Mysterious Mansions in Silhouette

We drew our mansions with black permanent marker on paper spritzed with watercolour. We used basic shapes (squares and rectangles) for the body of the house, which many chose to bend and distort into interesting positions. Then we added different shaped roofs and other architectural features such as widow's walks, differently shaped windows, doors, verandahs and chimneys.

Although this is NOT a 'Halloween' picture, some of the children chose to include ghosts, bats and other 'spooky' images into their drawings.

The walls of our buildings were then coloured with solid black marker to create a silhouette, and we finished with yellow colour-stick in the windows for extra atmosphere and glow.

I love the contrast between the bright watercolour, detailed line drawing and the solid black of the silhouetted buildings. This project was heavily influenced by a great lesson I saw over at Mrs Picasso's Art Room - we had lots of fun with it :)

Silberzweig Inspired Reef Fish

Tasman S

Living on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, we have a number of coral reef islands on our door step. When I saw 'Sapphire Coral Fish' by Canadian artist Sandra Silberzweig, I knew that this would be a beautiful inspiration for a reef-themed picture. We started with a discussion about Sandra's use of bright colours, black outlines and pattern.

Molly B

Luka M

We created our own Reef Fish pictures using cut paper, fluoro paint and oil pastel. This project was such a lot of fun to do, and they are all beautiful! 

'Sapphire Coral Fish' - Sandra Silberzweig.

Clay Snowmen ....

Pottery - Our favourite lesson of the term! This week we've made clay snowmen. A bit early for Christmas, but by the time I get them dried, fired and back to the schools for painting it will be close to the end of term.

We started with a pinch pot base, then joined on a solid head and added coil scarf, hat and nose before using a skewer to add facial features.

The last step was the brain surgery, necessary to allow air into the solid head for even drying.

A great project for practising our score and slip joining.... it will be interesting to see how many come back from the firing with all the bits still in place :)

Smurfs 'n' Snails.... Viewfinder Movies in Soft Pastel

We used viewfinders to select individual compositions from promotional photos of the Smurfs 2 and Turbo movies, and finished with soft pastel.The tricky part was enlarging the viewfinder selection to fill our whole page! Thanks Ruby and Oscar for sharing your work :)

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!

"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.