The Book Dummy finale

Students from "The Book Dummy" class, 2015 at RISD-CE

I posted pictures and info about the last day of my Book Dummy class to my webpage blog. Click here to see it.

RISD Winter Weekend Watercolor Intensive, 2015

This past weekend, I enjoyed the beautiful views of Narragansett Bay from RISD's Tillinghast Farm in Barrington, RI, while working with students eager to learn more about watercolor.

We spent all day Saturday doing exercises to explore materials, mark- making, color combinations, properties such as staining and granulating, and the interaction of wetness, paper and pigment. 

Bethany worked on a dog portrait.

Michael did several paintings using a big brush technique.

Kate worked on the subtle gradations of color to create this beaded jewelry.

Priyankar took a step away from his usual work as a chemical engineer.

We laid washes, used salt and resists, and went through step by step procedures that watercolor artist's use.

On Sunday, each student came prepared to work on a personal project or two to put their new skills into practice, and we shared and critiqued the days work before heading home.

A big thanks to each and every student for sharing your talents and enthusiasm... teaching this class was a pleasure!

Stephen had a great view as he worked on painting puffins.

Barbara used washes, salt, and resist to complete her paintings

Fred did 3 paintings, including a monochromatic landscape that had great impact.

Richard worked to improve his watercolor skills for the natural science illustration certificate.

Amanda used blues, violets and roses to create wet on wet skies.

Rayne used resit to create wheat colored grasses against a dark blue sky.

Mandy underpainted layered washes to create space, and planned to glaze colors next.

Here is is after Mandy finished glazing the colors on at home.

 

Gloria used Derwent Inktense pencils to add texture to her abstract painting.

Donna dropped colors into her background wash to add interest.

RISD Weekend Watercolor Intensive, Summer 2014

I had a grand time with 13 fabulous students last weekend. They were all ready to spend a weekend learning more about watercolor. After a full day of exercises on Saturday, they painted their own pieces on Sunday. Here is one of the student paintings, a class portrait.

A painting of the class in action done by student, Susan Klare.

 Below are pictures of most of the students, with their work in progress.

Susan and  Whitney came for some artistic mom-daughter together time.
Ben (how did I miss getting a picture of Ben!) drove up from DC for the weekend.
Several of the students enjoyed Waterfires after class on Saturday evening.

Whitney is building up courage to add layers of paint.

Here is an early stage of Susan's class portrait.

Jane worked diligently on color swatches

Cheryl did a lovely scene of rocks, water and flowers.

Birch used resist techniques, and mixed red and green... complementary colors... to get his dark background.

Lowry originally hoped for an absolutely flat sky, but her delicate clouds turned out even better.

Lynn did a painting of her grandparent's farm.

Alessandra took a break from law school to do several paintings.

Anna, our best equipped student, added energy to the weekend.

The students had a wide range of backgrounds... from total beginners, to people who had some experience with watercolor but wanted to learn more, to experienced artists who were looking to learn another media.

Ben experimented with wet-on-wet and Yupo paper, and Miyoung created textured backgrounds with salt. Anne did a floral still life from a blooming kalanchoe. Lois worked on letterforms with delicate colors that she later planned to layer, overpaint, and even stitch into art pieces.

We had a photographer spend a few hours with us, so pictures of the class will probably show up in future RISD CE catalogs.

Thanks to all of the students for your creativity and enthusiasm! It was an exciting and fun weekend for me!

Life is Sweet

Illustration Friday # 28: SWEET, RISD CE graduation, and chickadees

Life is Sweet  ©Cheryl Kirk Noll

You can see the passage of time... here the snowbell flowers are budding.

Spring is my favorite time of year. Classes finish up. Students graduate. Flowers bloom and babies hatch.

This year has been particularly productive for my garden. A cute little birdhouse that my dad gave us at least ten years ago has it's first tenants this year.

The flowers have blossomed. Breath in the fragrance!

A black-capped chickadee couple made Songbird Hollow their home. The birdhouse hangs from a styrax obessia (Fragrant snowbell tree) right outside our back window, so we were thrilled to watch the pair nest-building. On Tuesday, I heard the babies peeping for the first time when their parents arrived with food. Within two weeks, they should be flying away.

It's a life-affirming process to watch.

After the 4 day heat wave, the snowbells are gone, but roses are out!

My job as the adviser for the Children's Book Illustration certificate program at RISD-ce is a thrill for me too. I often meet students when they start the program, and I always have them for at least one class, meet with them for the final portfolio critique, and have the honor of handing out their certificates.

 I'm thankful to my brilliant program coordinator, Francoise McAree, to the CE staff, and to the fine teachers in the program who have led these students along the way.

I'm so proud of this year's 11 graduates. I'm as proud as a mama chickadee, and I can't wait to see where they fly, now that they've left the nest.

l-r sitting: Roya Ma, teacher assistant Susan Novich, Sherry Brodeur, Sarah Luz, l-r standing: Laura Foltz, Jeanette Bradley, Instructor Judith Moffatt, Mary Jackson, Emily Laramee, Meg Sodano, Peter Sentkowski, Anne Wert (missing: Karen Sculos)

To see more about the graduating students and the program, go to the programs informal blog,  Drawing Together .

The Joys of Gardening and Teaching

Lily-blooming tulip, Ballerina

This spring, I am once again enjoying my tiny postage stamp garden. I was especially enthralled with a few tulips I grew, and the way they changed over their bloom time.

The first is a lily-blooming tulip, Ballerina.  When it was new, on cool days, it had gorgeous tones of purple that picked up on the grape hyacinth behind it. As it matured, it mellowed into a pumpkin-y orange, and it's pointed petals looked nice with my lacy japanese maple.

Lily-blooming Ballerina tulips against a dwarf japanese maple.

The second is un-named. I don't remember buying or planting it. However, I was thrilled to watch it change, from a pale lemony yellow in the early days to a stunning sunrise array as it matured.

unnamed tulip with ajuga and euphorbia

the same tulip as it matured

Children's Book Illustration 2 students, 2013- Corey, Jeff, Claire, Sarita, Rebecca, Bob and Chie.

     Watching these flowers grow and change reminded me of teaching. I feel the same thrill when I watch my Children's book Illustration students at RISD-ce. Their hard work is beautiful at every stage, and it's so satisfying to see their art grow and mature.

A book about Mom to Learn InDesign

Last spring, I decided to take a class in InDesign at RISD Continuing Education with Bryan Rodrigues. I loved it, and dummied up a few of the children's books I've been working on. Our big assignment was to do a book with 100 pages, so I decided on a scrapbook sort of project, and limited it by focusing it on my mom.

I had no idea how involved the project would become, or how much fun it would be to learn about my own family history, from the late 1800's to present.

In class, Bryan had us set up a book using a Blurb template. I chose a 9 x 12 size, and planned chapter layouts, formatting styles for headings, text, and captions. If you've used Adobe programs, InDesign is relatively intuitive, but there's nothing like having weekly instruction, followed by assignments to put what you've learned into practice. Bryan made it all seemed so easy!

One of my favorite pages was a montage of my mom modeling for Century Club. The pictures here span from 1976-2011... 35 years. She hasn't changed much, has she?

Mom modeling over the years

My niece helping Grandmom sort
family slides a few years back.

At home, I started by editing some of the 700 slides from our childhood that Mom had converted to digital a few years ago. I scoured the many scrapbooks I've kept over the years. During phone calls to Mom, I "slyly" asked about some of the old family stories we'd heard a million times, to make sure I had them right.

I didn't! What a surprise to hear the details of stories I thought I knew. I wrote them down, and started a hodgepodge text document.

A page in progress...
with lorem ipsum and lots of ????'s

Family photos from the 1920's

The book wasn't complete enough to give to Mom by the time my class ended, but it was chock-full of lorem ipsum (fake type used for placement) and photos that I'd scanned and formatted. By August, it felt like it was pulling together, but the text was nowhere near complete, so I made a PDF file and "gave" it to my mom for her 86th birthday.

Pictures from 1940

Happily, she was thrilled. From that time on, Mom and I collaborated on the text and captions. She searched her records for dates and details, and corrected my "gazillions" of mistakes. I collected some of her scrapbooks and photographed pages from others.



I began to turn to resources from other members of my family. My cousin, Jack Eiser, had continued the genealogy work his sister Joyce began, and I was able to access Rowe and Grant family trees on ancestry.com, complete with census records, birth certificates and more. (Thanks, Jack)
 I'd collected family reminisces over the years, and I pulled anecdotes from those. When Mom didn't remember details from her childhood, she called her sister and brother and gathered their memories. Not surprisingly, they often saw things through different prisms.

Photos from the 70's!

At Thanksgiving, Mom and I went through the text and trolled for missing pictures and information. My husband told me firmly that I needed to finish this never-ending project in time to have it printed for Christmas. I started working fifteen hour days, and for a few days, the project wasn't fun, with color conversions and uploading, spell checks, missing dates, and a deadline.

But then, miraculously, it was finished! One hundred pages, over 500 photographs, and a permanent record of my mom's history.

It was oh, so satisfying to see it arrive at Mom's as a hard-cover book, and to see the look on her face when she opened it at our Christmas celebration.

Of course, this project only whet my appetite for more. There are still so many photos! And there's still my dad's side of the family to explore!!!

The Joys of Summer in RI

An amusing tree, seen in the park near RISD

I've been absent from the internet for the much of the summer because I've been busy. I just finished  teaching Children's Book Illustration for Summer Studies at RISD. What a great group of students! We spent 2 full days in class each week for 6 weeks developing the many skills needed to illustrate children's books.
I couldn't have asked for a better group... hard-working and talented. Here they are.

RISD Summer Studies Children's Book Illustration students

Students do a light study from a model.

We had child models, worked in multiple media, had Judith Moffatt as a guest lecturer, and more. We even had a video crew come interview us. If this Youtube video works, it's about the company that does the videos (Animal), and has a few seconds of clips from our class.

A fun and productive work day in the studio of artist and friend, Judith Moffatt

On the home front, I've been busy working on a picture book dummy, and getting lots of feedback from my writer's group , artist's group, friends and family before sending it off to my rep. She'll be shopping it in New York next week. (fingers crossed)

A fringe benefit of my writing group... blueberries picked fresh from Linda Crotta Brennan's garden.

 Hubby and I have taken many late afternoon summer jaunts to various RI spots. What a great state little Rhody is. From woods and lakes, to rocky beaches, to wetland coves, there is endless beauty in this remarkable state.

down Hopkinton way

a cove south of Pawtuxet Village on a cloudy day... Queen Anne's lace (ammi majus) in it's glory

Point Judith lighthouse. Always a treat.

Oh... and we're getting our house painted. So, there's the summer (so far) wrap-up.