Picasso Blue Guitar

This step-by-step Pablo Picasso art project will be available in my upcoming book! Check out more information and subscribe to stay in the loop about my book.

I love this Pablo Picasso Art lesson. It was one of my first art lessons on Picasso combining two of his signature styles.

Picasso did not actually paint a picture like this. I created this lesson back in 2011 as a way to introduce 3 different pieces of information about him: his frequent use of guitars as a subject matter, his Blue Period, and the art movement he co-founded: Cubism. Someone years ago mistook my art sample for a real Picasso and since then it has been circulating the internet in various ways (just google Picasso blue guitar and this sample will be one of the first to pop up)! It even made it as a backdrop in a Jimmy Buffett concert! Check back soon to see a blog post about this whole experience.

Please refer people back to this site if you use this lesson! 🙂

I'm writing a book!

I am excited to announce my latest project! My daughter and I are working on a big, beautiful, creatively designed book on artist related lessons (similar to the ones on this website but with more details, step by step instructions and photos). The book will be for anyone who wants concise, detailed, well laid out lessons that are ready to teach, in a format that is fun to look at as well.

Book Info

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Other Lessons:

Aztec Masks Art Lesson

Hundertwasser Mixed Media

door in Italy with turquoise bike by it.

The Doors of Italy

At the end of a 3 week vacation to Europe, I came away with so many pictures of things that captured my interest and the mood of the moment. I couldn’t get enough of all the time worn doors, especially those in Italy.

Making Reading Beautiful!

We painted Free Little Libraries! Does your city have a Little Free Library? These are little free standing libraries that have a “host” who looks after them and can be located in someone’s yard , out in the country, or in front of a business or in a park. You can take a book to read or leave one for someone else to find.

My Beautiful Tuscan Kitchen

This year marks the two year anniversary of our kitchen remodel! My wonderful cabinet maker husband finally got around to making this custom kitchen for our home and I couldn’t be happier!

If you go to Paris you Need to Visit this Museum

(And no, it isn’t the Louvre)

I’m just now having some time to write some posts from our trip to Europe last spring. So many pictures to wade through! And it was such a whirlwind of places, art, food and constant walking that it is hard to know where to start.

Thinking about Impressionism and how much I love so many of the artists in this movement so I am going to start with our visit to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. It was definitely a highlight and one I had looked forward to for a long time. It did not disappoint. We went on one of the evenings when they are open late and just had a relaxed time enjoying all the art and imagining so many great stories of how it all came to be.

All the paintings that I had seen in countless books and prints were so much more breathtaking in person. I loved getting a close up look of Van Gogh’s brushstrokes and could just feel the energy and movement and angst that was so much a part of who he was as an artist. Going from one artist’s grouping to another (many of them were in the same room), I could finally get a real sense of this time in history and how these artists all played off one another.

Some of my favorites were the Degas pastels, Renoir’s dancing couples, Cezzane’s still lifes, Romare Bearden’s cut paper art (you could see the creased and faded paper and imagine his fingers cutting and pasting). Mary Cassatt’s luminous portraits were glowing with the play of color and light that so define her work. And of course Monet! (went to Giverny on this trip too…another post on that)! Hard to put into words the magic in this place and feeling an almost hushed awe of such incredible talent. The museum is housed in the former Gare d’Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900, and is such a beautiful building, a perfect setting for all this amazing art. And being located on the left bank of the Seine the location just adds to the feeling of stepping back in time.

If you love art and especially Impressionism and Post Impressionism (this museum holds the largest collection in the world) then you need to see this in person.

Picasso