New Picasso's Basement Website! Woo-hoo!

I am pleased as punch to introduce you to my new Picasso's Basement website!!!  (That's right. Click the link. You know you want to!)
Come learn more about Picasso's Basement and, by all means, hire me to run a program for you!

     Pass this on to your friends who want to throw their kids a party! I can run a fabulous art party. 

 
     Tell a buddy who owns a preschool! I am happy to teach a class for them.

     Let your local parks department know about it. I am running afternoon classes in the Fanwood park buildings but will travel locally!  

    Recommend me to retirement or assisted living communities!  I can come in to help make a memory box with the seniors that they can share with family or use to honor a special person or moment in their lives.

A big hearty hug and thank you to my friend Lyuda Luvrentyeva who designed the site. She is an amazing illustrator to boot. (Right, you know the drill. Click her link too! She likes to work!)
She worked hard into the night while I bombarded her with pictures of artwork and artists. She pored over fonts and tolerated my lack of technical know-how. Plus she fed me very very good bread.  THANKS, LYUDA!  

Negative Spaces

 When you go to art school the teachers really like talking about negative space. It's a biggie. And rightly so. If an artist is aware of negative space--the space around the subject--then he's more likely to create an interesting composition. Kids and grownups alike tend to put their subject matter smack in the middle of the drawing or painting and call it a day.

I came across the designs of Florent Bodart on Threadless, a really wonderful website where designers and artists can submit designs for t-shirts or vote for other designs that have been submitted. The winning designs are sold on shirts and the artists get a percentage of the fee.

Florent's work is bold and delicate at the same time. He works with a variety of styles but the one that grabbed me was his animals. They are drawn simply or silhouetted against black. Then he applies lines of patterns to fill the animal's shape.

Florent Bodart rocks his negative space!

What a great opportunity to teach the kids about using negative space to help the composition.

VOILA! Merci, Florent!

My apologies to my students, I seem to have only saved one photo from last week. Lucky for me it is a fantastic one! Congrats to the artist!