Art work and dementia

Artwork is supposed to be very therapeutic for people with dementia, and I once went to a local branch where a local professional artist had three very large pictures on the wall, and left them for all of the clients to look at.

As they were all modern art and something many find difficult to work out, it took some time before people started to speak about what they could see in the pictures.

I confess that I was not impressed at first, then realised that these people could all see different things, from the same picture and after a while I started to see things which were not easy to see in the first place. I ended up enjoying the experience , although I am not a fan of modern art work.

Although many people who have dementia love to paint and draw, there are times when it becomes difficult to get the picture right, especially if it is down to look like a scene outside. I often give up in total frustration because it never looks the same but I guess this is all down to the spacial awareness side of things, where everything looks so very different in our eyes from day to day.

I used to love drawing when I was younger, and I think looking back this makes life so much harder as all this has gone.

It is difficult to get distances right and sometimes angles, yet as an engineer I would sketch or draw out things that were needed and then go back to the office knowing full well that I had an accurate drawing of what was needed, but now that the brain has changed all of this is all but in the past.

These days I struggle with the colours, getting the right shade or at least working out how to mix the correct shade of a certain colour, but I guess its all trial and error, but there are extra problems when it comes to how certain colours were mixed before.

I suppose I just have to make notes of how colours were made up and go from there.

The other method is a watercolour colour wheel, but then that depends on the colours in the paint box. Once the wrappers are off the new colour blocks, I have no idea what they are, so its going to be a complete challenge to get this off the ground, but I am determined to give it a try while I can

Some people think that other forms of paint are much better such as oils, or acrylic, but as I am new to this, It’s a case of trial and error  

Artwork can be relaxing when it works well, however I often look at something and see something which is not really there at all.

I sometimes find pastels easier to use although I would love to do water colours, as it looks nicer.