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.

Partridge in a Pear Tree Paper Wreath

I prepared for this workshop by cutting the centres out of paper plates and making some 2-piece templates for the partridge.

Students made golden pears by printing with real pears. I was a bit disappointed with the results - I think maybe the knife I used to cut the pears wasn't sharp enough so that the printing surface wasn't smooth. The students didn't mind though! After using the templates and some painted paper to make the partridge, we assembled the wreath, adding in some crepe paper leaves.

Leaf Print Trees

This project was really enjoyed by my students. They began by either placing their hand and forearm on the paper and having their carer draw round it, or by drawing around their carer's arm. After colouring in the silhouette with oil pastels they began adding leaves. I had brought in leaves in various shapes and sizes. I actually washed them before I gave them to my students because most of them really hate getting dirt on their hands and I thought the sight of a slug might really push them over the edge! I showed them how to place the leaves face down and paint the back with poster paint before pressing them onto the paper. A lot of my students have quite severe disabilities but pressing or patting something down onto paper is something that they can all do. I encouraged some of them to print some fallen leaves at the bottom of the picture too.

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.

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!