Drawing Butterflies By Progressive Steps

     I have included here a series of five, butterfly, drawing exercises from an old book. In each case it is the last figure of each series of diagrams that you are striving to copy.

      Learning to draw is best when students are encouraged by multiple means of processing information. Teachers should encourage progressive diagram drawing, drawing from real life, drawing from artworks and from their imaginations. The more articulate the student, the easier it becomes for him or her to express themselves. It is difficult for art students to become articulate if their teacher is attaching too much philosophy to practice early in their pupil's development.

      Each method of drawing accesses different areas of the brain. Educators will soon discover that different students excel at different rates according to their familiarity with utilizing that particular part of their brain. Teaching art to the very young should focus primarily on the absorption of knowledge and how to use it within a wide variety of circumstance/context. 

      All artists should be given time to learn how to manipulate information without having the process judged by those art educators that teach according to current popular belief.  Do not fixate on artistic schools of thought or practice until a student is approximately sixteen or older and is able to make important choices for himself apart from your personal tastes and opinions.
      The method of drawing illustrated in the jpgs. below, is very appropriate for cartoonists or graphic designers to learn. Encourage art students to try this method of making art along with many other practices inside your classroom.

full frontal butterfly draw

Draw butterfly from side.

Draw another butterfly from side.

Smaller butterfly drawing challenge.

Last step-by-step butterfly drawing challenge.

The Resurrection Illustrated

     So it is that out of these elementary particles human bodies are built, and out of nature's storehouse God will in some way reinvest the spirit with a material organism. We can well believe that this is possible in the light of what chemistry can do.  There are many things which the chemist can do which we would not believe to be possible did we not know them to be facts. I think it is Dr. Brown who quotes from Mr. Hallet the story of a gentleman who was something of a chemist, who had given a faithful servant a silver cup. The servant dropped the cup in a vessel of what he supposed to be pure water, but which in reality was aqua fortis. He let it lie there not thinking it could receive any harm, but, returning some time after, saw the cup gradually dissolving. He was loudly bewailing his loss when he was told his master could restore the cup for him. He could not believe it. "Do you not see," he said, "that it is dissolving before our sight?" But at last the master was brought to the spot. He called for some salt water, which he poured into the vessel, and told the servant to watch. By and by the silver cup began to gather as a white powder at the bottom. When the deposit was complete the master said to the servant, "Pour off the liquid, gather up this dust, have it melted and run together, then take it to the workman and let him hammer the cup again." You may take gold; you may file it down to a powder, mix it with other metals, throw it into the fire, do what you will with it, and the chemist will bring back with certainty the exact gold.

      Thus our bodies are built up by fruits from the tropics, by grain from the prairies. The flesh that roamed the plains as cattle has even become part of us. If God can build up human bodies here, can He not find and convert the dust that we put away in the grave, and bring it back to forms of life? In my judgment, God is able to preserve even the particles of the human body and restore them. So far as the power is concerned, it can be done, and will be done, as God may think best. by H. W. Thomas, D. D.

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the 

heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. Psalm 46:10 

The song is, "Before The Day" by Newsong 

If I may stand before His throne,

And look upon His face,

What shall I care that oft, alone,

Like Him, I ran my race.

Safe on thy ever blissful plains,

My heart's own treasure gathered there;

Farewell, forever, sins and pains,

Farewell, bereavement, sorrow and care!

C. Huntington.

Christ Rose By His Own Power

      He rose in the night; no hand at the door, no voice in his ear, no rough touch awakening him. Other watchers than Pilate's soldiers stood by the sepulchre; but these angels whom it will became to keep guard at this dead man's chamber door, beyond opening it, beyond rolling away the stone, beyond looking on with wondering eyes, took no part in the scenes of that eventful morning. The hour sounds; the appointed time arrives. Having slept out his sleep, Jesus stirs; he awakes of his own accord he rises by his own power; and arranging, or leaving attending angels to arrange, the linen clothes, he walks out on the dewy ground, beneath the starry sky, to turn grief into the greatest joy, and hail the breaking of the brightest morn that ever rose on this guilty world. That open empty tomb assures us of a day when ours too shall be as empty. Having raised himself, he has power to raise his people, panic-stricken soldiers flying to the scene, and Mary rising from his blessed feet to hasten to the city, to rush through the streets, to burst in among the disciples, and with a voice of joy to cry, His is risen, He is risen! prove this is no vain brag or boast, "I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have the power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." Rev. Dr. Gutherie.

Phil Wickham sings, "Christ Is Risen"

 

MAN REDEEMABLE

With other ministrations thou, O Nature!
Healest thy wandering and distempered child:
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,—

Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters
Till he relent, and can no more endure
To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy;

But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit healed and harmonized
By the benignant touch of love and beauty.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The Present, Past And Future

An early daguerreotype of
 Senator and Episcopalian,
Daniel Webster.

      It is noble faculty of our nature which enables us to connect out thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness, with what is distant in place or time; and, looking before and after, to hold communion at once with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are, we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, without relation to past or the future. Neither the point of time, nor the spot of earth, in which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history; and in the future by hope and anticipation.

      As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted and religious imagination, which leads us to raise our thoughts from the orb, which, amid this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeding which nature prompts, and teaches to be proper among children of the same External Parent, to the contemplation of the myriads of fellow-beings, with which His goodness has peopled the infinite space--so neither is it false or vain to consider ourselves as interested and connected with our whole race, through all time; allied to our ancestors; allied to our posterity; closely compacted on all sides with others; ourselves being but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our race, runs onward through its successive generations, binding together the past, the present and the future, and terminating at last with the consummation of all things earthly, at the throne of God. - Daniel Webster.

 

LONG LIFE AND HARD STUDY

       Devotion to intellectual pursuits and to studies, even of the most severe and unremitting character, is not incompatible with extreme longevity, terminated by a serene and unclouded sunset. Dr. Johnson composed his “Dictionary” in seven years! And during that time he wrote also the Prologue to the opening of Drury Lane Theatre; the “Vanity of Human Wishes;” the tragedy of “Irene;” and the “Rambler;”—an almost incomprehensible effort of mind. He lived to the age of seventy-five. When Fontenelle’s brilliant career terminated, and he was asked if he felt pain, he replied, “ I only feel a difficulty of existing.”

How To Decoupage a Picture On To An Easter Egg

Here is an obvious question. "How do you decoupage a picture or a scene onto an egg?" Obvious question, rarely answered. Above you see a sweet example of this from a manufacturer of Easter novelty.

Here is my version of the same process, only, I've used an elaborate patterned design.

This lovely pattern was taken from a fancy dinner napkin. You need to separate the layers.
 Only use the top one.

Measure the length of your egg and cut rectangular strip from the napkin or tissue paper to fit neatly around it. Now you will need to cut at regular intervals, slashes into your design. Notice how I do NOT cut all the way through the rectangle. I leave about an inch uncut. This uncut central part of the rectangle is the continuous, uninterrupted part of the design that wraps around the mid section of the egg. The larger your egg the wider this section will be. After cutting this napkin thus, apply Mod Podge to the surface of your egg and carefully paste down the napkin, starting first with the middle part of the design. The fringed parts of the napkin will overlap some but the design will be preserved for the most part.

After cutting and gluing this first piece of the napkin, I then cut out parts of the design that I thought the most attractive from left over napkins and pasted these on the top and bottom parts of my egg where the design did not cover. This is because I used very large eggs for this project and my napkins were quite small.

This is the wider, bottom half of my egg that needed additional
 decoupage to cover it completely.

In order for your eggs to look professional, you need to use very thin
tissues for this project. This insures that the design will appear uninterrupted
 and hand painted. Also, I was very particular about the colors of eggs that
I used for the design. Had I used dark blue or purple plastic eggs,
this design would not be as attractive. The napkin is very thin and the
colors will show through the glue and tissue, so be selective. This egg was
yellow. The one below was pink.

Decoupage Easter Eggs:

• DIY - Decoupage Easter Eggs and here with a photo
• Kids Craft: decoupage easter egg
• Paper Napkin Decoupage Eggs
• Paper Fabric Wrapped Easter Eggs
• Read more about this process here