Charlotte Mason Nature Notebook

One of the things I really wanted to focus on this year was keeping nature notebooks and we have a little bit but not very much.  But it's hard to get the kids excited about it just by telling them "wow look at that red cardinal! Now go draw it in your notebook!" But the best way to get them excited about doing things is to set an example and do it myself. so part of making myself start a nature notebook was volunteering to lead the sketching portion of our Charlotte Mason Nature Club since a lot of the kids were bringing their sketch pads but no one was really sketching.  So I picked up my own fresh sketch pad and just that act alone was very exciting! Lol!  

I drew up 2 samples for the upcoming nature outing as we will be focusing on birds and I chose to draw a blue jay and cardinal because I have been enjoying watching those 2 birds in our yard lately.

Anyways I'm excited to get the kids excited about their nature notebooks and   Hopefully next week I can post a couple pictures of what the kids do if they let me!

Update:

I taught the kids the secret to drawing any bird is to start with an egg shape for the body and a circle for the head...and while studying the bird they can take into account the proportions and positions of head and body.  Then you add a curves line to connect the top if head to back and bottom if head to breast, add an eye. And pretty much straight out from the eye is a straight line for the middle of the beak.  Look at the bird, does it have a very short beak or a long beak like a hummingbird? Then you can draw an angled line from the tip of the beak back to the head on top and bottom. Then you add wings and a tail...again look at the bird, a cardinal has a longer almost rectangle tail, a blue jay tail is long but more full and rounded at the end, other birds have a very short tail.  After putting in the basic shapes and proportions you can render the details, make edges more soft and curved with feather shapes and erase you drawing lines that are no longer needed at the end and add color.  

The point of a nature journal is to have fun recording what you observed in nature and also experiment and have fun with as an art journal as well.  I always tell my kids to have fun with it, if they want it realistic they can but it doesn't have to be an exact representation of what they see.  Just enjoy nature, think about it and use it as inspiration in their nature notebooks/art journal.

Here are some other things my kids have done in their nature notebooks for example

Fall foliage

 Tracing a leaf

Watercolor sheep

Watercolor wild horse on beach (from Cumberland island)

Recording his playtime with the hose outside

A blue jay

Collecting chicken eggs 

???? Lol

The Dress - Painting with Plaster

The Dress

Painted with Plaster

The first time I made a painting where the image was made with plaster and then painted over for a 3D effect was in college when I was doing some works for a production at the Yakima museum.  I made six 6x6 ft paintings...each one themed after the music compositions that were being performed.  My sister choreographed a dance to go with each song too so the production was a combination of live jazz, dance and visual art.  It was cool.  The plaster was used on a painting called Punctuation.  I made a huge punctuation mark on the canvas with plaster, then painted the whole canvas a solid color and then splattered it all jackson pollock style...I thought it went with the theme of punctuation with the punctuated marks they left.  ANYWAYS, I really enjoyed using plaster and have wanted to do it again ever since.  I have ALSO been wanting to make a dress painting for a long time too...like .....Then, a few months ago when I was researching faux finishing when I was getting ready to do the bathroom makeover  I discovered Segreto Finishes by Leslie Sinclair and fell in LOVE.  Then I was looking through the Segreto Art Gallery and saw the paintings by Rachel Schwind and saw the paintings she made with plaster and was inspired.  Her dress paintings with plaster are like the perfect combination of the 2 types of paintings I've been wanting to do for the last few years!  So I made this for the master bedroom.  

work in progress...

work in progress....

I wanted to make it more greyish and muted the way Rachel Schwind does, but wanted to have some blue undertones so I painted a mix of grey and teal on the background and then just teal over the dress.  I started adding a white-ish wash to the background..toning it down...but then I couldn't bring myself to do it over the dress...it wasn't what I intended...but I loved the pop of color...it still has the simplicity I wanted anyways.  I used plaster and painted it on with a palette knife.  waited for it to dry and then added paint.  Only mistake...I should have not done this on a canvas...the plaster is cracking like crazy so I am going to get a bunch of midge podge and paint that over top of the whole thing to try to keep it from cracking further and hopefully keep any plaster from cracking too much and falling off!  I would be so sad.  The cracks aren't too noticeable unless you get up and look real close but they make me nervous!  The punctuation painting was on canvas too and there was no cracking...even after trasport in a u-haul but maybe it was because that canvas was so thick and sturdy...these canvases I've been buying are really inexpensive and are light and flimsy...I'm not even sure if it's real canvas..it's almost papery because if I get it too wet...the edges start to fray...so maybe that is the problem.  But large canvases are EXPENSIVE!  This one was $16! and it's a good size!  you get what you pay for I guess.

And after I made this dress painting, my 5 year old, who is dress obsessed, wanted to make a dress painting too and design her own dress so I did a google image search for dress paintings and let her pick out a reference picture and she made this, all by herself and she is so proud of it she keeps saying we need to send it to a factory so they can make it into a real dress.


When she seriously wants to draw something, I sit down and give her a little instruction by drawing the same picture along side her on my own paper and explaining what I'm doing as I go and then she draws hers at the same time.  It's from the Monart method when I was teaching art classes and it's nice because I never touch her picture and she can look at it after and be proud that she did the entire thing by herself.  As you can see I turned mine into a silly clown picture as we painted along side each other.  She wanted it to have polk-a-dots so I had her make the dots with crayons and then paint watercolor overtop, a 5 year old couldn't paint a polk-a-dot dress it would be a mess...so this worked well and kids always love seeing the crayon resist the watercolor.  When is was dry she added glitter.

While doing the google image search for "dress paintings" we found the artist Roxanne Rossi and I am LOVING her dress paintings.  So simplistic and beautiful I had to share!  Almost made me wish I painted something like this instead of the plaster dress....(almost! still love the plaster dress painting)

Restoration Hardware Inspired Pillows - Tutorial

Restoration Hardware Inspired Pillows

hand painted on canvas

  I have a thing for the natural linens and natural and neutral colors of Restoration Hardware and am a fan of the  

Presse Parisienne Burlap Pillow Cover.  I love the faded charm and vintage look so I decided to make my own version.  Now, I know these are not a actual knock-off because I didn't use french words to mimic the old bank bags and flour sacks like Resto did and they aren't the exact same style but it was the inspiration for this project.  I like the idea of incorporating stories and meaning throughout your home as much as possible...doing things with intention.  Kind of like how in Art History you see a painting that's interesting/beautiful to look at and you can enjoy it without knowing anything about it, but most likely, there is something more to it, a depiction of an event, a story, symbolism of some kind or another that the artist intentionally added.  So not that these are some great work of art like that....but I was just going for the symbolism aspect.  OK so I made the first pillow a tribute to our wedding date, but the other two pillows may just look like more nautical themed decor, but they represent our family history because my husbands ancestors were ship builders and that's where his last name comes from, and then I also remembered that some of my ancestors were ship owners that brought over some of the first Americans.

This project also cost me nothing since I had everything on hand...I have a big roll of raw canvas from an art project I did back in the day.  

Supplies

raw canvas, burlap, or undyed cotton fabric or other linen-type fabric

burnt umber acrylic paint 

flat paintbrush

scrap cardboard

charcoal

pencil

sewing machine

matching thread

pillow forms

image or lettering printed to desired size (how to print a picture on multiple pages info here)

tape

scissors

Find or create an image you would like to transfer onto your Restoration Hardware pillows.  If you are doing words, just select the right font and sizes and print out.  Figure out the size of your pillow and how big you want your image to be and click here to see how to print a picture on multiple pages.

Trim the pages and line up your image and tape all sections together.

Flip your printed image over and shade the back with charcoal as pictured.  I used a willow stick the first time and it wasn't as messy as the chalky charcoal I used in the picture.

Once the back surface is covered with charcoal, flip the image over and line up on fabric (raw canvas in my case) and tape down so it doesn't slide around.

Using a mechanical pencil or sharpened pencil, carefully trace over your image with firm pressure to transfer the image to your fabric.  Carefully pick up one side and take a peek under the paper to see if your image has been fully transferred or if you need to go back over a couple areas.  It won't be perfect but it will give you a good outline to go by.

Using Burnt Umber Acrylic paint (I used Dick Blick) I would get the paint on my flat paint brush and then run it over the cardboard to keep the tip flat and remove excess paint.  I did not use any water.  Then carefully go over your pencil lines and paint the outline of your image (or just paint your letters this way). You may want to practice first on some scraps.  After I had my outline done, I went back and did some filling in and shading but it was very minimal...as you can see in the ship wheel, on the spindles I would place my brush down on the outline and then drag it towards the middle of the spindle and pull up just a little bit and did that all the way up the spindle to create some dimension.  But how you decide to embellish on your outline is totally up to you and dependent on your image.  But with these pillows, the simpler and more basic you keep the image and detail....the better.  I also reminded myself not to go crazy trying to make these so perfect  because they are supposed to have a vintage, worn look to them and so every line doesn't have to be perfectly evenly shaded.  And I promised I wouldn't care when they got thrown around either, if the image gets worn from use...it'll just add character. :)

Now, measure the size of your pillow form and then cut the fabric to fit, adding room for seam allowance. (I added 1/2-1 inch which is being generous, but I figured I could always make it smaller...can't make it bigger)  Then cut fabric for the back, cut two pieces large enough to overlap by a couple of inches.  Give yourself a few inches to work with.

Fold the raw edges back on the overlapping pieces and iron as pictured above.

Sew a straight seam to finish the edge on both pieces.

Now line up your pieces with the right sides of your fabric facing each other.  Finished seam down against painted fabric.

Place the overlapping piece on, right side down also as pictured.

Pin around the edges.

Sew a 1/4 inch seam around all four edges, back stitching at start and end.

Using the slip opening, flip the pillow cover right-side-out.

Take pillow form (or in my case, nasty crusty kid wrecked pillow) and insert it into your custom, hand painted "vintage" burlap pillow cover to add some rustic charm to your space!

On the anchor, once the dry brushing was done, I wanted to add some faint color to the rest to add more dimension so after I had painted the outline and dark areas of detail, I did go back with a little water and a super small amount of paint just to barely tint it and went over the interior of the anchor, added a little more detail.

NOTE: I just saw this tutorial on Knock Off Decor and it's a much easier/faster method, especially if you don't feel comfortable hand painting!

Drop Cloth Pillow Case Knockoff

from the Shabby Beach Nest