Rock Pool Collages

Talia D

Living on the coast, all the kids are familiar with rock pools, and the fun of peering into the nooks and crannies to look for the creatures that might live there. Of course you have to be a bit careful about touching unfamiliar creatures as there are a few that can be dangerous (even deadly!), like the blue ringed octopus and the cone fish. Although you don't see these often around our area, the kids are still all very aware of the possible dangers! A safe and fun alternative is the rock pool display at Underwater World, where the assistants will help you to pick up and touch many of the animals safely :)

Our rock pools are created with brown paper rocks (with sponged paint for texture) and a variety of rock-pool creatures drawn with black marker on polka dot stickers, cut out and collaged in layers onto coloured paper.

Celebrating Spring! ~ Paddy Art #6

Folk Art Flower Collage - Watercolour paper painted by residents with dripped and squirted paint and printed with bubble-wrap. I cut out flower shapes and vases, which the residents assembled (with varying degrees of assistance) to create their masterpieces. We finished them off with some glitter glue. Every one turned out beautifully!

Watercolour Flowers - Still celebrating Spring! I drew some flowers free-style on watercolour paper. Residents painted with food dye and then sprinkled with salt. They loved the colours, and marvelled over the salt effect.

While we're enjoying the school holidays, life in Pademelon continues unchanged for the residents. One of the highlights each week is our Friday Art Group - a chance to create together, a chance to admire our own and each other's creations, a chance to share a laugh :)

Even though I carefully choose no-fail projects, and for many there is a great deal of assistance every step of the way, there is always a sense of wonder and magic when we hold up the finished pictures. The heart felt comments of 'I didn't think I could do that!' and 'It's beautiful!' make the effort so worth while!

Folksy Birds - Paddy Art #4

Sally (our Pademelon Diversional Therapist) had a lot of old stamps and suggested that we might be able to use them in our art group.

I drew up some basic shape folk-art style birds on a couple of canvases, and the residents collaged the stamps all over them. This was actually quite a good sensory activity as they ended up with glue on their fingers which they rolled off by rubbing their fingers together.

Then it was a simple job for me to then paint in the background with off-white (although it appears quite grey in these photos), and add a black-glue outline to make the images 'pop'. I love the white-on-white texture that the painted-over stamps create around the edges of the birds.

I'm quite enjoying our collaborative projects - everyone can be involved to some extent... Some are very hands on, while for others it's an opportunity to sit around the table and enjoy the social atmosphere. Either way it's a way to create a moment of fun and meaningful interaction (and every one of those is so precious!)

Thanks Moonflitter Musing and Eva Crawford on Redbubble for your creations that inspired this project :)

Click here to see more of the art we have been creating at Pademelon (an aged care facility for people with dementia).

Rousseau-ish Mixed Media Jungles

We looked at Rousseau's 'Surprised! (Tropical Storm with a Tiger)'. We especially enjoyed the way the artist makes us feel as though we are inside the picture, with the wild jungle all around us, and decided that one of the ways he has achieved this is by making the plants large and overlapping so that we catch only glimpses of the sky through the foliage, and they extend out beyond the frame of the picture like a photograph.

The kids were also interested to find out that Rousseau didn't actually travel to the exotic places he painted, instead adapting and enlarging his favourite plants and flowers to make them appear like a luxuriant tropical scene.

We used torn paper mounted on a black mount and watercolor resist  to create our jungle backgrounds, pulling our plants up to the top of the page and beyond so that they tower over our heads and draw us into the picture. We filled our jungles with overlapping grasses and plants, vines and exotic flowers and animals.

While our backgrounds dried, we drew jungle animals onto brown paper with black markers, and we filled the spaces around our animals with leaf shapes before adding more colour with wax crayons.

Finally, we collaged the animals and leaves onto our backgrounds, overlapping into the torn border to bring them forward in the page and add depth to our compositions.

Our finished pictures are fabulous - very Rousseau-ish indeed!

Outback Landscape

Shaun H

We're still on our Christmas (Summer) holiday break here in Australia, but here is one of the projects my kids did with Lee (my wonderful friend who taught the classes for me while I was away at the end of last year.)

The kids created a collage of torn newspaper trees on a black background, and finished them with oil pastel. They have a real Fred Williams feel to them :)

These are particularly relevant to us now, while we are experiencing unusually extreme temperatures of up to 40C (even as high as 45C out at Birdsville earlier in the month!). For those of you who work in Fahrenheit I think that's 104 - 113. Very very hot!

Needless to say the fire danger is high, and bush fires have been ravaging many parts of the country.

Whale Watching!

Humpback Whale Collage

Ava C (Year 3)

Ethan B (Year 2)

Faith H (Year 1)

Ivy Y (Year 1)

James A (Year 6)

James R-S (Year 5)

Kanan P (Year 4)

Maddy W (Year 4)

Matilda B (Year 2)

Mayah K (Year 5)

Molly B (Prep)

Sage B (Year 2)

Lilly H (Year 4)

It’s the end of winter here in sunny Queensland (Australia), and the humpback whales are on their annual migration north along the Queensland coastline. If you’re very lucky you can occasionally catch a far-off glimpse of what might possibly be a whale spout on the horizon from my balcony, but it’s a much better idea to hop on a whale-watching day cruise where the ‘friendlies’ will often come up close and personal. It’s truly quite a memorable experience!

I thought it was an appropriate time of the year to do a whale picture, so we looked at photographic examples before drawing a breaching humpback (guided lesson) which we then outlined with black marker and finished with black watercolor. We made a collage of torn painted paper for the background.

Of course some kids decided they’d rather do sharks (which are also common in our waters), octopuses and even mermaids – hey I’m happy they are so creative! Great job everyone!