Sense of Place Activities: Another Cloudy Day

Another Cloudy Day

Another cloudy Monday of quarantine…let’s draw it with artist Mary Helen Maskill! You’ll need crayons or color pencils and white paper of any kind.

Storms are an inherent part of North Texas weather. For inspiration, read below American artist Miner Kilbourne Kellogg’s description of a Texas thunderstorm in the 1870s. Then, create your own version of a storm or the weather you see, using color. Think about how color can describe a place and a time of day. How do artists use color to create a mood in an artwork?

• an impromptu musical event takes place
• the poetry of the scene—with a half-moon now and then eclipsed by dark clouds passing over the clear starry vault of bluish grey
• three grand and graceful cumuli (large clouds) in close company charged with electricity and frequently emitting lambent (luminous) flames defining their exquisite forms overlaying each other as do scenes in a theatre
• a vivid flash would add vigor to the bugle’s (small trumpet’s) blast
• blinding circular and angular and perpendicular sharp and cutting lines of fluid (rain), as variation to the hilarious passages of the most noted and popular of operatic music

Wow, he saw all that! What do you see?!

Kellogg Citation: Friend, L. (1967), “M. K. Kellogg’s Texas Journal 1872,” Austin: University of Texas; and Powers, J. & D. (2000), “Texas Painters, Sculptors and Graphic Artists: a Biographical Dictionary of Artists in Texas before 1942,” Austin, TX: Woodmont Books; https://www.askart.com.

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