Win a Week at Summer Camp While Making Great Gifts for the Holidays!

Arctic Fox at the San Diego Zoo, Sun., Nov.20, 2011

Photo by Perrin Weston Coman

I enjoyed another awesome animal drawing class at the San Diego Zoo Sunday with Watts Atelier Instructor Tom Babbey. This gorgeous little Arctic Fox lives in his enclosure near the Polar Bears.

As a reminder, Carlsbad Art Farm is holding Art Farm for the Holidays during the first three weekends in December for students currently enrolled in Grades 2-8.

Students are invited to come to Art Farm to make gifts for the holidays, visit with our farm animals, indulge in sugary holiday treats and hot cider, and enjoy being at Art Farm during this beautiful season of the year. The recent rains have brought much greenery to our 10-acre woodland preserve making it a perfect holiday setting.

All paid students attending Art Farm for the Holidays open studio sessions will be put in a drawing for a chance to win a week at Carlsbad Art Farm Summer Camp 2012 (value $400). Camps begin in June and continue through mid-August. Camps are one-week, Monday through Friday, 9 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. The drawing will follow the last open-house session the third weekend in December. Note: Students must be entering grades 2 or higher in fall 2012 to attend summer camp.

Polar Bear at the San Diego Zoo, Sun., Nov. 12, 2011
Photo by Perrin Weston Coman

Carlsbad Art Farm is located on Sunny Creek Road near the Village of Carlsbad. We are known for our wonderful sold-out summer camps and year-round studio art, visual literacy and natural science enrichment classes for youth Grades 2-8. Students study drawing and painting technique in our outdoor studios, often using our farm animals as live models. Our habitat is riparian, with a year-round running creek which we use to educate students about conservation and respect for the natural world. This November, we welcomed two wonderful groups of Kelly Elementary School second-graders who came to Art Farm for a field trip to study pond life.

Art Farm for the Holidays open studio times and dates are detailed in our previous post (see "Art Farm for the Holidays" below). RSVPs are mandatory. The fee is $40 per 4-hour session per student. An additional fee of $5-$15 per gift made (cost depends on materials used) applies. Payment is by cash or check payable to Carlsbad Art Farm on the day of the event. We anticipate that students will be able to complete 2-3 projects per visit depending on what projects they choose and how long it takes to complete the project.

To RSVP for Art Farm for the Holidays, check dates and times on our previous post and follow link for contacting us. Questions may be directed to Owner/Director Perrin Weston Coman at director@CarlsbadArtFarm.com. Please type "Art Farm Holiday" in the subject head so we don't delete your email as spam.

Drawing at the San Diego Zoo

I'm enjoying a 10-week San Diego Zoo drawing drawing class for adults with Instructor Tom Babbey through Watts Atelier (based in Encinitas). Tom is an awesome animal artist (link to his sketch blog at bottom of post). If you can find a class offered by him jump at the opportunity. Tips for Young students: Animal models generally move a lot (even the Galapagos tortoise pictured here), so animal artists have to develop a visual memory of their subjects so they can keep drawing while waiting for their subjects to strike a similar pose. 

One week we were drawing Grevy's Zebras (also pictured here), and for almost three hours these animals conspired against us artists by keeping their faces obscured in troughs of hay. Much of my zebra's head that day was drawn using my "visual memory" of what a zebra's head looks like.

If you are serious about learning to draw animals well, it helps to have a good camera with zoom lens and fast shutter speed so you can develop your own image library. If you don't have a camera or can't get to the zoo, visit the San Diego Zoo website and find an image there to draw. The images here were taken by me over a period of several weeks at the San Diego Zoo. I also took many close-up "detail shots" of different parts of the animal such as legs, hoofs, eyes, muzzles, ears, etc.

Tips for Young Students: Make a habit of keeping a daily sketchbook where you practice, practice, practice! When you go to the zoo or any other place where you can view animals, practice drawing them from life in your sketchbook. Over time, as you flip through your book, you will be amazed at your improvements. 

You are welcome to print out these zoo pictures and sketch them.

Students: With parent permission, we invite you to send a scanned image of artwork made by you of one of the pictures in this blog post. Send your image file to us at director@carlsbadartfarm.com. We just might exhibit your art on our blog! Remember to include your first name only and your age.

Tom Babbey Animal Sketch Blog

Two Hour Time Lapse Painting Demonstration by Instructor Kris Finch

One Last Chance for Summer Camp this Season

We are nearing the end of another great summer camp season at Art Farm with one more session to go starting next week on Aug. 9. There are still a few spaces left. To enroll visit our website, click on the camp tab, and scroll down to the bottom for enrollment forms. Or call 760-688-6147.

At right is a wonderful charcoal drawing of a baboon by Sarah Bauer, who is entering Grade 6 this fall. She attended camp last week.

Students in drawing class learn to use value (lights and darks) and look for shapes within the animal. This is different and much more sophisticated then simply drawing the contour of an object and then filling in the color. Charcoal is a wonderful medium for young students as it forces them to get away from hard-line drawing in favor of a style that has a more "painterly" feel. The smudginess combined with line drawing is what gives it life. Here the drawing is on a "toned" paper, meaning it has a color, in this case a sort of felt gray. The nice quality of the paper -- which grabs the charcoal and allows the paper texture to become an important element in the drawing -- also helps students be more successful.

Perhaps we'll see you this summer. If not, visit our blog often to see offerings during the school year for young students and adults. Currently, we offer our ongoing Saturday morning art class for students in Grades 2 through 8.