Art Concepts

"The books are clean and appear simple, yet the topics covered in each are complete. They're great unit studies.” -- teacher When we began working on this book,...See more » "The books are clean and appear simple, yet the topics covered in each are complete. They're great unit studies.” -- teacher When we began working on this book, Marie Hablitzel (my mother and coauthor) showed me a lesson of how to draw a cluster of grapes by drawing rows of circles positioned like a stacked set of billiard balls. I had not seen this lesson in years and seeing it then prompted me to flash back to a proud moment when I was seven-years-old. Alone, using water from the wading pool, I made circles with my wet fingers on the sun-warmed surface of the cement patio in our backyard. My challenge was to draw four circles, the same size, in a row. This is difficult to draw freehand since it involves two tasks -- d uplicating the size of a circle and keeping all the circles on a level line. On this hot day, my circles quickly evaporated into the dry air, so I repeatedly attempted to draw a perfect row. After mastering a decent row of circles, I proceeded to add a second row of circles nestled into the spaces between the circles in the first row. Many tries later, I got three rows of circles to line up correctly, creating a staggered pattern. The circles vanished, but I was glowing with pride! Thirty years later, with Marie's simple drawing of grapes before me, I had something concrete as to why I was so passionate about my mother's lessons. Yes, my mother taught me to draw, but she also taught me to think, be observant, and pay attention to details -- all the while filling my head with questions to ask or ponder. ~Kim Stitzer Coauthor, Draw Write Now, Books 1-8See less »