Contour Tree Drawing

I’m stilling enjoying the artwork of Friedensrich Hundertwasser, who inspired this contour drawing of a tree trunk.

1. I used a square paper and drew the outline of a tree trunk with a few finger-looking shapes pointing down. After adding a few vertical lines for definition, I made a series of curved, or “jumping” lines going across and filling up the trunk.
2. I drew a curvy horizonal line, and then filled in the ground below with more horizontal wavy lines that jumped across the tree roots.
3. Lastly the sky got a few wavy lines also. When the pencil drawing was complete, I traced all the lines with a thin black marker.
4. I chose a main pencil color for the trunk, ground and sky. After filling in those areas with medium pressure, I went back and filled in some random lines with darker and lighter versions of each color.

CA Visual Art Standard: Creative Expression, Grade Three
2.3 Paint or draw a landscape, seascape, or cityscape that shows the illusion of space.

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Back To School Portraits

I'd been looking for a different approach to self-portraits for a back-to-school project. I wanted something that would ask the students to see themselves in a new way, and create a colorful display that I knew the teachers would appreciate for their classrooms. Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser has an amazing life story, along with a very appealing style of abstract drawing. Click here to read more about him.

1. Start with a 9" x 12" paper, and trace the width of a ruler around the outside edges in pencil. Add another line about 1/4" away to make a narrow inner border.
2. Draw a very large circle that almost touches the top border and does touch the left and right. Wobbly circles are welcome! Shoulders may be straight or angled. Eyes are drawn by starting with a center dot, and then the football shapes that extend and touch the outside edge. Hair must be simple, simple, simple, using as few lines as possible. Names are drawn in block letters in the bottom border.
3. When the drawing is done, all lines are traced with a thin black marker.
4. Everything is colored in heavily with some good colored pencils. This sample is down Prismacolors.

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Hundertwasser Landscape

I was inspired by one of Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s paintings to make this abstract landscape.

1. I cut a wavy rectangular shape of green tissue, large enough to cover the bottom 2/3 of the paper. A 50/50 mixture of water and glue was brushed under and over it to attach it to the paper.
2. I cut a bunch of round blue circles, and also glued them to the paper, overlapping a bit at times.
3. After the glue was dry, I used Sharpie markers to draw the tree trunks and lots of organic lines.
4. The sky was filled in with watercolor pencils, and then painted with water.

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Hundertwasser Portraits

I’m still so hooked on the Vienna artist Hundertwasser, that I thought I would try combining his style with my popsicle portrait project. I think his art has a kind of layered marker look to it so it seemed like a good match.

1. It seems that Hundertwasser had a real aversion to straight lines, so I thought I would start with 8 un-straight jumbo popsicle stick glued to two back ones and let dry.
2. I traced the board onto dry wax paper just so I knew the size my drawing should be. Looking at Hundertwasser’s paintings, I tried his style of a very round head, large eyes that spread across the whole face, simple features and hair.
3. When the pencil drawing was done, I traced the lines with a gray marker, and then colored in all the shapes with Sharpie markers. In the past I have always tried to not smudge the color together, but this time I let them smear all they wanted to! When the coloring was done, I cut the drawing out very close to the edges.
4. I mixed 50/50 glue and water and brushed a layer all over the board and the back side of the drawing. I placed the drawing on the board and brushed another layer of glue over the front. Any wrinkles were spread out to smooth before the glue dried.
5. After the glue was dry, I went back with the markers and added those trademark Hundertwasser lines wherever it seemed fit. The marker colors show up much brighter over the dry glue so they give some added punch to the picture.

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Art Journaling 117

This is another drawing inspired by the Austrian abstract artist, Friedensreich Hundertwasser. His philosophy about nature is very reflective in his artwork, so I used his quote and love of wavy lines to jump start this journal page.

1. I started by drawing a wavy horizontal line, and then five random circles for the flower centers above it. All the centers had a stem drawn down, then lots of concentric circles around them.
2. When I was happy with the size of the flowers, I drew lots of wavy horizontal lines that imitated the horizon line, and jumped around each flower.
3. After the sky was complete, I added block letters below spelling out one of my favorite quotes from Hundertwasser. With the drawing done, I traced all the lines with a thin black marker.
4. Using colored pencils, I filled in the drawing, using some more coloring ideas from Hundertwasser. The background I colored one color with medium pressure, and then came back over the black lines and pressed harder to shade. The ground and stems and letters were colored with matching colors too keep things readable. But with the flower circles, I let myself try all different kinds of combinations to see what I liked best. I think having some rules like this will keep teachers from getting a lot of half-done pages which have a tendency, in my experience, to not get completed.

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