The subject of our paintings is the fauna of Australia and the style is an homage to the Dreamtime paintings of the Aborigines, the indigenous peoples of Australia.
We're using a limited palette of warm earth tones, and I love some of the sophisticated colors these young artists have mixed up! We're also working on making the positive and negative spaces of our compositions interesting.
There are several steps to these paintings, beginning with the drawing in pencil and then inking with Sharpie. The next step is one that really surprises the kids- I have them crumple up their artwork, as if they were going to throw it away, and then repeat that about three times. Then we mist the papers with water and iron them flat again. This really softens the paper, giving it an almost bark-like texture and making it a great surface to paint on.
Once the large areas are painted, we'll begin adding the characteristic dots of the Papunya Tula "dot art" movement. The last step will be to clean up the outlines if needed or desired.
We won't finish these until after the Thanksgiving holiday, but I couldn't wait to give you a sneak preview!
Make it a Wonderful Day!!
looks like a really fun project!
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