Art Therapy

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1914

Every Thursday evening at Whitehall Farm Studios, us ladies (and an occasional gentleman) get together and ART.  We let down our inhibitions and CREATE.  We run Art Therapy in a three-week session format, with a new theme every session.  We just completed our 'Watercolor Blooms' and they were as lovely to paint as they are to admire.

Rachael started the session off with a Ripped Watercolored Paper Floral, Beth's week covered Oversized Blooms, and Gretchen capped off the session with an ode to Charles Rennie Mackintosh with our own stylized Botanicals.

Gretchen's Botanical project emerged out of her admiration for Glaskow Art Nouveau watercolorists Charles Rennie Mackintosh (June 7, 1868 – December 10, 1928) and his wife Margaret MacDonald.   Mackintosh, a main representative of the Arts and Crafts Movement, derived his own fluid style out of Japonisme, because of its restraint and simple linear forms. Not every petal or stem was painted, but those that were burst forth with color. This contrast between color and line is what made Mackintosh and his wife some of the greatest watercolorists of their time.

The Project:

BEFORE-HAND: Soak a few sheets of watercolor paper in a warm coffee bath (Gretchen used Green Mountain Decaff- since it's a strong coffee, and she doesn't drink decaff, but had it on-hand).  Let them dry.

Step One:   Choose your Botanical Inspiration. We used images of our favorite plant life.

Step Two:   Delicately draw out the image, using a pencil. Use only lines.

Step Three:   Using a thin-line BROWN sharpee, draw in the lines of the floral.

Step Four:   Make sure you have added the special boxed botanical notation/date/signature!

Step Five:   Watercolor.  Some of Mackintosh's work is quite colorful, some is very restrained.  Some are nearly all painted in, some have barely any colored passages.  But all are just lovely.

OUR WORK:

Gretchen's Lotus

Beth's unknown flower

Chelsea's Hibiscus Bud

Carla's Echinacea

Robyn's Sunflower

Rachael's Blossoming Branch

Examples of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife Margaret MacDonald's dream-like watercolors:

Mackintosh/MacDonald, 'Petunia' 1914

Mackintosh/MacDonald, 'Cactus Flower' 1915

  Mackintosh/MacDonald, 'Butterfly Flower' 1912

Mackintosh/MacDonald, 'Cuckoo Flower' 1910

Spring Camp



Karissa working intently on her oil pastel bug

Whitehall Farm Studio's Spring Camp- held April 16-18- finished with happy artists and beautiful work! Instructors Erin Graziano and Beth Newman brought enthusiasm and creativity each day as the campers busily worked on their projects.  Young artists in the making completed three projects during each day.

Day One:  All About Me

The Self Portrait

Young artists learned beginning facial proportions in our sure to be 'museum quality' self-portraits.

Chloe- Age 4

Callie- Age 6

Shaela- Age 4

Ella- Age 5

All About Me

Campers created a special piece 'all about' themselves.  Careful thought was put into what makes them unique and this was used to make their own personal artwork. 

Scarlett's thoughtful 'All About Me' piece

Day Two: Over the Rainbow 

Day two took us over the rainbow, through the clouds, and into the sky.  We started the morning by creating some interesting textures using paint and texture brushes to make colorful kites to fly in our blue skies, then we worked our way through our landscape of red poppies and finished the day with our rainbow tree rings.  

Up, Up, and Away Kites

Erin worked with the artists to create these soaring kites.  Lovely work!

Caitlin's Kites

Autumn cutting her Kites

Poppy Landscapes

Artists worked carefully to paint their fluid landscapes and then added the paper poppies, cut grass, and buttons and trim to finish their own poppy field. 

 Watercolor landscape with paper poppies and buttons

Callie's Poppies

Tree Ring Rainbows

The students painting their rainbow rings around the cut Maple tree slices.  Twine was tied to a hole in each in order to make them into a wall hanging.  



Tree Ring Rainbows

Day Three: Blooms and Bugs

 

We are loving the arrival of Spring!  We celebrated the new season by painting some vibrant watercolor blooms, studied some fascinating insects, and made our own paper-mache lightbulb bugs! 

Watercolor Blooms

Caitlin's Bloom

Callie's Blooms

Shaela's colorful rose- Age 4

Bright Insects

Student's studied the colors and lines of these unique insects as they worked on close-up oil pastels over black paper to make these amazing drawings!

Callie holding up her '89 Moth'- known for it's unique 89 wing marking

Caelie drawing the black lines on her bumble-bee

Lightbulb Bugs

Ladybugs, Bunble-Bees and Make-Believe Bugs out of lighbulbs!





We had a Creative Week here art Art Camp!  We hope to see you here for one our 4 Summer Camps!

Abigail listening to Ms. Erin's book reading

One Giant Step for Mankind

Erin Graziano's Class Prototype 'Rocket Launch!' - oil pastel, black acrylic, mixed media on paper

Our latest Early Release workshop, 'One Giant Step for Mankind' led by Erin Graziano, launched our artwork into Outer Space! Students constructed rockets using cut out shapes, foil, wooden shapes, funky tape and sharpie marker for accents. The students then placed their assemblage piece on top of their space paintings. A complete multi-media experience in outer space! Brilliant! Check out the intergalactic planet paintings!

Rocket Launch!

Students begin laying out their planets - first in pencil. Then students begin using oil pastel techniques to create the planets.

  


Students are then instructed to begin making their "space" around the planets using black acrylic paint. An emphasis is placed on layout design and our building the pieces using different mediums.

Love the rings around Saturn in this Planetary Galaxy!

Children's Basket Gallery

Whitehall Farm Studios will be providing a free interactive art project at the Children's Basket Gallery, a Family Event held at Hopkins School in Hopkinton, MA this Saturday, April 6, from 12-4pm.  We would love to see you there!

Technique Tuesdays!

We recently wrapped up a session of our Technique Tuesday class!  These budding artists learned some great foundational art skills through some pretty exciting lessons.

The Approach

Our main focus during these classes was to build a classic drawing skill-set while having the students completely engaged and excited about their work.  The students (ages 6-10) primarily learned how to approach each drawing- by observing and mapping! With this approach, the artists learned the proper proportions for drawing a face and a figure, how to sketch and draw a living animal (we used a well-behaved bunny!), and how to interpret details, form, and color through pencil and watercolor.  And the students really created some amazing artworks!

The Artwork

The American Girl Figure Drawing project:

Observing the body proportions

Sienna painting in her doll's clothes

What better way to learn about body proportions than by using a well-loved doll!  The girls were reminded that this doll is a little different than a human figure in that she is only 4 heads tall.  We made sure to measure an actual girl- she was 6 and a half heads tall!  (An adult is 8 1/2 'heads' tall- as we learned.)  

The girls drew their figures by drawing mapping lines to make sure we had the body parts in the right place.  The waist was in the middle, the hands hit in the middle of the thigh, the knees were halfway from the waist to the feet. Once their girls were drawn and painted, we used an acetate overlay over the figures so the girls could design and paint their own clothes!  The young artists loved this part and were very creative in coming up with their clothing designs! 

Sienna Van Buren's finished girl

Underneath the clothes!

Zoe's Cherry Dress

Great Proportions!

Ellie's finished girl

There's a heart under there!

 Big Blooms

Beckoning Spring to come to our art studio, we painted these oversized and vibrant blooms! 

Zoe's Tulips - 18 x 24 watercolor on paper

Sienna's Bright Zinnias - 18 x 24 watercolor on paper

 Life-sized Chickens  18 x 24" pencil and watercolor on paper

I love the way these chickens turned out!  I had originally planned on an enlarged self-portrait, but as soon as the girls saw another girl drawing a chicken, all were drawing chickens!  We worked on creating interesting detail with both pencil and paint to make our life-sized chickens truly life-like!

Zoe Coelho, Age 8

Ellie Driscoll, Age 8

Sophie Driscoll, Age 10

Abigail Newman, Age 6

Sienna Van Buren, Age 7

Matroyskas and R2D2

The students worked on some great direct observation drawings, making sure to add details and shadows.

Ellie's fantastic R2D2

Sienna's R2D2 with shadows

Matroyshka Family

 Beginning Perspective with Trees, Shadows, and Snow

We also covered beginning perspective this session, by observing how objects change in size as they get farther away.  Using a simple tree and snow-scape, the girls were careful to create dimension in their work.

Ellie's bunny in the forest

Zoe's night forest

We hope you will join us next session for Technique Tuesdays- starting April 23rd.  Register through our website!