Art Day

Today, Kenzie and I had a really nice "art day" and we produced some nice pieces of art.  I need to purchase a few more frames and mat board because I realized today that I don't have any on hand anymore for framing small pieces of artwork.  Actually, I found that we are short on a few art supplies so I'll need to remedy that also before I forget.

After spending far too much time searching for and digging out our art supplies, we sorted out what we would need for today and then came up with a plan.  We chose a couple of ideas and decided upon some nice compositions for two pieces of artwork each.  

We sketched a few ideas and then did a little practice on some scrap paper before we touched the watercolor paper.  Then we talked about shapes, colors, values, light and shadows for our compositions.  Below are a couple of our initial sketches to help iron out sizes of the basic shapes...

The first watercolor piece of art was sort of a memento of our Christmas week in Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie this past Christmas.  The plan was to do a rough sketch of the Manhattan skyline that would resemble it closely enough that people would know what it was supposed to be.  In particular, we wanted two iconic buildings in this piece which are very well-known in the New York skyline...  the Empire State Building with the Chrysler Building in the background.  We actually blocked out some shapes of these two buildings from memory on scrap paper (above) and then lightly sketched it onto the watercolor paper...

As you can see in Kenzie's painting, above, we chose a nighttime scene with the buildings being silhouetted against the night sky.  There is a crescent moon in the sky along with some stars.  

My version is below.  Quite honestly, there are quite a few features of Kenzie's painting that I prefer over my own painting.  (One of my art professors... way, way back when...  always pointed out the very problems I am seeing in my own artwork today.)

We had a few other ideas to choose from for our second piece but we chose to paint a lone tree.  I figured this would be good practice for a larger piece sometime down the road involving multiple trees in a landscape.  Maybe next time we'll work on mountains fading into the background.

Kenzie's tree is below...  I find the "Weeping Willow" effect she unknowingly applied to be interesting!

And, my tree is next...

As expected, Kenzie did a great job and, better yet, it was really nice spending the day with Kenzie on these small art projects!