Art 4 Care Homes

1) Drawing, Drawing, Drawing

We bring lots of different types of pens, pencils, markers, crayons and plenty of paper and try to make as many drawings as we can in 1 hour. At the end of the session we put all the drawings into a ring binder folder to make a big book of our drawings together.

2) Colourful Pattern Painting Party

Using watercolour paints we each paint a pattern on a sheet of paper. We then pass that pattern on to the person sitting next to us, and they copy the pattern onto a new piece of paper making any changes they want to the design. We lay each finished pattern in the centre of the table so by the end of the session we have a huge patchwork of colourful patterns.

3) Traditional Drawing and Watercolour Painting

10 minutes drawing warm up. 15 minutes sketching a scene on watercolour paper then 35 minutes painting the scene with watercolour paints. Participants are free to paint more than one scene if they finish before the end of the session.

4) Dynamic Drawing

1 hour of pencil sketching using Peter Han's Dynamic Drawing method. Participants practice shapes and shading, and use these to build up objects and scenes either from still life, photos or their own imagination.

5) Colour and Calm

Using watercolour paints we will work together to paint calm scenes from photographs and abstract designs. We will focus on how such gentle painting can help us to feel calm and relaxed.

6) Sketch your Life

Using Liz Wakelin's "Sketching a year in Lakeland" as inspiration, we will spend an hour sketching happy moments from our lives, and share them with each other at the end of the session.

7) Draw Your Feelings

We will follow some of the exercises in Rukmini Poddar's excellent book " Draw Your Feelings". We will focus on happy,  positive emotions, and how they can be expressed through art.

8) Special Activities

Any combination of residents and visitors, and your choice of art activity. For example maybe a resident has a birthday and would like a group consisting of some fellow residents as well as family and friends who visit. Or you're a friend or relative and would like to arrange a surprise art party. Whatever ideas you have we can help you talk to the care home and figure out what's possible, and what we can provide. In certain cases art activities many be limited by care home facilities or health and safety guidelines though we will do our best to accommodate any idea you have to the best of our abilities.