Cotton Woolly Spring Lambs

Adorable spring lambs were the inspiration for my workshop today. I showed my students a photograph of a lamb and pointed out the pink in its ears and around its eyes.
The first step was to use a cardboard template to draw and cut out 2 ears. Most of my students, who are all adults with learning difficulties, are able to draw around a stencil if someone holds it still for them. Others can hold the template still while their carer draws around it. I then gave out pink paint and asked everyone to paint inside the ears, keeping a white border. I also asked them to paint 2 pink eyes onto a large paper plate to which we added black painted centres. Now it was time for the fun to start! Students spread glue onto the plate and stuck down cotton wool balls, avoiding the eyes. I demonstrated how to tease out the cotton wool to make it fluffier. One of my students is completely blind and she really enjoyed the texture of the cotton wool. Everyone made a great job of this part of the task. Once they were done, I gave out pre-cut black paper noses and pink felt tongues and bits of wool to make a mouth. The final step was to glue on the ears. Making the ears point out to the sides rather than upwards makes it look like a lamb rather than a rabbit!

St David's Day Rabbits and Daffodils

It is good luck to say 'white rabbits' three times when you wake up on the 1st of March (I've no idea why!) and daffodils are the national flower of Wales, so I decided that this project would be a good one for St David's Day.
I pre-cut some rabbit silhouettes (students could choose between pink and brown) and demonstrated how to use a dry brush technique to paint fur onto the rabbits. After putting them aside to dry, we used petal-shaped sponges and yellow paint to print daffodil petals onto a large sheet of pale green paper. Most of my students are very familiar with sponge printing now and have really got the hang of it. I passed around green pastels so that they could draw some stalks and leaves. The next step was to add details to the rabbits. We just used marker pens for this which worked fine on top of the dry paint. After glueing the rabbit onto the centre of the picture, we created 3D daffodil trumpets by sticking on little paper cup cases. By an amazing stroke of luck I found miniature paper cases which were already coloured yellow. I think the project would also look nice with white paper cases.

Fox in the Snow

This workshop was inspired by a fox collage by Paige Balcer. You can see it here: http://lookaway.typepad.com/look_away/2009/02/woodland-creatures.html

We began by blowing white paint through straws to create snowy trees. I then provided students with pre-cut fox heads, bodies and tails which they covered in torn tissue. I touched some of them up with a little orange paint (just to help them along a little bit) before they added eyes and noses. I think the results are really sweet!

Paper Penguins

This project was a combination of ideas from Adventures of an Art Teacher and Mrs Picasso's Art Room. I began by getting the students to paint the background using blue paint at the top and white at the bottom and blending the two in the middle. All the students managed this really well. They then followed my instructions to make the large penguin out of black and white paper. I pre-cut the paper to the different sizes needed.They all required plenty of help from their carers but were able to draw the shapes with assistance and they are all great at gluing things down! The second, smaller penguin was drawn onto white paper using pens or pastels and then cut out and stuck down. They created the snowflakes by tapping a brush loaded with watery white paint. This is less messy than spraying or flicking paint and was a new technique for the students.

Painted Paper Cats

Our painted paper came into use again for this workshop. I created simple two-piece templates for the cats which students embellished with cut-out paper eyes and wool whiskers. I wanted to keep the background simple so that the cats would stand out so we just used a contrasting colour of paper for the wall.

Painted Paper Tree Frogs

This was a two part workshop which began with making painted paper according to the very useful instructions on Deep Space Sparkle. It's unusual for my students to spend a whole hour working with paint and they loved it. The resulting painted paper was really lovely.
The next session involved using templates to make the tree frogs. There was quite a lot of cutting out required which not many of my students are able to do but they were able to choose colours, draw round the templates (or hold them down while their carer drew round them), apply glue to the pieces and stick them down.
We made a nice background for the frog using tissue paper prints. It took a bit of experimenting before I found some non-colourfast tissue paper, but once I did, it was just a case of the students creating a very rough leaf-shape, sticking it down with water, then peeling the tissue off to reveal a delicate and beautiful printed leaf.
We finished the project by using strips of brown paper to make a frame.

Leaping Fish Watercolour and Torn Paper

This project was inspired by this artwork by Deborah Angyo Gorman:

Students began by using a wet-on-wet watercolour technique to create a background. I then gave them all a drawing of a fish which I had prepared in advance. They (or their carers) cut it out and they then began covering it in torn foil paper.
This activity was nice and simple to explain and the students became very absorbed in gluing down the paper.
Only drawback is that the reflective foil makes the pictures hard to photograph!