Did you know that the Egyptians believed in something called a Ka and the afterlife? That's right! Egyptians believed that when a person died, their Ka (or what we call a soul) lived on in the afterlife. They believed that the Ka would behave just as it did when the person was alive. The Ka would wake up and leave the body every morning, eat, play, then go back to sleep at night. The Egyptians believed that the Ka would need a way to know which body was its own and that was the purpose of the Death Mask. The Egyptians would mummify the bodies, then wrap them in linen, then over the head a Death Mask would be placed. The mask would resemble the person who had passed. The Kings and Queen's masks would be made out of precious materials and gemstones and the people who did not have as much money, the masks would be either painted wood or the face would be painted directly on the linen. This mask would help the Ka find its body. We also talked about some of Egyptian history. Egypt was divided into upper and lower Egypt. Upper Egypt was protected by the Vulture goddess Nekhbet and Lower Egypt was protected by the Cobra goddess Wadjet. We learned that the crowns would show either of these gods and based on the one we saw we would know which land the Pharaoh ruled over. We also talked about the False beard. We learned that only Pharaohs wore a false beard and if we looked at art and saw an Egyptian with a false beard they would always be the Pharaoh. WOW, BTW kids LOVED learning all this. EVERY class was hooked and I challenged them all to go to the library and read more books on the Egyptians. After we discussed this, we then learned how to draw a Death Mask. Then we talked about pattern and symmetry. We used pattern to draw the horizontal lines on the mask and made sure that our work was as symmetrical as possible. We used oil pastels to color with and finally gold paint. The last step is not depicted but we will cut these out and mount onto black paper and used glue and glitter to draw hieroglyphs of our initials. WHEH!
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This is a new project for me and was inspired by a fellow art teacher whom I love dearly, Maureen Armstrong at Mountain View Elementary school. What we did was look at different cultures and discuss the origins of language and communication. We talked about how symbols only hold meaning when placed in context of the culture they belong to. Then we viewed a few examples and talked about them. Then students went back to their tables and read through several different cultures that I was able to find symbols of and selected two cultures and symbols that spoke to them. Students drew these symbols on a small square then learned how to use tracing paper to make a transfer to a much larger square so that the resulting image is symmetrical. Then I taped the traced drawing to copper, students chose either the copper or the silver side, and students used wooden and plastic dowels to create the impression on the copper. This process of creating a raised relief on metal is called Repousse. The final step is to paint india ink over the entire surface then we polish it off so it only falls in the lines, this is called a Patina (brownish sheen polished on metal). The final step is for students to write their artist statement. I loved this project! It was fun for the kids to read about different cultures and I haven't had a single student feel lost or as though they cannot do this. Every student so far has loved their end result and it has created lots of smiles! |
Mrs. ThompsonWelcome to the Big Shanty Intermediate art room! I hope you enjoy seeing what we are doing! Archives
May 2020
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