Drawing the Eiffel Tower in Summer Art Classs

Video - Eiffel Tower Drawings


Summer Drawing Classes with Kindergarten through 3rd grade - We drew the Eiffel Tower. Watch here!

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Design Your Own Dinosaur

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The Kindergarten and First Grade art class had been asking me to teach them to draw a dinosaur. I should've studied up on the subject before I attempted this, they knew about everything there is to know about all the types of dinosaurs, and what they ate, and more. I just told them to make it look however they wanted to if they were the ones helping God on the day he created dinosaurs. Here is the Artsonia  online gallery for this project: Artsonia Dinosaur Gallery


I started them out by lightly sketching an egg shape (Did dinosaurs come from eggs? My class thought "yes") in the middle of their paper to be the body. Watch the video to see how we went from that point.

Music is from Disney's "Ice Age" - "Walk the Dinosaur", done by Queen Latifah in the movie, but redone in this version for a Kid's Travel Cd by "Kids United".

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St. Patricks Day - Irish Street Scene Drawing

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For St. Patrick's Day we drew Irish street scenes, complete with cobblestone streets and chimney stacks. Every street scene had a pot of gold hidden in it somewhere, and a rainbow, or course! Our snack for the day was Lucky Charms (a big hit!). Watch the video to see how to direct the kids, step by step, in this simple drawing exercise.

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How to Draw a Fire

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I have a class full of kindergarten and 1st graders, mostly boys, to keep entertained in Art Club.  One thing that boys often like is fire.

Sketch first with a pencil:
1. Start with 5 or 6 circles along the bottom of the page.
2. Draw a swirl inside each circle
3. Put a dot in the center towards the top of the paper
4. Draw lines from the sides of each circle back to that dot. Draw lightly.
5. Draw a "smile shape in the middle of that group of lines.
6. Erase the lines above the smile shape.
7. Draw several "witches hats" floating along the top.
8. Draw the flames and sparks using long skinny "S" shapes that connect at the bottom.
9. Go over the pencil lines with a black Sharpie.
10. Explain how to color in the fire using a mix of crayons and markers.
11. Don't forget some marshmallows and curly smoke!

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"On the Sea of Life" Painting Auction

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Watch this video!
Painting is available for auction.

The painting that I do in this video will be auctioned on my website this spring. I have brainstormed about how to do this, and I think the easiest way for everyone is to just have people email me an offer, and the highest offer I get by May 1st will be the winner.  This is acrylic on canvas and consists of three 8"x20" panels. These panels are lightweight and easy to hang as is. No framing necessary. Shipping is free. I will start the bidding at $50. Any takers? My email address is ArtSpigotStudio@me.com

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I now have a Website!

I have finally built myself a website. http://ArtSpigotStudio.com. I it did myself, too, which is why all the buttons may not work as expected and spelling errors are sure to be found.  But... on the bright side... I plan to start auctioning paintings (video-ed to music by my kids and friends and favorites) as soon as I have an online audience. I am collecting email addresses of people who may like to watch this for entertainment or participation. That way I can contact people when the auction starts. I am also giving away free one-of-a-kind original paintings to anyone who gets me 50 email subscribers.  Please visit to figure this all out.

Go there and give me your email address!

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Painting Brazilian Toucans

                                      
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Trapped by an ice storm with my sister and her kids visiting from Florida, we decided to paint for entertainment.  My niece, a sophmore at MVNU, was packing to fly to Brazil for the semester, and so I decided to teach them to paint a Toucan. The video shows the finished product for all 7 of us. When my niece arrived in Brazil, she facebook-ed me a photo of the art classroom on campus, which, lo and behold, had a display of painted Toucans. If you friend me on Facebook you can see it!  

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Christmas - Jars of Joy Paintings

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Just finished up a series of 5 classes with 2nd through 4th grade. We used acrylic paint on canvas to do some Christmas paintings.
Class 1: Backgrounds and edges (christmas colors, not too crazy with patterns - should be kind of muted - cover all white canvas - don't get the colors too muddy)
Class 2: Jars (we cut shapes out of cardboard first and traced around them)
Class 3: Twirly Vines (fill up the canvas, used paint pens for the skinny vine, used q-tips for the dots of color along each vine)
Class 4: Bows and ornaments hanging from the vines
Class 5: Tiny Manger scene - hot glue to the canvas and wrap a ribbon around the edge.
Kids and parents both loved it, and we had a Christmas art show!

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How to Illustrate a book

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For the people (especially my Mom) who have said, "I'd like to see how you do that!" I created this video to show my own pecular process of illustrating a book. The illustrations in this particular book, Song of the Crickets, were inspired by the Bluegrass lessons my daughter and I are taking. I drew each of the crickets with an instrument.
I use a Mac loaded with PhotoShop Elements and ILife which includes Pages. My camera is a FinePix S1500.
This is the 10th book I've illustrated for several different authors. They are all available through this link:
Phyllis’ Books:
​Books-illustrated-Phyllis-Dillard-Stewart

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Canvas Hot Air Balloon Class

Eleven children took my summer class for painting balloons on canvas.  This is how we did it...
Day One - Paint the sky
Day Two - Paint the clouds and the landscape
Day Three - Landscape details and start Balloon
Day Four - Balloon and basket details
Day Five - Finish up, and letter around edges

Each day they practiced first on a 20"X72" mural before working on their individual canvas. We then displayed our finished artwork for everyone to admire.

Artsonia has a gallery of all their results.

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20 Minute Guided Drawings

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 Teaching a drawing class during VBS in Deland Florida added the challenge of helpings kids, ages 5 to 12, complete a sketch in 20 minutes.  I had about 60 kids during the week, and they were divided into groups by age.  I also had to think up a sketch that was related to the Bible lesson for the day, and had a sea-creature theme.  So... "Friendly Dolphins" represented the idea that God is your friend, "Comforting Octopus", with all those arms to give hugs, reminds us that God can comfort us.  "Surprising Butterfly Fish" opened our eyes to the surprises of God's creation, "Seagulls" carrying a sprig of life illustrated the promise of new life.  Last, "Family of Sea Turtles" represented the generations through which our faith has been passed down.  You can view all the galleries at Artsonia .com.  The kids and parents were amazed at how these quick sketches turned out.

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Hot Air Balloon

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This is a painting I did with my daughters. I am planning on teaching 4th through 6th graders this in July. Can't wait to show the results! This was fun because each artist designs their own sky, landscape and balloon.  All done with acrylics on canvas.

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Painting a Summer Sky

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This video gives simple instructions for painting a sky with acrylics on canvas.  Three skies, one painted by me, and one by each of my daughters.  We then used the skies as backgrounds for a painting of hot air balloons.  That video coming soon!

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Drawing an Orangutan

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Drawing an orangutan or other monkey is a great way to remember a trip to the zoo.  I taught this to elementary students during summer camp. Having circle shapes (cups, bottle caps, etc) to trace around for the basic starting shapes is helpful. The video shows a watercolor, but the kids at camp used markers and crayons.

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Painting to Celebrate Summer Vacation

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Acrylics on canvas... this project takes up a whole week of summer art camp.  Great idea for pre-teen and high school girls, but younger students can have fun with it, too. Don't try to get too technical with the self-portraits, a cartoon-y look can be the goal.

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Beatitudes - Class Series

When I taught this class to 3rd and  4th grade we alternated - lesson one week, the clay dog the next week. 

1. Boston Terriers represent the "poor in spirit" because they know they need guidance.  Biblical example - Zacchaeeus

2. Bassett Hounds represent  mourning because they look so sad and bay so pitifully. Biblical example - the family and friends of Lazarus.

Get the idea?  I am writing a book for this series, so when I am done you can get the whole deal! I will post a link for sure.

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Clay Boxer - Brindle

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Ahhh... the boxer, who has a reputation for keeping himself clean, so we gave him the "pure heart" award when we studied the beatitudes. This video shows how to make the whole body, too, but sometimes I just do a head, flatten it a bit, and glue a huge magnet on the back.  This saves money on clay when you have a large class, helps students concentrate more on the details of the face, and gets done a little faster. To give him a "brindle" look, have the students mix a little black clay with the brown, but don't mix it too much... you want to be able to see the black streaks in the brown background.

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Clay Dalmatian for 3rd Grade

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Great activity for Fire Prevention or Fire Safety week.  The head is the most difficult part - create the heads before class and bake them to make it easier for younger classes.

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Sculpting a Black Lab from Polymer Clay

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The class has finished a dog head and a laying down dog. Now it's time for a  dog who's been told to "Sit!" and is waiting for his treat.  Since many of the kids have black labs as pets, we decided to do these.



We used Fimo III polymer clay, which says "soft" on the packaging. Usually "soft" Fimo III clay is only a tad softer than the other types, but the black has a tendancy to be very soft and sticky. You will not need to warm this black up in your hands to work with it. It was so sticky that I ended up making and baking the "toothpick heads"  in advance, and then letting the class build the body, insert the pre-baked head, and  put on the ears and eyes. That was still a challange for kindergartners, put they turned out awesome! These need to be baked at 225 for 15 minutes.

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Easy Irish Setter or Labrador Retriever in Clay

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I was teaching Kindergartners how to do clay sculptures, and I didn't realize their limitations on arranging shapes and sizes. I had to come up with a super-super easy dog that looked real.


This gives the students practice in arranging shapes, almost the same brain function as Tangrams.  So, build a Fimo Clay dog and call it Math!  A variety of colors could be used to make either an Irish Setter, a Black Lab, a Chocolate Lab, etc.Older kids, even high-schoolers,  will love this, too, and theirs will probably turn out even better!  Great first project in polymer clay.

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