Australian Bark Paintings

Third grade artists wrapped up their study of Australia as they explored Australian bark painting.  They viewed Aboriginal cave paintings and learned that the hand print stencil found in many cave paintings can be a symbol of peace;  it is also used as a signature, to show that a person was in that place.

Third graders also viewed bark paintings and learned that the symbols and images found on traditional bark paintings are similar to Aboriginal cave paintings.  While we would have liked to use real bark from the Australian stringybark tree for our bark paintings, we settled for brown Kraft paper and decorative sticks from Mrs. Brouwer’s front yard!

      

Beautiful Boab Trees

Fourth Grade artists are completing these fabulous Boab Trees as part of our Cultural Focus this year – Australia.  They learned that the Boab Tree is also called the “bottle tree” as it stores water in the bottle-shaped trunk to endure harsh drought conditions in the Australian outback.

Our boab trees were inspired by the work of  Australian artist Bronwyn Bancroft, author and illustrator of the book “Why I Love Australia”.

Fourth Graders prepared the paper for their work by first rubbing it with crayons for a bit of color and texture.  Next they painted their boabs with black tempera; when the tempera was dry, color was added with oil pastels.

   

       See more of our beautiful boab trees at our ARTSONIA GALLERY!