Cave art drawings

Cave art drawings done in oil pastel on paper bags 6-8th grade

art room upadate

We have just finished our first full month of school and are on yet ANOTHER new schedule. As of Friday afternoon they were changing the schedule yet again. Even more annoying is the fact that my supply order for the year has STILL not been sent to the district. Our oil pastels are inch long, we are digging the last little bits of paint out of the watercolors, we have one or two bottles of tempera in each color. We got a small donation of supplies at the start of the year and I am trying to make them last as long as possible. I've already had to buy about $70 worth of supplies for my middle school and life skills classes. They simply need different supplies than what is available. The school secretary swore that she would put the order in this week. We will see. Sometimes it takes up to a month to get the supplies after the order has been put in.

This is putting a bit of a cramp into my "art around the world" plan. The 6th-8th graders are done with their cave art unit and are in the middle of their Australian art unit. To recap:
CAVE ART
*Online web scavenger hunt (well liked)
*PowerPoint of cave paintings
*Painting with lights out, under tables with only fingers and sticks as brushes and instant coffee mixed with water to make the paint. (most kids enjoyed the experience, the art produced was so so)
*PowerPoint 2
*Practice drawing three cave animals
*Brown paper sacks and oil pastel cave animals (very nice)
*Paper machie "rocks" using celucaly and this lesson . Students really like making their "rocks" we made them on half sheets of transparencies. The backside of the rock worked with with oil pastel and some paint. The bumpy side was too bumpy and we got very mixed results with the quality of work. The students really enjoyed it though. One large bag (cost $11 with my 40% off coupon) took care of two classes of 20 students.

I don't feel the celuclay was worth the money. After we used it I found a lesson that uses regular clay with some sand pressed into the top. I have also seen people use sandpaper. I will use the clay with the 5th graders (if it comes in on time) and brown paper sacks with the 4th graders and 5th graders if the clay is late.

4th grade looked at the cave art power point and started practicing their animal drawings. Some were really negative about the project. They get really caught up on their perfections nature to have everything look perfect. Fifth grade is two weeks behind and will start cave art NEXT week. That gives the clay three weeks to show up.

3rd grade is finishing up a pattern fall leaf project and trying to salvage the bird/bird house project this week. We will do cave art with them starting next week.

2nd grade....yah they are still having a rough time, just like last year when they were 1st graders. They will not be doing the art around the world unit. They will be doing slightly harder versions of the k-1 projects or just random stuff till they get control of themselves.

cave art website scavenger hunt

Cave Art Website Scavenger Hunt
(work on your own or with one other person)
Name(s):


Go to this website:
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/

1. What country is the Lascaux site in?


Use the website and the directions I provide to answer the questions below:
Click on the discover link (has the horse painting next to it)
Click on the 'Time and Space" link
Go to the second page

2. Sketch what the entrance of the cave looked like at the end of the Paleolithic period.

Go to the next page. Look at the time line.

3. About what year were the paintings in the Lascaux caves done?

On the sidebar on the left click on "1940 the Discovery" link

4. How many teenagers discovered the Lascaux cave? Name one.


Next Page

The boys went though a hole in the ground from where the roots of a pine tree had lived. When they entered the cave the the found an open space that is now called:

5. Great Hall _____ _____ ________

Next Page

6. List three of the animals that are painted in the Hall of the Bulls.
*
*
*

Next page.

One of the four boys, Marcel Radiate went down a deep shaft (hole) in the cave

7. How deep was the shaft he went into?

Next page.

The next morning the villagers went to see the caves and a group of archaeologists came to explore the caves.

Go to the sidebar on the left. Click on "1963 The Closing of the Cave"

For many years people were able to go into the caves to see the paintings.

8. In 1955 about how many people a day went though the caves?

However, scientist discovered that all the carbon dioxide from visitors breathing was ruining the paintings.

Next Page

9. The caves were closed to visitors on April ____ 1963.

Next Page, Next page

In 1980 the French government started to build a life size copy of the Lascaux caves. Today you can visit the replica caves that are near the real caves.


Go to the left sidebar. Click on "Virtual Visit" There are 7 galleries you can click on to visit. The links are in yellow. Click on the Great Hall of the Bulls link.

10. Find the "unicorn" sketch it.




11. Find the hidden bear. You can only see part of the bear because it is hidden in the ______________'s belly.

Go back to the "Virtual Visit" main page. Click on the Painted Gallery link.

12. How many antlers are on the stag?


13. Find the Chinese Horses. How many are there?


14. Choose one animal from this Gallery to sketch.


Take the remaining time to look though the other 5 galleries to gather ideas for your own art. Look at the animals that were painted, the colors that were used and the drawing style. Be prepared because starting tomorrow you will be a cave artist.

Monday Masterpiece

Ah the return of the Monday Masterpiece for the 6-8th graders. I did this at my last two middle schools and it is time to do it again. This time I am not providing the answer for the kids to circle after the first week. They have to come up with them on their own. I wish I could find the worksheet I made for this warm up. It seems to be long gone in the move from school to school.

Monday Masterpeice
Name
Period

What do you think this artwork is called?
What objects do you see in this artwork?
What colors do you see in this artwork?
What shapes do you see in this artwork?
Who do you think made this artwork (time/place/people)?
Do you like this artwork? WHY or why not?
On the back of this paper do a quick sketch of this artwork.

That is mostly it.

So Monday I will have the kids make their warm-up book. They need the Monday masterpiece sheet folded in half and two other sheets of paper.

Explain what the Monday Masterpiece is and say we are going to do it together today. The less we focus the less time we have to work on finishing our accordion books that I will be collecting at the end of class.

Starting tomorrow we will be working on our cave art unit full time. We will spend a day in the comp lab exploring the french cave paintings through a museum website, we will talk about the who, what, when, where and why's of cave art and we will be try our hand at making cave art style art.

I need to make a web guide for the Lascaux website and reserve the comp lab.

art room # 5 cave art 4th-5th grade projects

4th-5th graders will expand on the project from 2n-3rd only in a more complex form. I teach 9, yes 9, grade levels AND 2 levels of special education (27 classes each week). The only way I can pull this off is to stick with basically the same projects with the same supplies just with increasingly difficult skill level.

Our 4th/5th graders feel they are too cool for story books (rolls eyes) so we will skip First Dog and go right to a power point of the cave paintings. I'll set up the lesson by talking about crawling through the caves with your torch hoping you don' t run into a sleeping saber tooth tiger or bear who wants a easy meal. I'll share the info below which comes from this website:

From http://earlyhumans.mrdonn.org/caveart.html

COLOR: Early man used natural colors. You may have heard that they used charcoal to create these paintings. Actually, most art was not made with charcoal, but rather with mineral pigments, such as iron oxide (red ochre) or black manganese. They drew stick figures for people, but the animals were well drawn, and usually filled in with natural colors, to give them even more shape and substance.

DANGER: When you think cave, you might think of a big place, with high ceilings. Not so. In order to reach the places where cave paintings have been found, Cro-Magnon man had to crawl on his belly, through mazes of narrow, dark tunnels, by the light of a flicking torch or a spoon-like oil lamp (which had to be hand carried and balanced carefully to hold the burning oil in the rounded part of the spoon - while crawling along on your belly), and carrying the paints he had carefully prepared, with no idea if he might run into, oh .. a cave lion or a bear, on the way. Certainly he wasn't decorating his home, as these marvelous paintings were hidden deep within the darkest portions of the cave.

4th and 5th graders will also do two projects. A paper cave painting and a painting on "stone".

Paper cave painting: Start class with guided drawings of several cave animals. For older students I prefer to have a guided drawing worksheet for them to work on at their own speed. This allows me to give the students more examples to choose from. I try to have five objects/animals to draw and ask the students to try three. Students that finish early do the extra two.

After practice drawing we are right back to the brown paper bag that has been crumpled up. I LOVE to have the older kids get under the table to do these paintings. If the table is too tall or you are worried about paint dripping on the kids then just put the table on it's side so it is like a wall. Tape the paper bag to the table. Start by having students paint the outline of the animal they chose and any extra details like weapons or people. Use black and dark red/brown tempera paint.

After student's have painted the outline of their animals they will add shading and extra detail with paint and/or oil pastel. Emphasize to the students to leave some "rock" showing on the inside of the animal.

Project 2: Painting on Rock

We are going to "make" our rock using equal parts plaster, vermiculite and water.

*Mix this up in a plastic bucket till it has a thick cookie dough texture.

*Push all the tables and chairs away and have the kids sit in a almost circle around you.

*Give each child a plastic place mat (I get these from dollar tree) to put in front of them.

*Have each student come get a hand full of this "rock" slop. Take it back to their place mat and have them plop it down from about four inches above. This will make an interesting rock shape and texture. This mix will set up pretty fast. We are working with Fresco painting today.

*Have the kids use sticks to draw the outline of their animal or person into the "stone" and then start painting it while it is still wet and drying. The color will soak in. Worse comes to worse you can just make the stone and carve the design on the first day and then paint the stone the next day.

Make sure to let the "stone" dry for a week or so before giving it back to the students. It will take about four months for it to dry out all the way. At that point it will be surprisingly lightweight and sturdy.

NEVER put plaster in the sink and down the drain. Wait for it to dry out a bid and scrape it into a trash. Also have your students rinse their hands into a wash bucket not the sink:)

Next time: Middle school cave project lessons

Art room # 4 cave art 2nd-3rd grade projects

2nd-3rd: I will set up the lesson by reading The First Dog, then we will look at a few posters of cave art drawings. We will think about what kinds of things we see in the paintings (animals, hand prints, some people, weapons for hunting). Then we will think about what colors we see used. We will also pay close attention to how the art works are "signed" by the artists hand print.

We will then do two project that I believe will take about three sessions (including reading the book).

Project 1: An easy version of the same project that all 2nd-8th graders will do. I hope to put them all together and plaster the hallway I am in to make our own cave. We will do a guided drawing practice of a four legged horse like animal. I'll show the kids how to put on a horse mane or different types of antlers to make it a elk or antelope. We will also do a guided practice drawing of a mammoth.

After our guided drawings we will crumple brown paper bags, tear along the edges to make it look rough like rock and do a drawing of the animal we practiced before. We will make sure to "sign" our work by tracing around our hand.

Here are some cute examples from kindergartners Ceder Creek Elementary School
( I full anticipate my 2nd graders work to look a lot like these kindergartners work based on how far along they were at the end of last year. Most of our students are one to two years behind developmentally due to a variety of reasons)




Our second project will have the student's making "clan" necklaces.
*On paper I will print a circle about the size of a silver dollar.
*Student's will make a disk out of modeling clay and add modeling clay on top of it with snakes of clay to make a design or they can "carve" into the clay.
*We will then take the disk. Put it face up in a wax paper cup and pour in plaster of Paris mixed with vermiculite that gives a stone texture.
*We will stick a bar-b-q skewer into the cup to make a hole in the pendent.
(Put each students name on the cup! )
* We will let the pendents dry for a week and then tear off the paper cup to revel the pendent.
(Make sure to write each students name on the back of the pendent! )

If I get the funding I want to get some fake leather cording to make the necklace part.

Art room # 3 First Dog --- cave art childrens book

I took a really great class this summer that focused on art through history for kids. During this class I was introduced to a new/ old book (1988) by Jan Brett called The First Dog. First dog is about a cave boy named Kip who is traveling home and keeps encountering dangers, he is forewarned about these dangers and saved again and again by a wolf who eventually becomes Kip's companion and therefore the "first" dog. Here is the official description of the book and a picture of the cover.



Between 35,000 and 12,000 years ago, as the last of the great glaciers of the Pleistocene advanced and retreated over the grasslands of Europe and the New World, people like ourselves--Homo sapiens sapiens--began to flourish. Hunters and gatherers, they wore clothes made of animal skins, had shell and bone ornaments and used such tools as spears and knives. They made music and were prolific artist. This was a time of exceptional artistic achievement and technological advance, and it may have been during this period that the first wild animals were domesticated.
Jan Brett has created an appealing story from this possibility, setting it in a breathtaking Ice Age landscape populated with animals that coexisted with early man in Europe and the New World. The images and ornaments of her borders were inspired by the cave paintings and artifacts surviving from this time.

I think this book will really appeal to my students for several reasons. First they really love dogs and stories of animal companionship (many of my students feel animals are more trustworthy than their human counterparts...which frankly, and sadly, is often true). Second this book features a independent and adventurous young child who has been out having a grand adventure...WITHOUT the aid of adults. What child doesn't like that idea. Third Jan Brett's illustrations are so appealing. Not only does she do wonderful illustrations, but each picture is surrounded by boarder images that let you go deeper into the story.

One of my favorite parts of this book is the stone or clay medallion that Kip gives first dog to show that he was part of Kip's clan. One of the projects I'm going to do with my students is have them make a "clan" medallion for their own family.

art room # 2 Cave art of France background info

Once we get past the first few weeks of the school year we will start our study of art from around the world and through time. This is a series of lessons that I have been working on for about 6 or 7 years now. I have a two week summer camp version of art around the world, a year long elementary version that I am working on right now and a half year long middle school version that I have used before and will tweak for this year to make it year long.

Of course when we talk about pre-historic art we have to start with France and the Caves of Lascaux. This website is phenomenal and allows you and your students to tour the many caves of the Lascaux area and learn about the history of the paintings and the discovery of them.

http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/

My 6-8th graders will go on a web scavenger hunt to learn more about these caves. I will post the scavenger hunt questions later.
This website is particularly nice because it has a time line that features other caves int he Lascuaux area...ones even older than Lascaux. The time line, and photos, start with Chauvet which is dated at about 32,000 BC! Lascaux is dated at around 17-18,000 BC.

2nd-8th grade will also be shown a slide show of images from the caves and we will talk about these questions:
*How old do you think these paintings are?
*Why do you think these paintings were made?
note: most students, and a lot of adults, will think that the artists of these caves were painting pictures about the food the people ate and of the hunts they went on. Some older students may go as far as to predict that the paintings were done as a tribute or to attract the animals, sort of like a rain dance. After making guesses I like to show a sister Wendy clip that explains that most of the animals painted were NOT part of the diet of these people. In fact we now believe that the paintings were done by religious leaders, shamans of a sort, who were calling upon the power of these great animals.
*What do you think the caves were used for?
*How do you think these paintings were made?
*What other objects do you think you might find in the caves?

Next we will watch the Sister Wendy Clip. Then talk about the spiritual nature of the caves, the power animals per say. We will see the use of power animals in many native cultures throughout the year.

For 2nd-5th this is when we stop and do our art projects.
For 6-8th this is when we stop and do the web scavenger hunt.
This year I am also going to seek permission to show some fertility figures such as the Venus of Willendorft. This figure was found in modern day Austria and was made between 24,000 BCE – 22,000 BCE. People have debated round and round in circles about the exact meaning of this statue, the only point they can agree on being that she is a fertility figure. I like her as a class discussion piece because she is A. Sculpture, B. Sculpture in the round, 3. Portable (shows the nomadic lifestyle) 4. clues us into how important having a close, large, fertile, family would have been to survival.
Questions for the Venus:
*Why make a statue of a pregnant women?
*Why would it have been good to have a larger family during that time period
*more people to hunt, defend family, if someone dies still have a functioning group
*What were men and women's job's during that time?
*Why do you think she doesn't have a face?

Now as much as I want to show this work of art it will depend on me getting permission from the principal...boobies and all, and how mature each class is. I might do more of the talking then having a group discussion for the first question for Venus.
I have found a few more "school appropriate" shots of the the Venus.
I have been working with middle scholars long enough to know that this viewing will be saved for AFTER our art projects are done or I will have a pack of boys drawing naked women all over their cave art.