1. Scatter grains of rice onto a piece of tracing paper.
2. With a wax crayon mark next to each grain.
3. Draw lines between your marks.
4. Find shapes in your networks.

1. On a primed stretched canvas or other surface place your tracing paper drawing face down.
2. Trace over with a pencil to transfer your images.
3. Ask your companions to connect up your individual networks with coloured pen lines.
4. Ask another group of people to apply clear acrylic medium to areas.
5. Everyone take a small handfull of rice (coloured with food colouring) and throw it onto the horizontal surface.
6. When dry spray with clear polyurethane varnish to help secure the rice and fix the water based colours.

Similarity and discovery. Organised chaos, open to interpretation. Regular shapes float haphazardly, combined with hand prints and shading.

Coping with an unstructured situation, not knowing, not having an answer.

Co-operation. One person asked another person to put a dab of glue in their chosen place so they could stick their shape on.

When is a picture finished?

Some people liked this one better than the others ones because it was 'more open'.

Years 5 and 6.

Year 5 sorted pink and blue.

Year 6 added shapes in a random way, drawing lines to connect similar colours.

Year 5 added unique drawings of animals and inventions.

Then Yr 5 & 6 came together to add the rice sprinkles and a small group who joined the workshop near the end drew lines between similarly coloured shapes.

The guiding factors here were the numbers 7 and 8.

Attempting to be rational conforming to some unstated rule system.
Following instructions enabled me to make an Origami sampan.

Early Years worked in symmetrical pairs, adding the free hand brush marks in blue and red, with transparent squares stuck on and almost invisible.

Year One painted green and magenta triangles, and Year Two painted blue and yellow circles, again working in symmetrical pairs.

Some people found the finished picture too regimented.

Precise copy of reflected reeds in water, some symmetry!

Implying the existence of a flat reflective surface using just lines.

The grand illusion.

Firmly situated in 2D.

Left to right, up and down.

Organising space, is there is a story? Can a pattern be a story? Can a story have a pattern?

Patterns start with measuring.
Measuring starts with counting.
Measuring TIME, SPACE, QUANTITY, FREQUENCY.

COMPARING, what event happened first?
Is the plane in parallel time to the spilling cup? If movement is portrayed, is this a frozen moment?

Do the garments give anything away?
When might this scene have happened?

Painting may try to find a way to reconcile differences, join things up, by using a pattern.