I was scheduled to have an art class at The Mansion a few weeks ago. But Covid hit again and it wasn’t until today that I was able to get back to teach a class.
I walked down the hallway with Debbie. It had been a while since I’d seen her and I asked if she got a copy of the Odd Duck Book. She smiled and said yes, one for her and one for her daughter. “It’s so cute,” she said.
When we got to the Activities room Peg, Claudia, Jennifer and Maureen were finding seats around the table. We looked at the book and everyone agreed, with big smiles that the book was “really cute.”
Then I handed out paper and pencils. “Okay,” I said, “today we’re going to learn how to draw a cat.”
I’d figured out an easy way to draw a cat starting with an oval for the head and half-circle, like a big “D” for the body.
Once we got the body, legs and tail, we started to work on the details.
I said we would draw the ears next, but Claudia couldn’t wait to give her cat some eyes. Even before I had a chance to show them one way of drawing the cat’s features, Claudia had her face all done.
We all agreed that his mouth full of teeth gave him a great expression.
Once the cats were done I suggested adding a fishbowl with a fish in it or a plant. I did a demonstration on how to draw both. Then Maureen said there should be a chair for the cat to sleep on, which made sense to all of us.
So I showed them how to draw a chair and then everyone could pick from a few ideas about what to add to their drawings.
I talked about how in sculpture you create from the general to the specific, so if we were making a cat out of clay we’d start with shapes just like we did in the drawing.
That got me thinking that it would be fun to work with clay. A couple of the people who come to the art classes have a hard time seeing, so using clay might be easier for them.
Everyone seemed to like the idea of working with clay so that’s what we’ll do next time.
