The day we created a banner

A while ago Mat attended a group led by Clive Parkinson from Manchester Metropolitan University. He heads up the Arts For Health section and is currently creating a Manifesto (see http://artsandhealthmanifesto.blogspot.com/ for more). As part of this Alison Clough from Pioneer Projects in Bentham showed a technique for lettering and creating figures. Mat thought this was a good idea so he introduced it to the Wellart group to produce a banner about WellArt.

First letters to make the words are cut roughly by eye in dark paper. These are then stuck onto white paper and cut out again with a small border. The letters can then be arranged on a large piece of coloured paper. The figures were created by tearing up coloured paper. By tearing blocks to make up different parts of the body a feel of movement can be given to the figures. These were then all arranged with the words they went with to create the finished banner.



The day the Wellart group went potty!

The group decided to make a joint piece of artwork. We used air drying clay to individually create pots. All the different pots were then joined together to make one large sculpture. These were left to dry over the week before they were painted using acrylic paint. Acrylic makes a good covering as the first layer is soaked into the clay and the second forms a slightly shiny surface.

The day we took inspiration from Paul Klee

The groups used an artist pack from the Outside In website to look at the work of Paul Klee. We used mono print and pastels to produce some interesting variations on the artists work.

The day we did still life oil paintings

We had been talking about painting and discussing the difference between acrylics and oils. Most of the group had not used oils or had tried them but found them difficult to use. Mat decided to have a session using oil paint. The week before we took some old frames from a charity shop and removed the boards. We primed these with an acrylic wash. We did this as the oil from the oil paint will soak into paper or board so you need a proper primed surface. Acrylic gives a good base.

The following week we set up some objects to paint and Mat gave a demo. He tried to get everyone to paint straight on the board without attempting to mix, painting the objects first, starting from the darker shaded parts to the lighter highlights. Then he painted in the background.

Everyone else had a go and this was the result:

The day we made wellbeing collages

We made some simple collages from cut up magazines and newspapers. The idea was to pick out images that represented things which helped us to get through the day. Most of the group chose images about their daily lives and pictures to represent pets and family. It was interesting when we discussed the finished pictures that everyone identified the need to keep active and involved in order to keep going through times that were hard. The WellArt group was part of this, having a regular activity, being creative and being in a supportive social group.