Some back roads in Northern California

Northern California is now GREEN and we will be able to enjoy this for about 3 months before the hills turn brown in late May early June.

This past weekend my husband and I drove up to the Sacramento area to visit our daughter and her husband. The drive up was stressful with traffic and just the rush through San Francisco. On our way back home to the Bay Area Saturday we took some back roads and it was the most relaxing and photogenic trip. I took over 80 pictures during this 2,5 hr trip and most through the wind shield of our pick up truck with bird poop and bug guts smeared across the window.

Wish I could live out there....away from all the Bay Area stress...and just paint all day. I will try to take the back roads when driving home from visiting my daughter as often as I can from now on.

2 3 5

2 3 5
Originally uploaded by JeanetteCarlstrom

Mixed Media Art by me....found some fun vintage playing cards that needed a new home :)

Short Sunday

I don't know about you but I know I do NOT like this changing of time!!! I do not have young children anymore but I know that for the little ones it is hard to change your sleeping schedule and I feel for the parents trying to change bedtime and nap schedules. Today is Sunday and it is so short...almost over before it is starting. I guess it will be nice to have the evenings lighter but will it be dark tomorrow morning when I wake up...or...is that when we change the time in the fall??? I drive my family crazy for weeks after one of these time changing days always referring to the old time. Tomorrow I teach 5th grade and I can tell you that there will be 24 kids yawning as I try to get them motivated about Van Gogh.

Art lesson for kids

This was a messy but wonderful lesson. We decorated paper to use later for collage art.

We used paper in different colors and lots of tempera in different colors as well.

Some cut up sponges, q tips, plastic forks. You can use just about anything to create some nice patterns.

Talk to the kids about warm and cool colors, pattern, repetition etc. depending on their age. I do this lesson from grade 1 all the way to 5th grade.

We will use the decorated paper to create some fabulous collage art in the next week or two. Make sure you tell this to the kids and that you will all share the decorated paper....
Have FUN

Supplies:
Paper in different colors
Tempera in different colors
Corks, plastic forks, q tips, sponges etc.
Paintbrushes in different sizes
Cups of water to rinse brushes

Art lesson for Elementary School aged children

This is a wonderful art lesson where we studied Joan Miro and some of his "fun" work. The kids can really relate to his childish art and love to work with oil pastels. First we talk about Miro and I show them posters of some of his work. If you do not have posters you can find images online. Wikipedia is a good place to read up on artists http://en.wikipeida.org/wiki/joan_miro

We talk about how Miro uses bright colors and shapes to create creatures and fun objects.

The lesson is easy and fun...
We started with some large white paper and a black sharpie. The point here is to draw one line (a doodle) all over the paper. Later when we color (we picked primary colored oil pastels) the kids are so excited when all of a sudden shapes form and they see random "things" in their art. The best part was sharing our art and laughing at the random things we saw in each others drawings.

Kids love art so help them explore all the elements of art!!!!!!!

I love polka dots and tortellini with meatball soup

How can you not just love polka dots :o). When they are red or turquoise I just smile. Too bad the husband is not too into the idea of having the whole house decorated polka dot style. I just have to keep my polka dots here on my blog and see if I can't one day find out how to put polka dots in the background and make my banner filled with polka dots and some of my ART. How hard can it be right...just some of that Html and other language I so don't know anything about.

Hope your Saturday is wonderful! I just came back from a nice long walk looking at all the "spring". Magnolia trees in full bloom, birds singing and close to 68 degrees. Now I want to eat some of that wonderful tortellini and meatball soup I made and head up into my studio to rip some paper or sew some stitches on my fabric banners.

Tortellini Soup Recipe altered by me:

2 cans of vegetable broth+ 1 can water
1 small leek sliced fine
3 big carrots chopped in small pieces
3 tbsp olive oil
simmer for 4 min.
add broth and water to simmer for another 4 min.
add 2 c. tortellini (I bought the frozen kind) and just stuck it in the micro for 1 min. before adding to the soup
3 cloves chopped garlic
a bunch of homemade meatballs (cooked)
Italian spices
2 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper to tase
simmer for 10 min.
ENJOY...
I am

Art lesson for 4th grade

This is a really wonderful art lesson I tried out on my 4th grade students a few months ago. The lesson is all about VALUE. We practice the value scale on some scrap paper before we get started with some black water color and water. The kids love to make the different shades.

Second we draw a face on white paper and "chop" it into different pieces making sure we draw lines all the way to the end of the paper.

Third we colored everything in with different values.... by now the kids know all about it. We matted our work on black paper and enjoyed some nice comments from other teachers, parents and students about our ART work.

I wish the pictures where better (taken with my iphone) but wanted to share the lesson since it was such a hit. Remember that VALUE is one of the elements of ART and very important for our kids to learn.