My First Paint Night

April 24, 2019 Kara HartzLeave a comment

Panther and Meeko painting by Kara Hartz

As usual, I’m behind on the latest fads. Those, drink wine and paint nights have been big around her for quite awhile now. I’ve bee interested, at least in the painting part, but never had the time or money to attend one. That is, until recently. My day job put together a paint night as an employee appreciation event. Since we are a veterinary hospital, we got a pet themed painting. The sample, and the instructions were for a cat rubbing up to a dog, but as you can see, I changed mine to 2 cats, since I have 2 cats.

I don’t paint as a hobby, so considering I didn’t really know what I was doing, I really like how it turned out. I think my only regret is that weird thing I did trying to make Panther look furry and fluffy there in the section on her chest. I think the fluffy looks fine, at least in person, not so much in the photo, but I didn’t try it anywhere else, so it just seems out of place. Should have been consistent. Oh well. It’s ART!

Have you ever done a paint night? How’d you like it (and do you have a photo of your painting to share?)

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Homeschool Literature Project – Watership Down

October 16, 2017 Kara HartzLeave a comment

From the above guide, there was a suggested activity to draw a specific scene from the novel, Watership Down. I think there were 4 or 5 choices. My 9th grader chose to draw Bigwig after his fight with Woundwort, and my 5th grader chose to draw the Black Rabbit of Inlé.

Then in a different section there was a recommendation to write a poem. I don’t remember the particular styles they assigned, but they didn’t fit with the drawing prompt to my mind, and I liked the idea of having them write a poem to accompany their drawing, so I asked them to write a haiku about the scene they drew.

Earlier in our Watership Down until study, I had the 9th grader recreate a scene from the book in comic format. She is taking drawing lessons and I really like how it came out, although the drawings are very small and I couldn’t get a good photo. I liked the project enough that I’m planning on having her draw other scenes from other books in the future.

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Learning Something New

September 21, 2007 Kara Hartz2 Comments

I decided I want to learn to draw. I used to draw when I was young, and don’t really remember why I stopped.

treasurefield on Etsy reccomended the book “Drawing with Children” to me as a good beginning drawing book. I’m a little bumed because I got it on an interlibrary loan and so they won’t let me renew it and I’m only about 1/3 the way through. Due today.

Anyhow, I wasn’t very happy with the drawings I made as I worked on the exercises in the book, so last night I decided I’d break the ‘rules’ (or at least the suggestions in my book) and just draw something I was interested in. Sneaking over to my baby’s crib, and using what I learned so far, I drew this:

Sleeping Baby

I broke another guideline too. The book reccomends that beginners use a felt tiped pen to draw so they can’t worry about fixing mistakes – they just have to keep drawing. But I used a pencil, and erased a lot before I was satisfed with how it looked. I would have quit before finishing if I couldn’t erase, I think. It really is a great book though, I’m glad I did those exercises or else I wouldn’t have been brave enough to even try drawing a person.

Maybe not the Mona Lisa, but for my first drawing that I did on my own, I’m proud of my little old self. I really like how the ear turned out.