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.

Bonfire Night Collage

Remember, Remember the 5th of November!
In the UK we celebrate a foiled plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605 with fireworks and bonfires on the 5th of November.
My students used paint and collage to capture the colour and glitter of the event.
We used some lovely deep blue card for the background. The fireworks were made by blowing watered down paint with straws and also by swirling the straw around in the paint to make patterns. The bonfires started with an oil pastel drawing to which they added scraps of tissue paper and sparkly sweet papers. The final touch was some glitter glue which was spread or dotted here and there on the fire.

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!

Bird's Nest Collage

I got the idea for this lovely project from the Adventures of an Art Teacher blog.
I had not used the technique of blowing thinned paint through a straw with my class of disabled adults before and was sure that they would find it fun. After handing out the paper I went round each student individually and spooned a teaspoon of paint onto their paper and instucted them to blow (not suck!) the paint towards me. Not all of them managed to blow through the straw successfully but tilting the paper to let the paint run also worked well, as did using the straw like a brush to move the paint around. All of their 'tree branches' looked fantastic and very individual. I then showed them how to draw a few leaves at the end of the twigs they had just created. The paint was of course still very wet and I asked them to try not to dip the pastels into the wet paint. When I cleaned up at the end only one pastel had brown paint on it! Most of them needed help from their carers to draw and cut out some egg shapes from patterned paper. I asked them to place the eggs on the picture and let me check it before glueing them down as there was a temptation to spread the eggs all over the branch istead of grouping them together. I then handed out some shredded newspaper and pieces of raffia which they glued down to make the nest. The final step was to use a blue pastel to give the suggestion of a blue sky. I thought that we might have time to draw a bird sitting on the branch too but the activity took up the whole hour quite easily.

City at Night Collage

For this workshop I tried my own version of the City at Night art lesson I've seen on http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/  and other blogs. I decided to start with a circular background for a change and got the students to draw round a record to create a perfectly-sized circle (try doing that with an MP3 - ha!) which they cut out with help from their carers. Next, I showed them how to use pastels to make a moon and lots of stars. I had pre-cut loads of rectangles in different sizes and colours so they could choose which ones they wanted for their skyscrapers and glue them on at the base of the circle. I had also cut out lots of bright yellow squares for the windows. I explained that they didn't have to cover the whole skyscraper with windows because not everyone would have their lights on! They all seemed to understand and enjoyed positioning the windows. As a finishing touch I gave them a cut-out of a cartoon yellow taxi (much to the delight of one car-obsessed student) which they could glue on to the bottom.

Collage Silhouettes

I spotted this project on Mrs Jahnig's Art Space and decided to give it a whirl with my art group.
As soon as students started to arrive for class I began sitting them one by one in the 'hot seat' so that I could draw their profiles. I just used a lamp to create the shadows on large pieces of paper. It was a real challenge to get my students to sit still and not turn around to see what I was drawing! I had to be very fast and some of the profiles were a little rough. One of my students did not manage to sit still at all and so I drew the profile of his carer instead. After they all had their profiles drawn, I asked the carers to cut them out (one student was able to cut out his own) and then they began flicking through magazines and choosing images that appealed to them. I told them that I wanted them to create a picture of what goes on inside their heads and so they should choose pictures of things that they like or like doing. I'm not sure if they all understood the concept but they were all very definite about what images they did and didn't like. Few students could cut out the pictures themselves but they could all help apply the glue and stick them on to their profiles. I always like to use glitter glue for a bit of glamour!
The profiles were quite big and most students didn't have time to completely cover them in pictures during the hour-long class. It would also have been nice to mount the finished profiles on to black paper to frame them.
It was really interesting to see which pictures the students chose and I felt like I knew them better by the end of the class.

Collagraph Prints

I love printmaking and thought that collagraphs would be a good technique to try with my regular group of adults with learning difficulties.
We began by drawing an oval face-shape on card and cutting it out. In most cases the carer had to do the cutting. In my class all of the participants have a carer with them.
After they cut out the face shape, they drew simple eyes, noses and mouths on card, cut them out and glued them on to the face. Make sure you use decent paper glue and leave time for it to dry or else you will have eyes and noses sticking to the ink roller later!
I prepared a printing table with two colours of ink and got the participants to come up one at a time to make their print. If you have a large class it's a good idea to provide an extra activity for them to do while they are waiting. I usually have around 6 in my class but on the day of this activity I had 12 which meant there was a lot more waiting around than I would have liked.
I got them to ink up the face in one colour, place it face down on the paper and then go over the top with another colour which gives quite a nice 'arty' effect. All the participants really enjoyed using the ink roller. Even those who have trouble controlling a paintbrush seemed to find it really easy which made me think that printmaking is definitely a good activity for this group.
They all got a kick out of peeling off the card to reveal the face underneath even if some of the faces turned out a little scary looking!

Waterfront Houses

I'd seen various versions of this project on art blogs and decided I could simplify it for my group of adults with learning difficulties.
I prepared for this class by using a paper trimmer to cut some squares, rectangles and 'roof shapes' from coloured paper and printing out a photo of waterfront houses relected in water.
I began the class by passing the photo around to give everyone an idea of what we were aiming for.
I then asked them to use oil pastels to draw a wide stripe across the centre of the paper. This was to be the 'ground' that the buildings sit on. I also got them to use a blue oil pastel to draw waves on the bottom half of the paper. (actually I forgot to get them to do that until later but let's pretend I did it here!)
Next they had fun making their houses by gluing on the paper shapes (with lots of help from their carers!) Some decided to draw curtains at the windows, letter boxes, etc.
Now for the challenging part - they had to use watercolour paint to create the reflection of their houses in the water. To make it as simple as possible, I only asked them to paint a rectangle or square the same colour as the house above - I didn't expect them to paint the windows and doors too. Their carers helped them to choose the right colours.
Once that was done, all that was left was to use blue watercolour to paint the rest of the water around the reflections and a beautiful blue sky!

Collage Birds

I did this workshop with my regular group of adults with learning difficulties. None of the group can really draw or copy an image, so I prepared for the class by drawing some VERY simple, cartoonish birds with a marker pen on quite large sheets of paper. All the birds were different and I let everyone choose the one they liked best. (I had 6 participants in this workshop.)
Next I got them to make some patterned paper by drawing and scribbling on coloured paper with oil pastels. I then got them to cut or tear their patterned paper into squares which they had to share with the rest of the group so that everyone had a variety of colours. I also gave out some squares of nice shiny paper (recycled wrapping paper and gift bags). Then they set to work glueing the pieces of paper on to their bird. All of the participants had a carer with them so they helped make sure that the glue went in the right place ie ON the bird not around it!
I didn't have any 'googly eyes' with me that day so I just drew some eyes and cut them out for them.
After they had stuck everything on I went back over some of the lines I had drawn with the marker pen just to neaten the whole thing up a bit. This was a nice workshop which everyone seemed to find quite absorbing. Everyone tends to take their work home with them after my classes but if you have space for a display it would be nice to cut the birds out and place them along a branch or phone line.