Mindy provides individual guidance, discussion and demonstrations. This is not taught as a beginner class; however, beginners are welcome to join this relaxed instruction. Many of our drawings are exercises. We look to modern and abstract artists to direct creative minds. Participants register for each month and supplies and materials are on their own. A supply list is included as an attachment with your emailed receipt.

September: Vertical vs. Horizontal Lines
9/9 - Sketching Streets and Buildings: Use light and shadow to create perspective. Bring in travel photos to inspire creativity and developed into drawings. Relive the experience. Use a ruler, a 2b Pencil and good white drawing paper.
9/16 - The Fairy Tale Cottage: Align your fairy tale dream cottage into this world. If you have a personal photograph, bring it to class. Use colored pencils and black gel pens. Choose a pastel earth toned paper or good quality white paper.
9/23 - Your Home Interior: Enjoy photographing a favorite space at home and use that photo to draw it. Lay out the composition with a 2 H pencil and then skim over the line with an eraser and re-draw it with a gel pen. Include shading with varied textures and some blending stomp. The paper may be white or earth tone pastel.
9/30 - Catch up day: Bring in the unfinished pieces to work on today.

October: Fruit to Nuts Textures
10/7 - The Nuts: Using the theme nuts, create a still life of nuts, a squirrel eating a peanut, a wreath of leaves and nuts, or design a botanical realistic study of with all its' parts, the leaves, the textures and the branches.
10/14 - Berries and the Birds: A theme of birds eating the fall seeds and berries. You may use the bird house, the branch, a bird perched on a fence etc. Our focus is the textures
10/21 - Warm Fall Colors: Use the warm fall colors, warm gold, browns and warm grays and create a tapestry of abstract shapes based on leaves. The colored pencils are preferred. They can be inspired by stain glass, mosaic designs or actual leaves.
10/28 - Catch-up day: Bring in the unfinished pieces to work on today.

November: Turning Inside Outside
11/4 - Negative vs. Positive Shapes: Begin to draw circles of various shapes, size and texture. Be sure that they overlap. Allow them to fill the page. Next color only the negative shape. Learn to find the area that most enhances the shape of circles.
11/18 - Warm vs. Cold: Use one hot and one cold color to create random patterns of triangles. See how to force the emergence of a form. Overlap the shapes and types of triangles.
11/25 - Foreshortening with Density: Use scribble pen and pencil lines to create a shifting density texture. Some areas become opaque from so much layering of textures and then stretch apart to create light. Try to create an animal, for example. Implode or explode the animal by shifting its' body size vs. its head. You can make it look like it is approaching or going away.

December: Snowy Days Landscaping
12/2 - Frozen Water: On the creek, use of hard edge cuts through the water and snow caps over the edge of the bank. Its barren tree has one side of it built up with snow. These are a few suggestions that give you that look of nature.
12/9 - Starlight Mints on Wrapper: We use a simple common object like a starlight mint to create realistic pencil art.
12/16 - Children's Dream of Christmas: Design a child's face using the egg shaped oval and some carefully placed dots and dashes. Watch for facial expressions such as raised eyebrows, a wink and a grin. An elf hat or halo can top the curly hair. The more the merrier.