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 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!

Free-Form Pots

Lachlan F

For our pottery piece this term we made free-form pots.

We started with slabs of clay, which we decorated by pressing on leaves and string to create a surface pattern. We then prepared small balls of clay to create the feet, before moulding the slabs over our knees (a technique that has been around forever, and is always such fun!) We attached the feet to the base while the slabs where still draped over our knees. The resulting pots have a great oriental-style look.

After bisque firing we spray painted the pots with a base coat of indian red - a rich metallic red-brown colour that is the perfect base for the bright colours we dribbled by wiping our loaded brushes against the rim of the pot. I advised the kids to choose 2 colours - I love the mandarine orange and ocean blue combination  that Lachlan has selected in the example above. The dribbles run unpredictably, and seem to fit well with the free-form shape of our pots.

In the time we had at the end of the pot-painting session, we made these cute snake finger puppets :)
I photocopied the templates from Mr Printables - great for cutting skills practice and lots of fun for a half lesson fill-in!

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 :)

Soft Pastel Animals (in the style of Franz Marc)

'Kiwi' by Louise M

Franz Marc is probably my favourite artist, and I was absolutely thrilled to see examples of his work 'in the flesh' when we were in Madrid (as part of the temporary Gauguin exhibit at the Thyssen).

This week our creations are in the style of Franz Marc, featuring our favourite animals in a natural setting, and  using colour to express emotion. We've chosen to use soft pastel, for it's bright rich colour, and because we love getting our hands dirty!

After looking at various examples we drew our animals with black marker, then added colour with soft pastel. Although it doesn't show up well in these photos, we used at least two colours in each area, referring to our colour wheel to decide which colours would blend well together.

We ended up with a great variety of animals - from dinosaurs to horses, giraffes and dolphins!

Peacocks for Mother's Day

With Mother's Day just around the corner, we decided to create special Peacock pictures for our Mums.

After guided drawing, we used oil pastel on black paper, with free choice of colour and being sure to include lots of layering and blending.

Before adding colour we used a solid undercoat of white pastel on our peacock bodies and the 'eyes' in their tails to make the colour bright and bring those key elements of our designs forward.

Our peacocks are just fabulous - I know they'll be treasured by our Mums for many years to come!

This lesson was inspired by collections I found on Artsonia here and here, and this beautiful photograph found on Pinterest.