Australian Aboriginal Art

Aboriginal: the inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists; indigenous. In this project we focus on different cultures art forms- or the art form of the native Australian tribes. It is important to teach through art more than just art, and this is an example of teaching geography and cultures to children. My class did aboriginal art form on paper, but you can team them by painting on boomerangs, or on didgeridoos. To create a didgeridoo just take pvc pipe and melt the ends to make it have an organic look and paint/ spray paint (easier) brown. Bake to doing it on paper however. Aboriginals did art on rocks, animal hides, bark, anything organic they could paint on. The artwork is filled with symbols and used to tell stories, or as maps. Here is an example of classic symbols used:

 classic aboriginal art symbols

For our project we decided to tell the story of a typical day for us college students, and create our own symbols. Here is goes, the oh so exciting day of a poor college student hahaha. Just the thing I know you want to look at, but here are my symbols:

Sunrise: When I happen to wake up, and stumble out of bed.

Man: Teddy, my best friend and boyfriend.

Footsteps: I walk or bike a lot, I live on campus so that is my main form of transportation to school or work, I only drive if I need to go off campus.

Book: My university studies.

Easel: I am an art student so that shows my hands on homework, and classes.

Cellphone: This actually represents my connect to those who I love but live in another town, so family, that is my main form of communication with them.

Bull: This represents my work, I work for USU and our mascot is a bull- so original.

Cactus: This represents my chores of watering my plants, feeding my fish, dishes, etc.

Bowl: Represents food which is actually a rather big part of my day.

Moon: Nightfall when everything is done and I can curl up into bed.

I took my symbols actually quit literal, which the children do not have to do, I was just having a really creative day (not). So My journey that I take usually ends up with me waking up in the morning to a text from my boyfriend and talking with him to then doing the real fun stuff of homework and work. I try to talk to one important person in my life outside of USU each day. I continue on to do my chores, eat a lot. I see my boyfriend every night and then go home to bed. That is my literal very exciting schedule I have on a typical college student day. Here is an example of my artwork.

All hail the basic college girl schedule!

Aboriginal art fills the canvas and is composed of a lot of dots and some lines. This is the art type that is hard to do with children, here is a trick though- use the ends of pencils/ erasers! Make super clean dots and doesn't make a huge mess. Easiest way to follow the tradition form of dot art work. Have fun creating with your children.

Here is alink to a tutorial on how to do this art work Art in Elementary: Aboriginal Art Tutorial