Three Simple Yet Fantastic Ideas for Girls' Birthday Parties

Let's face it, creating a great girls' birthday party can often seem like an uphill challenge-even for the most creative of parents. With work and other obligations weighing down on you, it is easy to feel a sense of panic as your daughter's big day creeps up. Fortunately, girls' birthday parties are far simpler than most parents think. With their friends around and a little attention, you are half way to winning the birthday party battle. Here are three ideas you can easily execute.

A Cooking Party

With the Great British Bake Off and Masterchef once again taking the BBC by storm, older girls are becoming enticed by the idea of breaking out an apron and creating something delicious. Even some younger girls may enjoy the idea of joining their parents in the kitchen. A cooking party-under the right supervision-is a fantastic way to stimulate your daughter's creative side. One of the best aspects of hosting such a party is that you do not need to worry about providing food, as that becomes the kids' job. This is also a great idea for girls who want a unisex party.

Make Over Parties

Girls of all ages love a little glitz and glam. It is for this reason that make over parties are so popular. A typical make over party involves manicures, pedicures, and make-up. Usually, two girls are seen to by beauticians at the same time, which gives the rest of the guests a chance to run around with each other and chat. This is a party that works well throughout the year. During the summertime, you can use a gazebo to create a cool outdoor area for your daughter and her friends to hang out in. In the winter, you can host the party in your front room. Want to know the best part? Mess is minimal.

Crafting Parties

Whether it is jewelry making or throwing together some Christmas cards, crafting parties are always a hit with young girls. Girls birthday parties that focus on crafting ideas are particularly exciting when you have two or three crafting stations in your home. Your daughter and her friends can make several crafts. Jewelry works well, as the guests can take their creations home with them, which prevents you from having to worry about party bags. Alternatively, you can give the crafts a theme. When the wintertime comes around, making Christmas decorations is exciting. During the summer, stringing together some flowers for Hawaiian-style garments is always fun.

The key with any party is to build-up a little excitement. This is a great chance for extended family members and friends to enjoy time together. Your daughter, like all little girls, will always appreciate the efforts that have gone in to making her big day special.

View the original article here

Three Simple Yet Fantastic Ideas for Girls' Birthday Parties

Let's face it, creating a great girls' birthday party can often seem like an uphill challenge-even for the most creative of parents. With work and other obligations weighing down on you, it is easy to feel a sense of panic as your daughter's big day creeps up. Fortunately, girls' birthday parties are far simpler than most parents think. With their friends around and a little attention, you are half way to winning the birthday party battle. Here are three ideas you can easily execute.

A Cooking Party

With the Great British Bake Off and Masterchef once again taking the BBC by storm, older girls are becoming enticed by the idea of breaking out an apron and creating something delicious. Even some younger girls may enjoy the idea of joining their parents in the kitchen. A cooking party-under the right supervision-is a fantastic way to stimulate your daughter's creative side. One of the best aspects of hosting such a party is that you do not need to worry about providing food, as that becomes the kids' job. This is also a great idea for girls who want a unisex party.

Make Over Parties

Girls of all ages love a little glitz and glam. It is for this reason that make over parties are so popular. A typical make over party involves manicures, pedicures, and make-up. Usually, two girls are seen to by beauticians at the same time, which gives the rest of the guests a chance to run around with each other and chat. This is a party that works well throughout the year. During the summertime, you can use a gazebo to create a cool outdoor area for your daughter and her friends to hang out in. In the winter, you can host the party in your front room. Want to know the best part? Mess is minimal.

Crafting Parties

Whether it is jewelry making or throwing together some Christmas cards, crafting parties are always a hit with young girls. Girls birthday parties that focus on crafting ideas are particularly exciting when you have two or three crafting stations in your home. Your daughter and her friends can make several crafts. Jewelry works well, as the guests can take their creations home with them, which prevents you from having to worry about party bags. Alternatively, you can give the crafts a theme. When the wintertime comes around, making Christmas decorations is exciting. During the summer, stringing together some flowers for Hawaiian-style garments is always fun.

The key with any party is to build-up a little excitement. This is a great chance for extended family members and friends to enjoy time together. Your daughter, like all little girls, will always appreciate the efforts that have gone in to making her big day special.

View the original article here

Three Underpainting Practices for Oil Painting

The practice of underpainting is almost as large an area of study as oil painting.

The purpose of an underpainting is to establish the composition and overall light/dark pattern while initiating the development of volumes and substance to the forms.

An underpainting allows you to envision the totality of the pictorial idea. In addition to correcting drawing errors the underpainting's primary purpose is to fix the all important Notan, which is the Japanese term for light/dark harmony.

Generally speaking, there are three types of underpainting: there is the fully worked up monochromatic grisaille. This is the academic approach where little is left to chance. However, the classical grisaille of mixed white and black possesses an Achilles Heel. As the white paint ages it becomes more translucent and the black paint in the grey mix will dominate. Hence the overall picture will darken significantly, especially if there was extensive correcting of the grisaille.

If a basic oil/turpentine medium is employed this darkening is all but guaranteed. The solution is to use a thixotropic resin based medium -- such as Venice Turpentine -- which suspends the pigment and nullifies the oil's interminable darkening. Despite its name Venice Turpentine is a resin not a solvent. A confusing but important distinction.

The Renaissance approach often employed the verdaccio which is a green-hued underpainting. Michelangelo's unfinished Entombment exhibits his painting process from beginning to finish. The central Christ figure is a wholly resolved verdaccio underpainting.

The optical grisaille resolves many of the problems of the grey mixes of the classical grisaille. The imprimatura holds the light middle tones; raw umber and charcoal gray produces the darker values; and concludes with a select impasto of white lead paint that supports the highest values of the overpainting as the oil paint grows more translucent over time.

The final appearance of an optical grisaille is a painting that exhibits a higher key of color than what can be achieved by an academic grisaille or even direct alla prima.

The key for achieving a translucent grisaille is the thixotropic medium of stand oil, Venice turpentine and Damar varnish diluted with turpentine.

In oil painting your medium is to painting what sauces are to French cuisine. The all-too-common medium of linseed oil and turpentine actually degrades the paints robbing them of their lustre. You can buy ready-made painting mediums in the art store, but in my opinion this is like pouring Kraft Thousand Island dressing onto an exquisitely prepared gourmet meal.

Michael Britton is a painter, teacher and writer. Trained at the Art Students' League and the New York Academy of Art, Michael has exhibited and taught extensively in his almost 30 year career. He is the author of nine video workshops that are all available at http://www.artacademy.com/. His teaching focuses on traditional portrait drawing and painting in addition to composition and color theory.

Michael also travels and paints en plein air extensively. His comic travelogues and oil sketches are published at http://www.en-plein-air.com/.