Book Recommends!

As an art teacher I am always buying tons of art books to help myself and students learn new techniques and tricks. Here are a couple of my favorites:

1. Drawing Nature by Stanley Maltzman

2. Expressive Drawing by Robert Kaupelis

3. Acrylic: Artists' Questions Answered by David Cuthbert

4. Mixed Media Nature Journals by L.K Ludwig

5. Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson

6. Drawing and Sketching by Jackie Simmonds

7. 100 Creative Drawing Ideas by Anna Held Audette


There are a million more that I love but these books have really helped with lesson ideas and creating my own art. I usually buy all of my books through Amazon.com because the books are usually cheaper and you get free shipping if you spend over $25! Yay!

What is your favorite art book? I am always looking for new ones!

Crazy Monday

Well today has been an interesting Monday. My husband and I worked on my new and improved CanvasDoor website that will be out soon. I am going to be including video demonstrations on basic art techniques such as shading a sphere, drawing facial features, etc. I spent 2 hours today making these videos using my video camera on my Mac only to have Rob come home and watch them and tell me that we need to change the format of them. Blah. Oh well they were fun to do and got me excited again about teaching. School starts soon...which is good and bad. The bad part is getting up at 5 Am. The good part is being back to a schedule. Don't get me wrong...I LOVE summer. After 3 months of feeling guilty if I don' t do something every minute it is nice to feel really productive!

Anyways....tomorrow I think I am going to go back to this great art store I found down the street from where I live. They have tons of canvas in interesting dimensions and great supplies for very reasonable prices. I am going to do more of my collage mixed media artworks. I have changed my style a little and I am having a lot of fun with it! I am posting some of these new artworks. These artworks were inspired by Eric Carle and the finch that lives in my backyard. I had so much fun working on them so I am hoping to do a ton more. Well gotta go and sleep. I will write more.