"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.

Articulated Scarecrows ...

Our Scarecrows this week are in anticipation of the Mary Valley Scarecrow Festival which starts this weekend - it makes a lovely family afternoon drive into the Hinterland to see the clever and often humorous creations!

Created with cardboard and wax crayons, these are really lots of fun.

We started with a basic body template, to which the kids added their scarecrow's head, hands, feet, tatty clothing etc.

I drew the template in pencil before scanning it so that the resulting line is a light grey colour - subtle enough for the kids to change easily as they add their scarecrow's features.
We added strong colour with wax crayon, cut them out and pinned them together at the joints.

The final step is to glue them to the background, applying glue only to the head and torso so that the arms and legs can still move freely.

How Much Can A Koala Bear?

After a guided drawing lesson to draw our koala, we used water colour pencil, being sure to use short broken lines drawn in the same direction that the fur grows, to create a furry look for our koalas.  We were also careful to leave patches of white fur on the chest and ears to create contrast.

Students had a completely free range with colour - some went with natural greys, browns and black while others really lashed out! Thanks to Emma and Estelle for sharing their very individual Koala pictures here!

We used the same broken line technique to apply colour to the background, referring to the colour wheel to select colours that we knew would blend well together. Finally we brushed over all our line work with fine brushes and clean water. We were careful to apply our brushwork in the same direction that we drew our lines to dissolve the colour into watercolour while retaining the line work which gives the koala his furry appearance.

Rainbow Lorikeets

We have uninvited but welcome guests who visit us each morning around breakfast time.... They're a bit noisy, and they can be a bit messy (!) but they don't overstay their welcome, and I love seeing them :)

We've created Rainbow Lorikeet pictures using neon oil pastels on black paper. After a bit of experimenting and practice we start by drawing our birds in black oil pastel on black paper, then filling them in with white oil pastel, trying not to go over the black lines. We then create a border design with white lines, going over them to make sure they are firmly drawn.

The best part is adding colour with the neon pastels - they really have the 'wow' factor, and the kids love using them!

One of my visitors this morning

Not-So-Grumpy Cats - Fired and Finished!

These cute sculptures started out as Grumpy Cats, but nearly everyone took off the frown because they're so much nicer this way :)

Bisque fired and painted with acrylic house paint - we love the bright colours!!


Putting on the finishing touches....

Extended Drawings

I've done variations of extended drawing a few of times in years past with my classes, and when I saw this post by the ever-wonderful Kathy at Art Projects for Kids, I couldn't resist doing it again. What interested me was the way Kathy has used this activity to encourage students to work with careful detail by showing them 'Super Speedy' and 'Super Detailed' examples of the same sheet.

When I showed similar examples to my classes the contrast between the two drew lots of 'oohs and aahs' from the kids, and they were really inspired to work with focus. I think I can safely say that you could have heard a pin drop as they worked on their own pictures!

Kathy has created free templates for her extended drawing project, but I only had a half lesson available, so I needed a sheet with fewer photos. I followed the link I found in the comments of Kathy's post to these great animal photographs on white backgrounds - it certainly saved a lot of time hunting through magazines, or editing photos myself!

We used plain old black biro to create detailed environments for the animals, and the results are fantastic. It really gave those students who love precise, detailed work an opportunity to shine!!

Fun At the Ekka!

Last weekend was the final weekend of the Exhibition (aka the Ekka), the annual agricultural show that has become so much more .... wild rides, show bags, animal exhibitions, strawberry ice-creams, sideshow alley, fairy floss and dag-wood dogs, eating too much junk food and getting sick after a stomach clenching rollercoaster ride, spectacular fireworks etc etc

For some it is an amazing yearly fun fair, for others something to be avoided at all costs - whatever your opinion it has all the elements that kids love, especially the wild rides!

We started with a self portrait in black and white using thick and thin black markers. I encouraged the kids to think about facial expression to convey feeling, and to use a variety of line to create texture. Another topic of discussion was the use of diagonal line to convey liveliness and movement. I also encouraged them to draw directly with black markers, and I am really enjoying the spontaneous line work of their drawings, and the expressions on the faces!

We then used metallic markers to create a colourful background on black paper (the photos here do not do justice to the colours of the metallic markers!) We were especially trying to convey a sense of excitement and fun.

This has been one of our most effective pictures this term - I love the contrast of the black & white portraits against the explosively colourful backgrounds!