Get Connected to Carlsbad Art Farm Events!

Carlsbad Art Farm summer art and natural science camp enrollment is underway! For information and registration, visit our website or contact us.

Student Drawing, Grade 5

Whether you are new to Art Farm, or one of our many fans, or a teacher, we recommend that you become a follower on our blog (click icon, lower left) to receive kid-friendly postings about our animal friends at Art Farm and information about great websites and blogs by artists, museums, and other Internet resources, for kids, teens, and adults. We sift through what's out there so you don't have to.

Art Farm Outdoor Studio Drawing Class

If you are on Facebook, we also recommend that you visit our Art Farm Facebook Page and click the "Like" icon. Art Farm Facebook Page members will receive notifications of discounts, ongoing and new art classes, special events such as the Spring Art Farm Family BBQ, and other animal/art oriented postings. Art Farm won't annoy you with overly frequent posts. We just want to get occasional info to you and delight you with short missives and animal pictures from the Art Farm front. Give it try. You can always Unlike us.

To sign-up for the Art Farm Facebook Page, visit our website, click the Facebook icon, and then click the "Like" Icon. That's all there is to it.

Girl Scout getting kiss from Art Farm's Hairy Potter

At this time, we do plan to continue our Saturday morning Art class during the summer. Art class is from 9:30 A.M to Noon. Instruction makes use of live animal farm models to teach traditional drawing technique. Class is open to students in Grades 2-8. If you are not certain your child would like our class, we allow one-time class audits for $25.

Carlsbad Art Farm, recently featured in Carlsbad Magazine, Ranch & Coast Magazine, The Coast News, and the La Jolla Patch, as a premier destination for summer camp-bound youth,  is proud to be a 2010 Nickelodeon Parents' Pick Nominee. We are also proud of supporting local schools and organizations, such as Rady's Children Hospital, through our annual silent Auction donations of a week at Carlsbad Art Farm Summer Camp.

Art Farm Now Enrolling for Summer Camp 2011

It's been a busy year at Art Farm, and it's hard to believe that we've allowed so much time to pass without posting. But now we're ready to rock and roll. Art Farm is gearing up for our Summer Camp 2011 Season. The big news this summer is we are going full day. Weekly camp are Monday through Friday, 9:30 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. We have an early drop-off and late pick-up option for busy families.

We are also welcoming some new animal models this summer: three baby Nigerian Dwarf Goats and a new crop of spring chicks. One goat, a bottle-baby named Zeus, is already here and causing all sorts of mischief (pictures of Zeus coming soon!). To enroll in camp, visit our website at www.CarlsbadArtFarm.com. Become a fan at our Carlsbad Art Farm Facebook page to receive special offers, discounts, invites to our locally famous Art Farm BBQ, open houses, and whatever other fun stuff we dream up.

Also, consider becoming a fan of this blog. We keep it youth friendly and it's our way of sharing with you the goings on with our Art Farm critters and introducing young students to great website pages about art and natural science.

We hope to see you all soon at Art Farm.

It's a Wrap for Art Farm Summer Camp 2009

We at Carlsbad Art Farm want to say thank you to all the wonderful young artists and their parents who have made it yet another wonderful summer camp season at our woodland wonderland.

Yesterday marked the completion of our ninth and final weekly summer camp. At right are a selection of nature journals by some campers (click for larger view) filled with images of animals, plants, chickens, and just about anything else they could think of to draw. For more information and images of what students have seen and accomplished at Art Farm this summer view earlier posts or visit our website at CarlsbadArtFarm.com.

The good news is that for the first time this year Art Farm will be open year-round starting in mid-September. We will be offering classes for children and adults. We will be updating our website to reflect new offerings, but in the meantime check this blog frequently for the most current information.

Coming this fall, Art Farm will have ongoing art classes for students in grades two through eight. Additionally, Art Farm will be offering adult seminars and workshops. We are also available for home school art instruction. This is a wonderful opportunity for students to spend time in a natural woodland habitat, learning to draw, paint and otherwise make art through direct observation of animals and the surrounding natural environment.

Also for the first time this year, Art Farm will be available for mini-camps during the school year. We are available for week-long or three-day art camps during your school district's breaks. We have numerous inquires asking if we are available for activities by various youth groups such as girl scouts, boy scouts, youth soccer leagues, etc. The answer is: Yes we are. If you are a group of parents who would like to take advantage of any of these options then contact us at director@carlsbadartfarm.com. We do need up to two-weeks advance notice.

And finally, in answer to a question we hear a lot from parents whose children have attended Art Farm: Yes, we are available for birthday parties. Cost will depend on the number of guests and the type of art projects you select for your birthday child.

Again, thanks to all for joining us this summer at Art Farm. Come back to visit us and the critters often!

Alpacas Have Arrived at Art Farm

Alpacas have arrived at Carlsbad Art Farm just in time for the summer camp season. They are pictured here with my daughter, Emerson. They are unbelievably cute, like giant stuffed animals. The lighter colored alpaca is six months old. His name is Harry Potter because he has a zig-zagging spot of color on his forehead. The brown alpaca is one-year old. His name is Mr. Weasley.

The natural habitat of an alpaca is the high Andes of South America, but since 1984 they have flourished on farms throughout the United States. They are shorn twice a year. Alpaca hair is very fine and silky, and unlike wool it doesn't itch.

These are huacaya alpacas, which are known for their fine fiber and wooly coats. (There are also suri alpacas with tightly-wound fiber that looks like dreadlocks). A baby alpaca (birth to five months) is called a "cria". Harry Potter will be a "weanling" until his first birthday. Mr. Weasley will be a "yearling" until his second birthday.

Adult alpacas live up to 25 years. Their average height is 36-inches at the whithers. They can weight up to 175 pounds. Alpacas are camelids and are related to llamas and camels. They are much smaller than llamas and are a distinct breed apart. Alpacas are believed to be descended from vicunas, a wild camelid from South America.

Our alpacas will be serving as models for young artists coming to Carlsbad Art Farm this summer. And to answer a question that keeps coming up: No, Alpacas don't spit at people.

Designing a Book Cover

The illustration at right is from a tutorial by P.J. Lynch, a highly regarded Irish illustrator of children's books (as well as many other publications). The tutorial, posted at Scamp, an Irish illustrators blogspot, takes you step-by-step through Lynch's process for designing a book cover for an edition of the classic short story, "Gift of the Magi," about a young married couple too poor to buy each other gifts one Christmas. The story is about how they each make a sacrifice to secure a simple gift for each other.

Lynch started by sketching out the images from photographs he had taken of models. He then scanned his drafts into Photoshop and manipulated the composition, noting that he was somewhat new to Photoshop. He also used it as a tool to block in color areas. Later, he used this manipulated draft as a source for his final hand-painted image.

Just as important as the images in his step-by-step tutorial is a close reading of Lynch's text. He talks succinctly about how he uses his models and photographs as source material, but then he talks about how he rearranges elements for best compositional effect.

For example, at one point Lynch moves a bare wood table from the right side of the composition to the left side, noting, "the compositional breakthrough was when I saw that the table with the gift on it could be used as a way to lead the eye in, as well as helping to define the space and telling a little bit about Jim and Della’s impoverished state."

These are complicated concepts for young artists, the idea that composition "leads the eye" through a picture or that simply rearranging elements on the picture plane can somehow provide information about the people in the picture that wasn't there before. But particularly engaged middle school student, and certainly a high school student would benefit from being introduced to these artistic concepts as part of their studio art instruction.

Art Work from Art Farm

I'm just now starting to sift through three-years worth of student art work with the daunting task of trying to choose what to put on my website gallery. I've photographed so many images. The work posted there will eventually represents a range of ages from students entering second-grade through middle school.

Seen here is a lovely charcoal rendering of a horse by a second-grader. Students at Art Farm work from live animal models in outdoor studios on our 10-acre reserve. By the time this student rendered this horse, she had spent studio time learning how to use charcoal media and studying some basic horse anatomy. Her class was shown a diagram of a horse skeleton, and we went over how the horse moves and why. We watched a short film clip showing a horse in motion, and another illustrating how artists through the ages have depicted horses.

By the time we brought in a live horse to draw, this student was well prepared to tackle her subject. One obstacle to overcome when drawing a live animal is that animal models tend to move. That is why having a good sense of how the animal is put together to begin with helps in the drawing of it.

In our studio classes at Art Farm, students work at special easels called "art horses" (familiar to anyone who has ever gone to an art college or university) which allow them to sit down while drawing from a model. The art horse also allows them to draw at a tilt with a good range of arm and hand motion while closely observing the model. This is incredibly important for many types of drawing.

You can see from this charcoal drawing that there is looseness and charm to the line style and smudging that is moving away from simple contour or "coloring book"-style drawing toward a greater sophistication of expression. Not every line has been erased because it was "imperfect" (in fact I often ban erasers from class). You can see the anatomy under the surface: the bones supporting the animal. There is a sense of volume in the belly. This student has been given a high-grade piece of charcoal paper that allows the texture of the rubbings to take hold on the surface in a way that cheap construction paper cannot. The horse looks alive because the drawing technique is fluid and alive. Also, it has the look of an object rendered from a live model.

This second-grader, like many students her age, was very excited to be taught how to observe an animal like an artist and then how to go about getting it down on paper.

Surfing Links On the Art Farm Blog

As noted in an earlier post, I divide my blog lists into one suitable for younger artist and a second that comes under a "PG-13" heading, with the commonsense disclaimer that blogs are constantly morphing and parents need to monitor usage as they see fit.

All my listings, whether they come under blogs or links, are here because I believe they are great compendiums of information and creative talent. The links are not separated by age category, so parents may want to visit a site first to see if it is appropriate for any given child.

In listing links and blogs for parents and kids interested in art, my goal is to sift the wheat from the chaff that's floating about on the Internet. Today I hit upon an upstart publishing house, Drawn and Quarterly, that publishes literary comics and graphic novels. It is supported in part by the Canadian government. It's founding publisher, Chris Oliveros, pictured right from the biography page at D & W's website, set out in 1989 to convince the world's top literary comic artists to publish with with D & Q. D& Q also has a blog.

Today, with cartoonists that have been instrumental in defining the literary comics medium for the past twenty years, and a willingness to experiment with formats and concepts, the website notes that "Drawn & Quarterly has become one of the most influential art and literary comics publishers in North America, if not the whole world."

Looking through a few of the artist biographies, this boast seems to have some foundation in fact. To read the artists' biographies, visit the site, click on "artists" and then click on the image of the book sitting on the desk top of each artist. One example is Cartoonist/Illustrator Raymond Briggs who has been writing and drawing children’s books and graphic novels for 40 years. Some of his best-loved books include Father Christmas and The Snowman.

For high school students interested in the art of the literary graphic novel or something much more sophisticated than Manga or superhero-style comics story lines, this is a great site. The quality here is along the lines of Art Spiegleman's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Maus", or the more recent "Persepolis".

Blogs for Younger and Older Artists

Art Farm has two blog list headings: "Blogs for Younger Artists" and "PG-13 Artists' Blogs".

These blogs, for the most part, are maintained by artists. I post blogs because they are wonderful resources for learning about art technique, being introduced to new art, taking glimpses into the wonderful world of keeping art journals (for example, Vickie Henderson, a birder, who keeps journals about bird watching), etc.

Another example is Artist Duane Keiser, pictured here with his painting of a giant PB & J sandwich. Keiser does lots of food still lifes and his blog explains his process. What I like about this, for kids, is that it shows them, much the way Andy Warhol did with his soup cans in his time, that the most mundane subject matter from everyday life can be the stuff of art. What I like even more is that it shows kids that not everything is done on Photoshop. This is done on a big canvas, with messy paints and a fistful of brushes, and the guy has to know basic perspective, composition, color theory, and how to paint and draw to get this accomplished.

My ratings guide for my blogs list come with this disclaimer: I cannot guarantee what will or won't appear on a blog from day-to-day (or even moment-to-moment). Blogs are maintained by other people. These people may post whatever they like whenever they like. What I have done is visited each site personally, looked through them, and posted them on my site because I believe these blogs are well-established, have artistic merit, and have educational value to my audience.

My rating system is based on what I would allow my 10-year-old daughter to look at. Every family is different, so you must use your own judgement.

Anything under "Blogs for Younger Artists" I would have no problem allowing my daughter to view unsupervised. Anything under "PG-13 Artists Blogs" I would view first before deciding whether or not to let my daughter have access (it's just like the movies, some PG-13 rated films are fine for younger kids. It's the parent's call).

If you find these blogs useful, please take a moment to let me know by commenting to this post. If you find a blog that you believe should be moved to the "PG-13 category", I would also appreciate a heads-up.

Introducing Art Farm Instructor Kris Finch

Carlsbad Art Farm has assembled some great talent for our Summer Camp program this year (to learn more about our staff, follow this link and click on instructors. Visit frequently for updates on visiting instructors).

Kris Finch will be teaching drawing and oil painting this summer. He has a wonderful low-key style of instruction that is appealing to students. Kris and I sat down one afternoon to paint my mini-Mule, Picasso, and I was fascinated by his technique and how simply he explained it while whipping up this spot-on portrait of my mule. Kris is a classically trained portrait artist, but as you can see from the painting here he’s adept in the barnyard as well.

To see more of Kris’ work, visit his website.

Now Showing: The Works of Lori and April Mitchell

Two Carlsbad Art Farm Summer Camp staffers are currently having shows in coastal San Diego.

Girard Gourmet, at 7837 Girard Ave. in La Jolla, is showcasing the illustration work of Lori Mitchell (see picture at right) now through mid-April. Lori will be teaching drawing, painting, and mosaic art this summer at Art Farm.

Lori's mosaic work is for sale at the wonderful Art N Soul On 101 Gallery at 633 South Coast Highway 101 in Encinitas. Art N Soul features whimsical high-quality arts and crafts for by local artists.

April Mitchell, who is joining Art Farm's staff this summer as a teacher's aide, has work on display through March at The Artist Space at Southfair Gallery, 2010 Jimmy Durante Blvd., in Del Mar, as part of Canyon Crest Academy's Senior senior art show.