Lascaux Cave Drawings

For this lesson, I showed students a video that was captured of the cave drawings inside Lascaux Caves in Lascaux France.  The video was made in the 1960's so that the public could still see Lascaux's beautiful prehistoric images even though the cave was closed off to the public (in order to preserve the art).

The cave drawings are believed to date back over 17,000 years; making them the oldest art known about in the entire world!  The story goes that 4 teenage boys discovered the cave in 1940 when they noticed a hole in the ground where a tree once stood.  A lightning storm had struck the tree, revealing the hidden cave underneath.  Imagine how special you might feel if you were one of the 4 lucky boys who discovered the oldest art in the world!

In this art lesson, students were instructed to draw at least 2 animals (like those seen at Lascaux: cows, bulls, deer, bears, or a unicorn) and at least 3 symbols.  After students designed the composition of their drawing on a practice sheet, they completed a final drawing and added color with oil pastels.  We used a manilla paper to mimic the look of the ancient cave.

"Dia de los Muertos"

"Dia de los Muertos" is a very important Mexican holiday that is celebrated in Mexico and parts of the United States every year on November 2nd.  In Engllish, "Dia de los Muertos" is translated to Day of the Dead.  During this day, people celebrate by remembering loved one that have passed away.  There are many traditional ways of celebrating; some of which include building altars in remembrance of loved ones, dressing up as skeletons, dancing, eating special foods (like Pan de Muerto), a procession or parade, a name call of the deceased, and decorating gravesites with flowers and marigolds.  Often, people will also tell stories retelling fond memories of loved ones lost. 

Another big activity is making sugar skulls and using them to decorate.  A sugar skull is a skull made out of sugar that is decorated with icing.  The sugar skull image has spread through the culture of "Dia de los Muertos" to include costumes, artwork, and more.  In this lesson, students drew a sugar skull with silver sharpe on black construcion paper to create a stark contrast of lights and darks.

Every year, I attend the Day of the Dead festival at Bare Hands art gallery in downtown Birmingham.  It is a fabulous event with food, drinks, dancing, costumes and loads of wonderful art!

Aboriginal Snakes

I also did an art lesson based on the Aboriginal people with my older students (3rd, 4th, and 5th grade).  One way Aboriginal people present animals in their artwork is through their "X-ray" style paintings.  This is where you can see details inside the body of the animal just as a doctor would see the details of your bones on an x-ray.  After students finished drawing their snake in oil pastel, they added Aboriginal symbols to the background to finish their composition.

Originally, I got this idea from Art Projects for Kids, but I changed it up a little by having my students add symbols to their background!

Aboriginal Boomerangs

The Aboriginal people are the indigineous people, or first inhabitants, of the continent of Australia and their descendants.  They rich cultural heritage is very interesting and includes some beautiful artwork.  Traditionally, their artwork references stories from their "Dreamtime" as well as many dots, animals, and Aboriginal symbols.

In this art lesson, students first painted an Aboriginal boomerang with watercolors, then they added stamps of Aboriginal symbols.  To finish the composition, students filled their artwork with dots.  The examples above are from two of my second grade students!

Mandalas

Last week in art, all of my students learned about the ancient Asian artform of creating mandalas.  Mandala actually means "circle" in Sanskrit (an ancient Indian written language).  However, mandalas are much more intricate and meaningful than that.  Mandalas are often used to focus attention and deliniate a sacred space. 

 After looking at many variations of mandalas, we talked about concentric circles and radial symmetry. 

Some Tibetan Buddhists create painstakingly detailed mandalas out of sand (like the one below).

I gave each student a 9 x 9 square piece of heavy weight watercolor paper (90 pound).  First students drew a large circle.  Then, they divided the circle into 4 equal quadrants.  Then, the students added identical lines and shapes in each of the four quadrants; therefore crearting a concentric circle filled with a radialy symmetrical pattern.  The results?  Well, see for yourself!