"Sing Wild Songs of Adventure..." Paddy Art #5

If you've been following you'll know that I've been leading a weekly art group at Pademelon, a home for people with advanced dementia.

We have the most wonderful DT (Diversional Therapist) Sally, who forever goes above and beyond to keep life interesting and exciting for the residents. From high teas in the garden and daily music concerts to fish tanks and bird houses, she is always full of ideas and plans to add joy to the day, and she makes it happen! Because she does so much for my Mum, I would do anything for her! So when she approached me to lead a weekly art group I was delighted to lend a hand.

One idea we discussed early on was a collaborative Tree of Life.Our idea is to hang it in the living room and to have the residents glue on self-adhesive gems, with each new resident adding their gem as part of a 'welcome' to their new home. So while I wanted the residents to be as involved as possible in the creation, I also wanted the finished product to be something that would be a lovely and permanent addition to the room where they spend so much of their time! This is our final effort....

We started with 9 X 20" canvases which I pre-painted with a wash of Atelier Red-Gold Interactive acrylic. Residents Ken, Rae and Dorothy helped me to spatter paint Jackson Pollock-style all over the background. We used squeeze bottles of watered acrylic in cerulean blue, red-gold (same paint but stronger concentration) and metallic gold. I flattened cardboard packing boxes to shield our feet from the spatters. Lots (and lots!) of paint flying everywhere and loads of fun!

 I then took the canvases home and painted the negative space background in cream house paint, which gave good coverage but left the texture of the dried spatter paint. The tree shape stands out beautifully!

Meanwhile, I drew up some birds and dragonflies onto thick watercolour paper which Dorothy, Maureen, Neen, Elis and Nancy painted in cerulean blue. I embellished them with gold and red detail, cut them out and mod-podged them onto the background.

I also added some inspirational words (found on the Pinterest, where else??)
Sing wild songs of adventure...Dance lightly with life...Laugh for no reason...Love beyond words...
A bit kitsch I know, but it pretty well sums up what I want for my Mum at this stage in her life.

We refined the gem idea to include a gold leaf for each resident, with their name and birth date.
Here is my gorgeous Mum adding her leaf to the tree, with help from my sister Leanne.

Although I have come to prefer smaller individual projects which give the residents immediate results, as an on-going 'living' work, I'm pretty pleased with this one :)

Go here to see more Paddy Projects.

Minions, Minions Everywhere .....

Over the recent school break it seems that nearly all my kids saw (and loved!) the new Despicable Me 2 movie! So what better subject for a Pop Art-style painting?

We watched the Youtube 'Minions Banana Song', which the kids thought was hilarious...
(with a brief discussion along the lines of "of course WE know that hitting each other is not the way to solve a problem, but these Minions just don't know any better ..." :))



Then we planned out our composition, using milk bottle lids as a template for the eyes - this kept the minions large in the page. We went over all our lines with black oil pastel before painting with chromacryl paints.
Thanks Charlotte for sharing your great painting! Gotta love the Minions!!

An Australian Starry Night

Hollie (Yr 3)

The Starry Night is an iconic Van Gogh painting that we've used as inspiration for our art this week. When I recently saw this free lesson download at The Art of Education, I couldn't resist doing our own version.

Looking at the real deal on WikiPaintings, we especially made note of the dark detailed foreground and Van Gogh's swirling interpretation of the wind (or space) around the stars.We created our sky by drawing lots of movement lines with white and blue Crayola Color Sticks on purple paper. We then drew our foreground on a 3/4 sheet of black contruction paper and then traced over all our lines with either silver or gold sharpies before cutting it out and gluing it onto the purple sheet.

Students had complete freedom in creating their foregrounds, within the Australian theme. They produced a wide variety of settings, including bush scenes with gum trees and koalas, Ularu, the Sydney Opera House and (closer to home) the Mooloolaba Spit with it's lighthouse and water tower.

The final step was to create our stars using eraser-tipped pencils dipped into red, yellow, white and orange paint to create a variety of star-like patterns. The challenge was to try to make each star different!

This is a great lesson to illustrate the difference between copying other's art, and using it as an inspiration.

The kids produced some fabulous work on this project, I just love them!!

Paddy Art #3 Tulips

Although I have some wonderful group projects planned, at the moment I'm going with individual pieces that can be completed within the one session. My darling group of elderly people with dementia really need that instant reward for their efforts!

This week I found a lovely picture of tulips on line. It's a free printable but unfortunately my watercolour paper is too thick for the printer so I redrew it several times and pre-painted the backgrounds in blues and purples. This provided my group with section (of tulips) that they can paint, and an artistic choice while removing the confusion of too many lines and blank spaces.

Go here to learn more about how I have come to modify some of my teaching beliefs and practices (in particular the use of colouring sheets) when creating art with people with advanced dementia.

We started with a palette of red, yellow and fluorescent pink, then I later added two shades of green to the colour choices. I provided the green later to avoid mixing muddy colours.

They seem to prefer the painting process over colouring (see our Goldfish wax crayon resist project last week). I think this is because they get an instant result, and strong vibrant colours.

We had so many great successes with this painting! Although many residents (sadly including my lovely mum) are simply unable to focus for more than a moment or two, there are several who, like Rae, June and Rose, spent a whole hour painting, and only stopped because it was lunch time! It is so rewarding to see their satisfaction and pride in their art work.... :)

Go here to see all my Paddy Projects!!

Paddy Art Classes - #1 Butterflies

My lovely lovely Mum is a resident at Pademelon, a secure residence for people with dementia.

Mum is now non-verbal. She has lost nearly all her ability to care for herself, and also much of her interest in just about everything - she walks continuously and needs full assistance for every aspect of her personal care, from the time she wakes up to the moment she goes to bed.

Despite all this, she still seems to recognise us (judging by the look on her face when I walk through the door) and is still quick with a laugh. She loves to dance and gives kisses freely - she is a joy to be with, and she still is, as she always has been, my mum!

I've recently started doing art 'classes' with the residents at Paddy ....
For our first project I had no time at all for preparation, so I 'borrowed' it almost exactly from Kathy Barbro over at Art Projects for Kids. I saw the idea on her post Butterflies from Central Asia which featured a mural by one of Kathy's followers, using one of her butterfly designs.

We completed our butterflies as two 45cm square canvases.

I provided the residents with a palette of warm colours, a blank canvas (divided roughly into quarters with a red painted line, with an overlaid square in the middle) and a large black marker drawing of a butterfly. The residents then painted them.... bearing in mind that these are people with varying degrees of advanced dementia, I had many variations in degrees of participation - from the higher functioning ladies who sat for an hour meticulously painting the butterfly, to the people with lower functioning who painted a few brush strokes as they walked past, or contributed a brush-stroke with me guiding their hand. I also needed to give lots of encouragement and suggestions for "a bit of yellow here do you think?"

We didn't need to worry about staying in the lines, as they were going to be cut out and outlined heavily with black glue.

We repeated the process the following week with a cool palette.

There was great hilarity when we spattered the backgrounds with yellow paint!

When both were complete I cut out the butterflies and glued them onto the backgrounds with Mod Podge, outlined them with black glue, then sealed everything with another coat of Mod Podge.
(Next time I will try using Elmers Rubber Cement as the glue, as the butterflies have warped a little bit.)

They are so proud of their accomplishment on this project, and I am so proud of them. Some of the 'walkers' touch them as they go past (the black glue makes a raised line that feels good). Rose and June want them to be hanging in their rooms, but we have them in the lounge for everyone to enjoy :)

More Australian Native Animals

Kangaroo - Charlotte K (Year 2)

Emu - Tia C (Year 2)

Turtle - Mayah K (Year 5)

Platypus - Estelle T-F (Year 3)

Koala - Murray L (Year 2)

Cassowary - Oscar N (Year 2)

Platypus - Makedde C

Koala - Toby G (Year 2)

Echidna - Jay PO (Year 2)

Wallaby - Kyla R (Year 4)

More Australian native animals, drawn and painted using some traditional Australian Aboriginal designs and techniques. Click here to view details of how we created these great pictures.

Australian Native Animals

Emu

Turtle - April K (Year 5)

Turtle - Jakobe C (Prep)

My Hand - Abby K (Year 4)

Crocodile - Kiefer C (Year 2)

Platypus - Sascha B (Prep)

Crocodile - Kira R  (Year 5)

Kangaroo - Alex A S (Year 2)

Platypus - Bronte B (Year 3)

Indigenous Australian art is rich in tradition, texture and earth colors. Often depicting stories from the Dreamtime, the art style incorporates the use of many media and techniques including dot and x-ray painting, rock and bark painting, sculpture and fibre arts to name just a few.
This week we've explored just a small part of this rich culture, looking at examples of paintings of native Australian animals by indigenous artists using the dot and x-ray techniques.

After discussing color, texture and pattern, we used white color sticks on colored paper to first draw our animals in outline. We then thought about where we thought the internal organs of the animal might be, and drew them in with lots of pattern. It is important that our lines are drawn very firmly.
From there we considered the background patterns of our pictures, using flowing lines to divide the background into interesting shapes.

We then added more color in linear pattern or  solid blocks of color. I didn't restrict the student's use of color at all, but did talk to them about the effectiveness of a limited color palette.

Finally, students used the ends of paint brushes dipped in white acrylic to carefully apply dots of white along the major lines of their backgrounds and, if they chose, around their animals.

The Great Wave

Arabella Y (Year 3)

Candice N (Year 6)

Chan N (Year 2)

Cynthia N (Prep)

Emily W (Year 5)

Isobelle H (Year 1)

Jake E (Prep)

Jasmin T (Year 5)

Landen S (Prep)

Mitchell O (Year 3)

Sahana H (Year 3)

Zoe K (Year 2)

I saw this idea (thanks Carly Dellger on Artsonia) and thought it would encourage the students to think about different ways of applying their paint. We started with a simple rendition of a large wave, and added details – some kids followed the original and added japanese fishing boats with a mountain in the background, others made cities being engulfed by tsunamis, and other added surfboard riders and sea creatures… All outlines were traced over with black marker and color added with watercolor wash or acrylic. The fun part was using straws to blow watered white acrylic across the tops of the waves to create a foam effect.

Toucan

Estelle T-F (Year 3)

Aanya C (Year 3)

Abby K (Year 4)

Harry H-D (Year 6)

Harry O (Year 3)

Kate P (Year 4)

Olivia D.W (Year 3)

Taleeha B (Year 2)

Sahana H (Year 3)

Alexander K (Year 2)

Sascha B (Prep)

Zoe O (Year 6)

After looking at pictures of tropical birds, especially toucans, we used black oil pastel and acrylic paint to create our pictures.