New Studio

I haven't been posting, I haven't been painting. Besides seasonal allergies and school, I've been focused on my whole-house renovation. After many weeks of doing demo ourselves, the contractors started in earnest this week. There's nothing like a huge red dumpster in the front yard to get the neighbors talking.

One of my "promote your art" classmate Jerry Cable wrote this morning about suddenly finding the studio of his dreams. My remodel will also provide me my first very-own studio (not a rental). It is the room that was once a bedroom shared by me and my sister, and in later years was our parents' room. It has four windows and looks out onto the backyard, including the garden and a small pasture with horses. A few years ago a robin build a nest outside the window and I got to watch as the eggs hatched and the young robins grew up. I think this will be the perfect studio.
This photo is of my and my sister Mary Ellen having a tea party in the same room.

Ok, one more thing!

Its late, I'm home from basketball duty, I got the SMP tutorials posted, but just as I was shutting things down I found this little gem of whiteboard animation. Enjoy.

Stop Motion Pro tutorials

This is the first "getting started" SMP video/s from youtube. I'll add more than one if I am able.

Whiteboard Animation

In addition to clay animation, here is another example of something we could do - on the whiteboard. Of course my whiteboard is only a wipe-off because I covered it with wipe-off contact paper, and it is pretty ripply, but maybe that texture will look, um, interesting.

StopMotionPro tutorials

Hi everybody, welcome to my new blog. This will be a place we can keep news about the art room, pictures of our field trips (this spring) and other useful things. It can also be a place where students and parents can find useful links to art museum sites and kid-friendly art-related websites. I might even post to it when I am traveling somewhere - like this summer when I go back to Italy.

I decided to start this blog yesterday when I learned I will not be allowed to access YouTube at school. Personally I think it is a great resource if used properly, and with proper supervision.

I was intending to use this technology because the clay animation software we have just started using in Art II has placed all their tutorials on YouTube. Also, my students totally expect their great animations to be on YouTube for the world to enjoy. So, this is the best/fastest solution I can come up with. I'll figure out how to transfer the animations to my home computer or notebook, and I'll put them on YouTube from there, then I will post them onto this blog. I will first post the tutorials to the blog.

Another reason I will use this blog is to post pictures of student art project. I'm an artist and have my own art blog and website, and I can't resist putting pictures of student work there. So perhaps this will help me focus my own art blog better.


So now, back to school (it is Saturday, I hope I can manage to not set off the alarms like I did last weekend!) and set up the surprise I have for Art II.