I'm teaching art this year at the elementary school by mixing techniques from Mona Brooks' "Drawing with Children" book with lessons on particular artists. I'm looking at Lempicka, a jazz-age art deco portraitist, and trying to work out how to teach her approach to stylization. While I'm rather tickled by this portrait of a friend of mine (she was getting a facial), it can't be confused with a Lempicka. I'll talk to the kids about what I did to move from the photo to the stylized portrait. We can discuss why the foliage was changed, how the rose reflects the hair color, and what happened to the lines of the face. Did the mood change? Why? ... and so on.

She loves the fall in the Pacific Northwest and since she can't be here this year, I'm sending her this birthday card. I dropped calligraphy ink on the paper and blew it around (dizzy!), then sifted metallic powder on it, then tried to use a dried Big-leaf Maple leaf as a stencil which didn't leave a very crisp image, so I drew a leaf with red ink and filled it in with yellow watercolor paint, and all the while dripped, blew, and sprayed ink or paint whenever it seemed called for.