Open Studio Artwork

Art classes have been hit-or-miss throughout this winter (travel, illness, life). Subsequently, it was difficult to expect artists to work on the same project each week. So we decided to go with an open-studio format for a while and it worked out quite well.

Find out more about how to create this
wintery painted collage here and here. 

Shown here are a few of our winter-themed art pieces that were created during this time by adult art students in our Thursday Art Class for Grownups. 

This snowy alpine painted collages were painted with tempera on black sulfite paper and collage elements were added. 

The completed artwork was then mounted to a large mat board and embellished with evergreen twigs.

We learned about contemporary illustrator Jen Aranyi and created a few pieces of mixed media art work in her style. (Click here for a complete Jen Aranyi-themed lesson.) 

These were done in our watercolor sketchbooks or on watercolor paper using watercolors with ink. 

Jen's favorite subjects are these jagged mountain scenes, so that's how we got started. 

Then, after getting the hang of it, one student decided to make a greeting card using a completely different subject - in the same style:

We also decided to experiment in watercolor depicting various amounts of snow on evergreen trees.  We attempted in the samples below to start with light snow on one tree and work our way to heavy snow on the last tree.  Try it yourself - watercolorist Susie Short will show you how.

Moonlit Snow

These Moonlit Snow scenes were so much fun to create in the past with our tween and teen artists. So this year my grown up art class gave it a try and guess what? 

They loved it too!

This is a multi-step mixed media project that involves wet-on-wet watercolor, splattered paint, iridescent glitter, paint scraping, silhouettes, wild animals, a three-dimensional element, and a quote!  

What's not to love?

One reason I like this project is because so many art skills are used to create it.  We start with wet-on-wet watercolor for our wintery sky. While it dries we practice creating evergreen trees on a separate sheet of paper and using different brushes. Hint: the fan brush is a favorite. 

We also scrape another sheet of paper with black paint using small pieces of cardboard. These are later cut into strips to create our birch trees for the foreground. 

We paint in a few evergreen trees and the silhouette of a an animal that has been outlined in the midground. We splatter with a bit of white tempera paint and add a punch-out of our moon and a bit of glitter here and there.

Then we place and glue our birch trees over the scene using scraps of recycled packing foam for a 3-D effect. Finally, we add a printed 'snow quote' which we cut out with funky scissors for snowflake-like edges.

Take a look at The Snowy North to see our younger artists' versions of this wintery scene.