(upbeat music)
-: Hi, I'm Carina del Rosario.
My students call me Miss Carina.
Usually I'd be in the classroom teaching art,
or in a museum doing some art activities there.
But today I'm coming to you from a studio
so you can still make art wherever you are.
How are you feeling?
I have been fidgety lately, very restless.
And sometimes when I'm feeling that way,
I like to make some quick drawings.
It helps me get some energy out,
it helps me focus on what's right in front of me
instead of having my mind
go buzzing around all over the place.
So one of the artists who gave me inspiration
for using that technique is Romare Bearden.
Romare Bearden is one of my favorite artists.
He was born in 1911, and he lived, at first,
in North Carolina with his family,
his great grandparents, his grandparents and his parents.
But when he was a young person,
I think like three years old,
his parents wanted to leave the racism
that was in North Carolina during that time
and seek out opportunities for themselves in New York City.
So he moved there and grew up there
and continue to live there
in the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City,
and he would go sketching around his neighborhood.
He would sketch the block that he lived on,
the buildings there.
He would sketch musicians who were performing
at different nightclubs during the Harlem Renaissance there.
So he would just always sketch.
So that's what we're gonna do today.
We're going to just do some quick sketches,
focusing on lines and shapes.
What you'll need is either a notebook, or a piece of paper
and just a pen or a pencil.
I'm using a notebook that's a little bit darker pages
cause it's a little easier for the camera to see
rather than a white page.
So the picture that I chose is
of a Chief Sealth Trail near my house in Beacon Hill.
And in this picture, you can see
that there's some grassy parts,
there's a winding path and these electrical towers.
So again, I'm just gonna use my pen on my paper.
I'm gonna use this big one
just so it's a little bit easier to see.
And I'm just gonna focus on lines and shapes.
So I see some quick electrical towers here
and then there's some lines going this way.
I'm not gonna worry about getting it to exact.
It's like visual note taking.
So sometimes if you're taking notes,
you might not be capturing every single word,
and that's the same idea here.
You don't have to capture every single detail.
(pen scribbling)
I'm switching pens cause some
of them are a little bit drier than others.
So here's the grassy part,
and then over here is, I'm doing a curved line
to capture the path.
I see a square and a triangle for a house,
another triangle cause I'm just seeing the top of a house.
Okay, so I'm just using shapes.
I'm not worrying too much about the details.
Looks like I have some trees over there.
(pen scribbling)
Okay, so it's just a very rough sketch.
So I keep a bunch of those sketches in my notebook
just so that I can look at them for ideas
for other art projects.
Now, like I said, Mr. Bearden liked to think back
to other important places in his life.
So he would think about what life was like in North Carolina
with his great grandparents.
So sometimes he would just draw off from memory.
I'm gonna draw off from memory of my grandparents' place.
I'm gonna just flip the page here.
I was born in the Philippines and I left when I was six.
So even though I was only six years old
when my family moved to the United States,
I have very vivid memories of my grandparents' place.
So I'm gonna draw you
what I remember my grandparents house to look like.
There was this wall that was right at the sidewalk
and then it's a low concrete wall
and then there was a fence
and it was one of those wire fences or gates.
(pen scribbling)
So I'm just doing some curved lines.
And then there was this gate here that would swing open.
And then over here...
My grandparents' place was pretty small,
so I'm just using a rectangle
and then a smaller rectangle for the door.
Here's on this side was the living room in Tagalog,
which is the language that my family speaks,
it's called the Sala.
Over here on the side of the house,
there were some chickens,
so there were a couple of chicken coops here.
On this side of the front door was where I would take a nap
in the afternoon.
So yeah, what I want you to do is,
think about some places
that are important to you in your life.
It could be where you're sitting right now.
It could be someplace you've been
that you either have pictures of
or you have very specific memories of.
I want you to use lines and shapes just to draw that,
draw a few different places that are important to you,
and then keep it in your notebook.
Keep it handy because we'll do an art project
next time with those sketches.
So I hope you come back and join me.
Again, my name is Miss Carina,
and I'm a cultural worker and visual teaching artist
here in Seattle.
Thanks for joining me.
(upbeat music)