• Replies 11 replies
  • Subscribers 34 subscribers
  • Views 2773 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

I teach autistic teenagers - looking for advice

HettieLleshi

Hi there, 

So i teach in a specialist autism base in which our secondary students do not mix with main school. 

The area I am looking into at the moment is offering Art GCSE - of which we have some excitement and interest. 

Generally any tips or advice in delivering art to autistic teens, especially in regards to the following - 

- Researching (we have students who love art but refuse and will not research even with something they are interested in) THIS IS THE BIGGEST THING I NEED HELP WITH Slight smile

- Imagination (some students are extremely imaginative whilst others need a bit more help) 

Any advice, or ideas would be great. 

I am myself autistic but thrived in art, I just want to provide my students with the best experience and support them in the best way possible!

Parents

  • When I was a child I used to do art at home but I got incredibly frustrated that my hand and eye could never recreate what I imagined in my head precisely. The dimensions and proportions were always off. So we adapted. Started doing art with geometry implements to graph out lines and perspectives etc. Swapped runny watercolours for more opaque and solid pigments. Still all I wanted to draw was sci-fi and later in my teens pictures of pretty girls. Mostly gave up on physical media when I got a computer. Worked with computer graphics programs when ever I got a hankering to do art.

    If you can go digital in your art lessons consider it. If not consider more pencil work / acrylics etc. And let them pick their own subjects.  Don't give them a bowl of fruit to draw. let them use tools to help them get the proportions / perspective they want, maybe let them trace figures as a reference then have them trace their tracing using the outlines as guides instead of just copying them. As for research the autistic tendency to research is just naturally depth first. If an autistic person is interested in something they'll research it, get interested in some narrow detail of it and research that in more depth, then some detail with the detail untill they're looking at things that are pretty technical, esoteric and obscure. That's the natural flow of how the autistic mind works, trying to get them to research a wide range of different things but in not much detail is working against their natural inclinations.

    PS. think you could improvise a camera obscura? I bet that would get them interested.

Reply

  • When I was a child I used to do art at home but I got incredibly frustrated that my hand and eye could never recreate what I imagined in my head precisely. The dimensions and proportions were always off. So we adapted. Started doing art with geometry implements to graph out lines and perspectives etc. Swapped runny watercolours for more opaque and solid pigments. Still all I wanted to draw was sci-fi and later in my teens pictures of pretty girls. Mostly gave up on physical media when I got a computer. Worked with computer graphics programs when ever I got a hankering to do art.

    If you can go digital in your art lessons consider it. If not consider more pencil work / acrylics etc. And let them pick their own subjects.  Don't give them a bowl of fruit to draw. let them use tools to help them get the proportions / perspective they want, maybe let them trace figures as a reference then have them trace their tracing using the outlines as guides instead of just copying them. As for research the autistic tendency to research is just naturally depth first. If an autistic person is interested in something they'll research it, get interested in some narrow detail of it and research that in more depth, then some detail with the detail untill they're looking at things that are pretty technical, esoteric and obscure. That's the natural flow of how the autistic mind works, trying to get them to research a wide range of different things but in not much detail is working against their natural inclinations.

    PS. think you could improvise a camera obscura? I bet that would get them interested.

Children
No Data