ARCHIVES:
Welcome to the official Art Class website of the Branch County Homeschoolers. Classes have included instruction in drawing, design, perspective, form, shape, color, texture, and the media of pencil, colored pencil, and pastel. All children are welcome to attend and learn art basics.
Field trips have included plein air painting and a journey to the Chicago Art Institute. Kathryn Barnes, a professional artist and homeschool educator. has taught homeschool children the basics she learned as a child in art school. If you wish to have your artistically gifted or interested child tutored in art, please contact Barnes
Please take time to go on the gallery hop and enjoy some of the artwork the children have done and have offered to display here.
Please scroll down to find links to websites for online art instruction for your homeschool student. Please be sure and bookmark this page or save it to your favorites, and tell a friend~ Each one, teach one. Peace and artistic freedom to all for a better world~
Here are five basic line techniques :
Directional strokes. To look convincing, these strokes should follow the edges of the plane or form they're describing, and should be varied in value or weight to suggest areas of more or less shadow. When using directional strokes, keep things simple by drawing only those lines that you feel are absolutely essential for capturing the feeling of the subject's structure.
Hatching and cross-hatching. Variants of directional lines, this pair of related techniques comes in handy for creating changing areas of value. The most basic of the two, hatching involves applying parallel strokes to create tonal areas. The closer together the strokes, the darker the resulting area. Like hatching, cross-hatching begins with a series of parallel strokes. But here, the relative darkness is created by overlaying a second set of lines at angles to the first. Once again, the closeness and density of the lines create areas of relative lightness and darkness.
Scribbling. This is another technique that's great for creating the shifting values that produce the illusion of form. By overlapping loose, freehand layers of scribbles, you can achieve a more three-dimensional look.
Blending. Begin with light strokes you don't want the lines pressed so hard into the paper that they can't be removed and use facial tissue, cotton balls or swabs, chamois cloth, stumps of varying sizes and your fingertips to blend. No matter how you do it, blending adds a final sculpted or modeled touch to your drawing.
By working to master the use of line, you'll build the critical ability to capture the essence of your subject in as few, or as many, strokes as you desire.
~~Tips from the Artist's Magazine
In the last homeschool art class, the children learned how to use an artist's "Cartoon" or graph, to enlarge a drawing. Michelangelo used this technique to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Here are the hands of God and man reaching out to each other as were done by the class.
