Soothing Circles

I read somewhere that Wassily Kandinski used a lot of circles

 in his work because he felt they were "soothing to the soul."

Yesterday we showed the patients this image of one of his paintings

and had them color in the circles we drew for them.

Now, THIS they LOVE to do! 

There wasn't a sound in the room while they got right to work. 

 Here are some of the end results! 

Who knew? 

Circles ARE soothing to the soul! 

Back to the Drawing Board

In the past, I found that some of the patients like to paint 

directly on the image I've given them to "copy" or use as a reference. 

So for our first class after vacation, 

I printed out a series of simple landscapes on copy paper 

and clued them on to a thicker paper. 

We offered to outline the shapes for them to color in. 

 This was the sample I showed them,

 encouraging them to change the colors they saw.  

 In general, this didn't work as planned. 

Many of them were confused and 

didn't like the idea of putting paint over the photo. 

 Eleanor added a sun and some clouds though! 

This gal seemed to enjoy it.

This woman decided to make a summer scene into a fall scene. 

I think we will go back to the drawing board 

and this project is going in the "don't do this again" pile. 

Again, I have to remember that 

it's not so much the product that results from this class,

as much as it is the process of them sitting and working on something 

together.