More of the expat life...

Lots of paintbrushy stuff recently, I hardly post about my expat life here in Oman. Admittedly art has become a new passion of mine, whether teaching it, viewing it or making it. So forgive me if it's art-heavy over here. It makes me smile.

But the 'pedicures' side of life here continues. Not so many of those really. No time. It's not all relaxing by the beach or the pool, kindle or costa in hand. It's all about the kids now. Clubs every day. Rugby, guitar, football, sailing, choir. I'll fit my Gaelic football, golf and yoga in, hubby'll get to play rugby and bike ride at some point. It's none stop. I'm shattered. But it's through our own choosing. I am not complaining. I could quite easily stop the kids' club or not go to mine. But why do that? The kids have told me what they want to do, we've discussed limits and tiredness and making sure we have one quiet early night a week. We have a balance. Life's good.

But I'm still shattered. Weird feelings and pressure in my head. The meteoropath in me??

So I've decided to do something about it rather that make an action list to do something about it. Today I went to see a cranialsacral therapist. I'd heard of it as a young mum, great for babies etc. it was recommended to me for my migraines. So I thought I'd try it for my general 'unwellness'.

Interesting practise!

 

She basically manipulates and feels for the membrane between my head and my sacrum in my lower back and feels the vibrations and tensions. I didn't feel anything astounding or health changing but the fact she was noticing certain things in my body that I hadn't told her about told me that she was hitting the spot.

 

I'm still on the Topamax and after the neurologist increasing my dosage because the migraines hadn't disappeared as expected and this increase in dosage in turn coincided with another day with 4 auras, I knew I had to action my action list!

 

I can but try.

Lesson of the Week...Weather in Art

I love this one. Weather. Art. Together. Awesome. 

The tangents you (well, ok, I) can take this off are deep and endless but with my little year 3s it's just a small step for now. I'd like to eventually set up plans for weather in art up to year 6 and bring in 'meteoropathy. This fascinates me, ever since I saw Ola Rek exhibiting at the National Gallery in Glasgow a couple of years ago. She's October's artist of the month.

Art Lesson of the Week

This week's lesson was a good one for a few reasons.

Year 3: City of Fratsia, sketching, oil pastel and wash.

One: they learnt something new. Always good. Today was perspective and 3D work.
Two: they practised other sketching skills.
Three: they needed to delve into their imaginations to start with.
Four: it also required a bit of 'drawing what you see' whilst in that imagination. Always a tricky one, especially with the younger ones who have this ability to transpose any object regardless of what angle they view it from, to front on and draw it thus.

It was the lovely and mystical city of Fratsia that was the class topic and we just followed it in art but creating our own cities (imagination) of Fratsia. We read the book, 'Sanji and The Baker' (by Robin Tzannes and Korky Paul) and studied the city drawings and perspective (new word). We loved how the buildings towered off to the side and rose up the hill. We also loved the colour and medium that Paul had used. We thought about what we would see if we looked straight at a house? What would we see if we were sitting down on a seat in the street looking to the house to our right? (Observational drawing)

 



We worked with our basic sketching skills to plan our city and think about how the buildings we have created from our imagination would look like from an angle. This was a challenge for most of them. But once they saw what they were looking at and applied it to theirs, it flowed and clicked :-) We then worked with oil pastels and built up this beautiful city like Korky Paul did. Some chalk pastels slipped into the oil pastel box inadvertently so that became a lesson in itself as they were finding out the difference between chalks and oils, in feel, effect, the residue it makes. This was great fun, coming up with adjectives to tell the difference.

I encouraged them to use the oil pastels as we were finishing up with a wash of the colour of their choice (out of red, orange or blue). So they learned they can end with a wash, not just begin with one. I wanted them to see what happens when watery paint touches wax or oil. Those that used chalk in places had a lesson too. they predicted and observed what happened when they ran their final wash over. It did create an awesome sandstormy effect for some! Lovely! I download some of their pics soonish.

In hindsight, I would probably work on laying down more prep work for perspective and focus on observational drawing for a little while...outside of the classroom, drawing the school buildings from different angles. This could be brought in as a follow-up in perspective in year 4.