(This includes everything in the week prior to the pit painting party on Monday, July 6. So, here's a glimpse of all of the other things we do!)

Monday
On Monday we started off on a normal project of sketching outdoors. Each artist found an item from nature and was told to sketch it for a print. The prints later were carved out of linoleum after being sketched on to the surface. After eating a fulfilling lunch we went back outside to sketch near the construction site on campus. We found patterns in the cranes and machinery. We used this later in an industrial pattern print (above). For the rest of Monday we used the patterns on our soon-to-be masterpiece, the big painting.

Tuesday
Tuesday was a similar day to Monday, but days at Blue Sky always expand our creativity. In the morning we worked on a group project that doesn’t involve Katherine. Over the weekend we let a canvas dry that we splattered paint on the week before. Using pastels most of the group worked on drawing their favorite animal while another part of the group worked on our group masterpiece. This was to prevent too much crowding at either painting.

Wednesday
With Rodney's group, we made our way to ArtStreet. There we met four different artists.

• Adam, a graphic designer, was completing a project for the dorms at the University of Dayton. His project is on canvas and represents the native creatures in the Dayton area.


• Hillary is creating mobiles and sculptures from recycled items from the local area.


• Sarah is also doing a project for the UD dorms. Her project was abstract paintings of books. One of her examples was of a schoolbook for freshman college students--pages were torn out and plastered and spackled to the canvas.


• The last artist we spoke to, Liz, is working on art for the Learning Teaching Center in the UD library. She has created images of groups of people to point the students in the right direction of different rooms.

Thursday
On Thursday the Purple Picassos worked once again with Rodney’s group for the last choreographing practice. This practice we were told to be enthusiastic and get into the music. Adding dance moves to the paint choreography really helped us be more enthusiastic! Before lunch, we worked a bit more on choreographing the paint throwing by tossing actual cups of water to the pavement (that's one of Rodney's dancers to the left) so that we could practice our throwing technique.

After using so much energy outside and replenishing with lunch our two groups went back to the Rike building to be shown a video, “The Passing” by Bill Viola. The short film was about movement and picture with the meanings of life, growth and death. After the film we then divided into our respective groups to work more on our projects. While alone, braver members of the groups admitted to dozing off or out right falling asleep during the film, while others who caught most of the movie were eager to talk about it.

After some down time all groups reported to a far off building across campus to watch the presentation of Lisa’s lovely group. They talked about their small flash animation projects including one using the chalk board. They also documented the paint drop in the pit. In the end we let some paper airplanes fly and departed to have a relaxing weekend. The Purple Picassos shall return soon to fill another blog space!

-Rosie