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!

A Sunday Drive ....

We began by looking at some paintings by folk artist Jeanette Carlstrom, including 'House on the Hills' and (my favourite) 'Cats on a Stroll', especially noticing her use of colour, pattern and repetition. We also had some discussion about what we might see on a Sunday drive around our local area - including The Big Pineapple, strawberry farms, the ocean from the coast road (including dolphins, whales etc as this is whale migration season), Australia Zoo, the Ettamogah Pub and a host of other local landmarks.

We began by building a series of layered hills from the bottom of the page up. Over the hills we drew a winding road through the countryside that we filled with repetitive patterns.

After retracing all our lines in black marker we coloured all the solid shapes with wax crayon before painting the entire picture with watercolour.

I found it easiest with this particular project to set up a paint station for each colour, with the kids moving freely from colour to colour. This keeps the colours clean and makes cleaning up a breeze!

Thanks Amy at Artful Artsy Amy for her inspirational lesson idea :)

This painting was a lot of fun, and the students all did a fabulous job!