Let's Have Lunch!

These are little warm up paintings I do on a 5X7 pad of paper. The last one is a tuna melt from The Butler Did It, in Emily Carr cafeteria. Actually, it's the first in the row and then the name of the small series. Each picture is under 20 minutes. It's like making a pinch pot before making something with clay. It gets whatever's in my brain out and then moves me on to the next phase of my process. Ahhhh, I love lunch.

Max's pottie. There's this Kids' album I have and they sing the song, 'Poop in the pottie, poop in the pottie...' I feel bad for the band that got stuck with that song, but it's actually really funny. ' Not on your sister, not on your brother...' 

This is a flashback quilt picture. I used to be obsessed with quilts and it was reinforced in the book A Fine Balance. Well, I love how they are pieces of sew many stories....

Juicy Paint. Ahhhhhhh.

A toy we inherited from our neighbor. Weird toys that you aren't sure what animal they are. But, very well loved, as in missing feet and ears and things.

Just blobbing.

Little faces of little kids I saw that day at work.

Collaborative piece with Jessica Jang.... Famous Vancouver Artist. I painted it, but she saved the image from a slow death as we played pass the pen and my brain would not function for the life of me! :D

Love,

TARA

The Process:

I've probably said this before, but this program is the BEST EVER! Rio Tinto Alcan Van Go Visual Arts Outreach from Arts Umbrella is the number one outreach EVER.

Invented and fine tuned by Maureen Proctor it is the creme of the crop!

Young artists create on the gym floor on huge 3 foot by 3 foot paintings.

Each year the theme changes. This year is Unlikely friends. We are creating self portraits with an unlikely pet. Here are some grade one kids pictures. Just Lovely.

Each workshop lasts 90 minutes. Young artists use oil pastels and tempera paint.

After drawing your self portrait in oil pastel you walk to the front of the gym to the paint table to get the paint you need.

You return to your spot and paint paint paint. Can you see the mirror on the left side of Kevin's piece?

I wonder why kids never paint the nose or the ears?

Here is an example of now, how am I going to solve this problem?

Visual arts is great for becoming better problem solvers and decision makers. I like the portraits best on black.

See you later. 

Love,

TARA

We Became Black Ink Obsessed:

This class of 9-12 year olds became obsessed with black ink on white paper. We explored the endless possibilities of sharpie pens and density of line and after three weeks/90minutes each week were 'done' with our pictures and no one wanted to add colour. 

This Lama cracks me up. standing no where, looking happy, and all those LINES! Love it.

I never figured out the name of this creature. But, loved the picture and the tail is creepy.

Bird Brilliance.

THIS WHALE KNOCKS ME OUT!

My minimalist penguin power

Four Friends

Then, we switched to India Ink.

This project began with my travel sketchbook, where I draw with black ink in my sketchbook. It is water coloured painted on top of the pictures, but then there's the last three days where I never got to paint. So the hyper active lines lead to create these wiggly black line drawings that look scribblyish and loose and free. I love drawing on vacations. None the less, the young artists after looking at these and learning I never use pencil first and so on and so forth, they attacked these pictures. And to be honest, I'm not one to think a long time about a line before creating it. So funny enough, some students decided to use pencil first. Some rejected pencil and went straight to ink, and some sat and thought and thought about each line before drawing it. Searched and Searched for each animal, and so on and so forth. But, even though my camera is getting tired and I need to upgrade, I love these beautiful black and whites!

Ice Cubes Melting: inspired by Salvador Dali's camembert cheese melting clocks! 

I was looking for inspiration for my 9-12 year old class and came across Salvador Dali's melting cheese/clocks paintings. After reading a quick clip about how these came about, old cheese melting at the dinner table, or something like that, I thought, hey, it would be fun to watch something melt and draw it. The easiest to supply to a studio without an oven, blow dryer or heat gun was an ice cube. It worked GREAT! The pencil drawings that the young artists created are each really cool how they chose to depict it. Steps, add colour, no colour, crackly parts, darks and lights. I was really surprised and impressed! (We added water colour inks on the cubes for some artists who wanted colour and then painted with that paint/melted cube.) I recommend this for a perspective study too! Really cool and I mean cool! :D

You can also see the different levels of understanding and interpretation. In general, all the pictures were fun to look at and it always cracks me up how personalities are expressed in art no matter what! Love that.

Oh yeah, note to self, time to upgrade the camera, these photos are looking tired! Hmpf! 

ANIMORPHS Exhibition Ainsworth Custom Designs

Granville Island

artists: tara carmichael, (me), mary kim and claudia segovia

For this show we picked the theme animorphs. soooo, I morphed max, my 15 month old into all different animals. as I was doing this, I thought, 'hey, morph, me, I'm the mom!' so I did. this is what happened. first I sewed a piece of origami paper onto the stonehenge paper, then I drew on top of the bright square and added paint and permanent inks. 

This image came to mind from playing 'hall ball' we live in a tiny apartment so we often go play in the hall. we play hall ball everyday at least once! Our neighbors sometimes come out to play too. Othertimes, I think they try to avoid it! :D 

Turtlax = turtle + max

This morph is sooo British Columbia! :D bear, pinecone, pine tree, mountains.... just look out the window

Mommy Morph.... this is a list of everything in the diaper bag... this story is actually called 'shoes and sox before we go outside!'. Max is saying, "Out, out, out."

Moo Cow, moo cow, moo cow.... 

'On the count of three, Jump!'

Bamboo You

Stanley Park Morph

Caw Caw! Max spoke crow before he spoke English. Actually, I think he's speaking English... hmmmm. I wonder...

If you want to know more about this art just email me, or facebook, or phone. They are all 5"X7" and some are framed and some are not. They range in price from $33.00 - $45.00. But mostly, I just love to tell the stories of MAX! The Amazing MAXIMILIAN! 

OK, thanks for looking! 

Love,

Tara

Oh yeah, I started back to work, so stay tuned for some more KID ART coming your way!

photobooth

Photo Booth is Amazing

I was messing around months ago and did this on Photo Booth. Isn't that crazy what a few clicks can do? Now I'm going to make a music track on Garage Band. Oh, and my apartment smells like burnt toast, but I didn't make any. Hmmmm.

Flying Baby...

This is supposed to be Max in the clouds. Hmmmm. I can't even tell if it's my hand or Kevin's. 

So, in conclusion my message for this post is, take time to mess around. Even if it was six months ago...

Thanks!

A Chance to Give Thanks. One of the best things about teaching was when kids said thanks. Sometimes they were inspired by their teacher, and sometimes a parent, and sometimes themselves. Any way, teachers love this when people, students, kids, say thanks. Here are some great ones from my Teaching. Outreach inspired many thankful pictures and words. It was always great!

Thanks for the Class were always appreciated and documented too! They are so lovely! Sometimes include unicorns!

Daphne's thank you was from when she was 5, she drew the class and of course hearts to express her love. aahhhhhhh!

This thank you was from summer camp. Dayea might have been assisted by her mom to write this thank you. So Sweet!

In conclusion, I recommend giving thanks!

thanks,

TARA