you like to join me? I would love it if you would! Simply click this link--The Sketchbook Project--and do it soon! To be included in the 2015 exhibit, you must sign up by January 5, 2015. So do it! Now! And let me know--I'd love for us to take this journey together!