DEC 2 – DEC 6 • Using color in shadows is essential to good artwork, and so is understanding how basic shapes like a cube are drawn. Since it’s the holiday season, we paint a red-wrapped, cube-shaped gift with a green ribbon and bow. Students learn the basics of cube shapes and accuracy, as well as mixing opposites, or compliments, to create shadow colors.

NOV 18 – 22 • Students learn how to mix colors and how they are affected by other pigments. Using a special page, they’ll mix and fill swatches for 16 colors (grades 3 – 5) or 25 colors (grades 6 – 12) in different variations of blues. The lesson continues with the Darks Color Journal using black, grays, and a few browns, in the same manner. The mixed colors use pigments from the ARTSquish program, and produce colors that artists often need to use when actually painting. Advanced students create an expressive acrylic painting on canvas from provided reference, that uses dark colors.

NOV 11 – 15 • Since the holiday season is almost here, it’s time to take a week for a personal project and also finish up anything that is still in progress from this fall. This may become a gift, or just a great piece for the portfolio. Young art students are always asking to, “do what I want to do!” This is their chance. The overwhelming choice of “everything in the world” is narrowed by 1) requiring reference and 2) the use of several handouts to help you teach that making decisions about what to do can be fun and easy.