Aboriginal Texture Animals

Got the original idea for this AWESOME project from my good buddy Matt over at http://lawnim19artisticfreedom.blogspot.com/.  He did a texture lesson using rubbings and I thought that this would be a great way to talk about some Aboriginal art (especially since I have a bunch of great Aboriginal prints hanging up in our classroom). 

I started this lesson by simply asking students what texture was?  What senses can you use to identify texture?  Almost all agreed that by feel was the only way, but after I asked lots of questions, we found out that in ways, you can most certainly hear texture through vibrations, taste can be associated with texture as almost all the students recognized some sort of food they did not like because of how it felt, and lastly we talked about how you can see texture.  That was a key in our discussion because it lead to us talking about how we can see actual textures and how we can use sight to give the impression or illusion of texture without actually having any, much like artists do.  I showed a few examples and the students were quite impressed that they figured out how amazingly noticeable texture actually is with almost all of their senses.

I then passed out papers with a 6 section grid on them and told the class that we were going on a texture hunt.  I opened up our storage closest and my office as free to roam as long as students put everything back where they found it.  I showed them how to use a crayon to rub almost any texture they could find.  I said to find as many and as unique of textures as possible.

Once students filled up their first grid I had them flip it over and draw the grid on the back and use that to collect more.  I had some students that collected over 35 textures!!  The students LOVED this.  I did it with them as a little motivation and you could feel the excitement in the air.

In the second class, I reviewed the info about textures and we again talked about how artists use actual and implied textures in their work.  I talked about and demonstrated how we were going to practice re-creating textures by drawing them in 2-D.  They picked their top 8 favorite textures and then we talked about the use of lines.  Most students wanted to draw lines, but I asked the class if they drew any lines with their crayons when we did the rubbings?  The answer was no, so I told them that this was one of those rare times that Mr. Malcore wanted them to use scribbly lines and rough jagged marks.  The students really took their time and re-created some beautiful textures.

It took most students 2 class periods to complete their texture re-creation drawings.  The next step was to create our background paper.  I know its kind of strange that I have not yet really talked about what we were actually making for this project, but I like suspense haha so please just hold on.  This was by far one of the funnest art classes this year.  The students had been workings so meticulously on their textures that I wanted them to be able to let loose, have fun, and get sloppy.  We made some super messy tissue paper and watercolor diffusion paintings.  I demonstrated to the students how to wet tissue paper onto our large white paper to make the color diffuse out of the tissue and into our paper.  Now most projects I've seen using tissue paper this way involves glue and sticking the tissue paper to the background paper but that is not what I wanted.  I wanted the students to be able to see how the colors actually bled into their paper and stayed.  After slopping on lots of tissue paper and water, we added their choices of primary colors in liquid watercolors to get a nice wet on wet mess as well.  The students really loved this and did not want to stop.  We left the wet tissue paper right on their papers to dry.  Once dry I shook all the tissue off into a bin and am hoping to use them for another project.

After making these awesome backgrounds, we began making our aboriginal animals.  I talked with students what Aborigines and where they come from.  I have 8-10 posters in my room of their art and we talked about things we noticed in each of them.  There was always some sort of animal (alligator, lizard, turtle, snake, or sea serpent in my posters) and lots of repeating pattern and line work.  I explained to students that they would have the choice to create a turtle, snake, or lizard and that we would decorate the inside of the animal with our textures that we collected.

I drew up some of the animals we were working with and printed out copies as handouts that the students could look at while drawing.  I also gave a little demo on how to break up the animals into easy to draw shapes and add features like legs and heads on after.  We drew out our animals in pencil and traced their contour outline with black sharpie marker.  I then gave out some metallic sharpies and demonstrated how to draw a rounded outline, just like bubble cutting but with a marker, around the animal about 1/2" from the black outline.  Students then decorated this space with many different repeating patterns.

In the next class, I showed students how to divide their animal up into 8 separate sections like a puzzle.  Students came up with lots of creative ways to divide their animal up.  We then used colored sharpies to trace the divisions.  Students took out the handout they drew textures on in an earlier class and began using colored gel pens to decorate each separate section with one of their top 8 favorite textures.  This took a little while but the students did a really great job trying to capture the likeness of their textures.  When completed, we cut them out and pasted them onto our colorful backgrounds.  I loved this project and it provided lots of learning and combining different mediums and ideas into one aesthetically awesome product!! Give it a try :)