Painting With The Rainbow

We had an incredible guest visit Tuesday night to offer us an art lesson. Christine Brown, an artist from the Worcester area, came to Campanelli Drive and taught a group of Colleagues and Residents from Specialized Housing all about color. We learned that ROY-G-BIV isn’t the name of a rapper from the 80’s, but is actually shorthand for the colors of the rainbow; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet.

We penciled in square-ish shapes and used painter’s tape to place our initials in the center of the canvas before we added beautiful colors of paint on top. Then we followed directions from the teacher, carefully (or not), filling in each square with the designated color from the rainbow.

We picked our own colors for each section of our work, keeping it within the appropriate color family. If the assigned color for that section was blue, each of us could pick from a myriad of blue shades, so no two paintings looked exactly alike. It was relaxing, soothing even, to work on these creations.

We used a variety of painting tools, including regular artist brushes, foam brushes, stenciling pouncers, house painting brushes, and more. We experimented until we found the tool that gave us the effect we wanted.

Once the squares were filled in, we took a break to let them dry and had some pizza and chili dip & crackers, with cupcakes for desert. Delicious!

The final step was the unveiling of the finished painting. We carefully ripped off the tape and revealed our initials. We were proud of the artwork we created. It was a moment of WOW! Magic to see our creations and experience the joy of sharing them with others!

Christine, our teacher, was very impressed with the talent of our Residents and Colleagues who participated. She plans to return to present a series of classes.

“This was a good group. They really listened to directions, and were serious about their work; they took this seriously and were able to have some fun. Everyone did a great job,” said Christine. “I will be thrilled to offer this opportunity again! I can see where the WOW! Magic comes in. The Colleagues were so attentive to the Residents and I’m glad some of them joined in and painted too. Everyone can be an artist!”

Check out some of the other great things Specialized Housing is up to here and what else we have planned here.