The Country Easel - School of Art

Our family is moving back to 100 Mile House, so I am happy to say that at some point, The Country Easel will be up and running again! 😍 We have some exciting news about new developments in what the school will be offering coming too! 🎨🎈✂️🖍🖌✏️

Missing my art students! I am so looking forward to next summer and coming up with a workshop that I can put on in 100 Mile House for any of my old (OR new) students!

Today was a sad day for me at the Country Easel. :( I had to say good bye to some of my Little Brushes who have been with me for the last five months. Summer is upon us, and families are getting busy!

I so love teaching the students and grow very fond of them over the course of the months we spend together, and when this session finished, it was that much harder as my studio is going to have to temporarily shut down due to moving.

I was blessed when Elias and Jasper presented me with a beautiful artistic bouquet of flowers! Yes, it brought tears to my eyes.

Today was the last week of Little Brushes for this session. We learned all about Emily Carr - our first Canadian artist. The students then created their replica of one of her famous paintings. They learned how to use the paint to give the impression of wind in the sky, and then they cut and painted tree trunks, a shrub, tree tops, and then textured their trunks and added shadows. The students did a fabulous job of listening to the step by step directions and produced beautiful tree paintings.

Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso were the founding fathers of Cubism. Today the Young Painterlies created their own work of Papier Colle. Braque invented Papier Colle where paper is attached to a background.

I can understand why Pointillism didn't last for long! It took a lot of persistence on the part of the Little Brushes to get themselves through this painting. Many, many, many dots. It makes more sense to smear paint because it covers more ground. ;) But no, it needs to be little points of colour to be like Georges Seurat, and dot by dot, the conquered it.

Kandinsky is a fascinating artist. He was one of the very first Abstract Artists. It is believed that he may have had a genetic condition known as synesthesia - this is when one sense triggers a different sense, allowing them for example, to hear colours, see music, taste words, or smell numbers.

The Little Brushes each gave me a colour and I taught them a new one. Black = Ebony; Red = Vermillion; Green = Emerald; Yellow = Saffron; Pink = Corral (sort of); Orange = Tangerine.

The book I read to them, "The Noisy Paintbox" taught them so many wonderful names of colours.

This week the students learned about C.M. Russell, an American artist, who was famous for his work depicting the Wild West. One of his most famous works was "Waiting for a Chinook" and this was what the students had the pleasure of painting. It was challenging as most of the projects are. I like to stretch the students and as each new artist is moving into new often uncharted territory my students are also moving along with them and being stretched greatly in the meanwhile. Sketching wolves and dying cattle, shadows in snow, and dismal skies using watercolours kept them very focused.

Making the Starry Night in collage was a lot of fun!! It's a great project to put into a shadow box.

My InBox on The Country Easel page is having problems loading. For some reason, I can see there is a message but as soon as I click on it, the page goes blank. I have had a couple parents message me in the last three days and I have been trying everyday to get into the messages to no avail.

Please can Amanda Bird and Kristi Iverson send me those private messages through email [email protected] Thank you so much!

Please send a box and something to wrap around the clay project for safe travel home on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. This is VERY important as these projects are very precious to the children and some of them are at bit delicate. I only say this as often times clay is durable,
but this is not fired but rather, preserved in another method taught by a Spanish sculpture, but not nearly as tough as firing. Thank you!

You will see your children put great love into these projects. 🙂