Australian Aboriginal Art

Materials Needed:

*Large sheet of brown recycled paper

*Acrylic paint (black, white, yellow, and red)

*Various sized paintbrushes

*Water

*Cup

*Paper towels

This project is derived from Australian Aboriginal art using design and painting techniques and symbols.

*For a tutorial on the following techniques click I Want to Teach Art in Elementary*
To begin, I made a list of ten items/ideas that were a part of my daily life and that were important to me. Once I made that list, then I came up with symbols to represent those ideas or items. For example, I drew a three leafed plant to represent living life, I drew two circles linked together to represent partnership, a large spiral to represent a point of significance, a burst design to represent creativity, small ghost looking figures to represent a person or being, and small pointy symbols to represent writing or the exchanging of ideas/education. I drew more, but these few were what I ultimately ended up using in my final composition.

I started by drawing several thumbnail sketches of a layout that I wanted. I started by trying to use all ten of my symbols, but I felt that by putting them all together, it began to lack its deeper meanings. So, settling on a design, I started with the spiral in the center with the creativity symbol in the middle, because I felt that everything revolved around significant places and creation, and then I drew the symbols for beings and ideas around the spiral as an idea of people sharing ideas surrounding creativity, creation, in the significant place of life. Around that, I then drew the partnership rings representing the idea of people leaning on one another in partnerships. I then drew the plants in the corners of the paper to help fill the empty space and to reinforce the idea of living life and the ideas expressed in life in general.

Once I had it drawn on my recycled paper, I then designated colors based on the balance of the piece. Using the four sacred aboriginal colors, I got to work on carefully painting the shapes I had drawn with a mid-sized brush. Once I had them filled with color, I outlined everything in black. For the person symbols, I decided to fill them with a crosshatching design, much like the aboriginals used. I felt it was appropriate in a sense that I feel that everyone is made up of their own fabrics that are worn and show evidence of experiences over time. For those, I used a very fine brush. I then added white dots to the piece by using the end of the handle of one of my brushes and used a stippling technique to apply it in between the lines of the spiral. I then felt that there needed to be white dots elsewhere in the piece as well, so I added two larger dots in between the leafed symbols in each of the corners. I did this by loading up a brush with the white paint, pushing it onto the paper and then twisting the handle while applying pressure to create a circle.

I learned so much from this project. I learned that aboriginal art is much more difficult and time consuming than it seems. It is a very expressive style that connected with me on a deeper spiritual level than I expected. It forced me to look into my life and evaluate the important things, and lay them out on a piece of paper in a meaningful design that expressed my own thoughts about my life and the world. I of course, also learned how to be incredibly steady with my hand and a small brush in order to get the textures and techniques that I wanted, such as the crosshatching in the figures.