Coral Reef Fish ~ Version 2

Here's another version of our Great Barrier Reef pictures inspired by Sandra Silberzweig. This time we used fluoro oil pastels and fluoro paints to create a water-colour resist coral reef background. We finished with fish cut from black paper, cutting out shapes inside the fish to allow the background colour and pattern to show through.

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!

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!

Paddy Art Class #2 Goldfish

We recently installed a lovely large fish tank in Pademelon, full of beautiful goldfish. The residents love to watch the flashes of gold as the fish swim in and out of the foliage and rock decorations.
(Pademelon is the secure dementia facility where my Mum is a resident.)

Since starting the art activities at Paddy, I've been steadily learning more about the residents - their capacity to stay on task, and to listen to, comprehend and follow instructions is severely limited. As the dementia progresses, these capabilities diminish further.

I am learning to modify my expectations, not of the residents artistic endeavours, but my own goals for each session ....

When I work with children I would not dream of touching their work without their consent, and then only briefly to demonstrate a technique or to help them understand an elusive concept. When I am with the Paddy residents we often work on their piece together, even with me guiding their hand.

As an art teacher, I have quite strong views about 'colouring in' sheets. I rarely use templates, and then only when the goal of the lesson is quite separate from the basic drawing and our time is so limited that I have little choice. But if presented with a blank page, my elderly dementia sufferers are lost, even if I place a pencil in their hand.

With my art students, the lesson is all about developing new skills and building on previous learning. At Paddy it is about maintaining skills that are fast disappearing. What is important from their sessions is not necessarily the end result (a completed work of art that is all their own work), but rather the social process of being there - enjoying the feel of the materials, marvelling at the lovely colour combinations, having a laugh, and feeling good about what they have accomplished.

It has taken me some time to get my head around this, and to embrace the colouring sheet concept for Paddy.

For our goldfish pictures I made a colouring-sheet using Word and Clip Art. This gave my group a starting point. I gave them wax crayons to add colour (bright colours only!) Most had had enough after just a few moments, but 2 or 3 sat colouring for nearly a whole hour (June, whose picture is featured above, is one of these. She carefully selected the colours she wanted to use and sat colouring for the fish and leaves for ages!). I had planned for them to add patterns to the table cloth and perhaps a wallpaper pattern, but no-one was able to do more than colour the shapes they had on the paper. (They just do not have the fine motor skills and ability to apply pressure to get the colour strong enough.)

The real pleasure came from watching the wash of colour go on, and the transformation of their pictures with the crayon glowing in the blue wash field. There were lots of 'oohs' and 'aahs' then, so I counted this activity a great success!

More Glasshouse Mountains in Wax Resist

Estelle T-F (Year 3)

Ethan B (Year 2)

Mackenzie R (Year 2)

Lucinda T (Year 5)

Emily H (Year 3)

Jasmin T (Year 5)

Makedde C (Year 1)

Charlotte K (Year 2)

Fatima M (Year 2)

Jake E (Prep)

Kai M (Prep)

Lily L (Year 2)

Millie A (Year 2)

Zoe K (Year 2)

Emma G (Year 4)

Harry O (Year 3)

Kate P (Year 4)

Seanea I (Year 6)

Thomas B (Year 4)

Emily W (Year 2)

Wax resist renditions of the Glasshouse Mountains on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, by my talented students! I think this lesson is improving with each group :) Visit my previous post for details about how we created our pictures, and to read about the aboriginal legend of Tibrogargan, Beerwah and Coonowrin.

Glasshouse Mountains Wax Resist 2

Mitchell O (Year 3)

Ava C (Year 3)

Bronte B (Year 3)

Lucy S (Year 3)

Kane B (Year 2)

Olivia D.W (Year 3)

Ruby D.W (Year 1)

More amazing pictures of the Glasshouse Mountains on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, by my talented Tuesday Group students! Today I placed much more emphasis on the use of curved lines to create depth and to draw the eye around the composition :) Visit my previous post for details about how we created our pictures, and to read about the aboriginal legend of Tibrogargan, Beerwah and Coonowrin.

Glasshouse Mountains

Charlotte Y (Year 5)

Bella Y (Year 3)

Jessica F (Year 6)

Sahana H (Year 3)

Benny K (Year 1)

Dylan W (Year 2)

Lucy R (Prep)

The Glasshouse Mountains are the remains of volcanoes, the central core or plug exposed through gradual weathering, rising from the coastal plain of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. They were formed more than 26 million years ago. There are 11 mountains in the group, the largest three being Tibrogargan, Mount Beerwah and Mount Coonowrin (often referred to as Crookneck). They have great cultural significance to their traditional owners, the Gubbi Gubbi people.

"In aboriginal legend, the mountains are members of a family with the father being Mount Tibrogargan and the mother Mount Beerwah. All of the other mountains are sons and daughters with the eldest being Mount Coonowrin.

Tibrogargan, the father, observed that the sea was rising and asked that Coonowrin the eldest son help their pregnant mother to safety. Terrified, Coonowrin instead fled. Infuriated by his sons cowardice Tibrogargan pursued him and struck him so hard that he dislocated Coonowrin's neck.

Once the danger passed Coonowrin felt tremendous guilt for his actions and asked his father, brothers and sisters for forgiveness but all wept with shame. This is said to explain the many small streams that flow through the area. Tibrogargan turned his back on Coonowrin and gazed out to sea refusing to look at his son Coonowrin who continues to hang his head in shame and weep." (Wikipedia)

This lesson is inspired by the painting 'Glasshouse Mtns, Sunshine Coast' by local Caloundra artist Damien Lange. I love the composition of his painting, with the mountains sitting on a curved horizon line and river flowing through the foreground. With Damien's kind permission I used his painting to discuss composition, line and movement with the students.

Our pictures are created with a wax resist using crayons and dye. We used black wax crayon to sketch in the horizon lines and mountains, then colors to add linear pattern to the mountains, river and foreground. I stressed to the kids that this was not a coloring-in picture, and discussed the use of repetitive line and pattern to create movement and interest. They were to use at least 2 colors in each area.

The pictures were then finished with a wash of sapphire blue fabric dye (thanks to Gretchen over at Gretchen's Art Blog for this idea - fabric dye gives lovely vibrant color and is a good cost-effective alternative to ink or liquid watercolor for resist work.)

I'm really impressed with what the kids have achieved with this picture! I especially love that we have been able to combine discovering some of the traditional lore of our local indigenous people the Gubbi Gubbi, with appreciation of the work of one of our local artists (thanks so much Damien!)

'Glasshouse Mtns - Sunshine Coast' - Damien Lange

More Dragonflies & Various Other Insects!

Alexander K (Year 2)

Sophie T-F (Prep)

Teddy H (Year 2)

Yule A (Year 4)

Ella H (Year 2)

Hannah Y (Year 2)

Kate P (Year 4)

Lily B (Year 4)

More dragonflies - and various other insects! Click here for details about how we created these marvelous pictures :)

Dragonflies & Various Other Insects!

Candice N (Year 6)

Faith H (Year 1)

Kira M (Year 2)

Libby E (Year 2)

Emily W (Year 5)

Liam R (Year 3)

Maddison P (Year 2)

Chan N (Year 2)

Charliz C (Year 2)

Jordan O (Year 3)

Kane B (Year 2)

Saturday (September 1) was the first day of Spring, so it seemed a good time to create a light and lively dragonfly picture. Looking at pictorial examples we observed the basic structure of the insect body - the three main sections of head, thorax and abdomen, and how the legs and wings attach to the thorax. Then we looked at how simply a basic insect template can easily be changed into various types of insects simply by altering the shape and size of the wings and body component parts.

We created the background of our pictures with leaf texture rubbings of flourescent oil pastel and watercolor wash . While our backgrounds dried we drew our insects, starting with the 3 basic body sections and then altering them to create insects of our choice - many chose dragonflies or butterflies, while others went for bees, preying mantis and a variety of other insects. We traced over all lines of the insects with sharpies and finer permanent black markers before adding color with the flourescent oil pastels, then cutting them out and gluing onto our backgrounds.

Our pictures are shimmering with a lovely iridescence, and are very Spring-ish!