Our second “lesson” in our summer project about the History of Art focused on Aboriginal Australian art and specifically dot painting. We looked online at various examples of dot paintings and discussed common features, such as the prominence of certain colours – and their symbolic significance – and the use of animal shapes and hand prints.
We poured out paint in the colours we had observed appeared most frequently in the paintings we had looked at and the children were given various utensils with which to make dot shapes – q-tips, bamboo skewers, old pencils – as well as being encouraged to use their own finger prints.
My 9 year old – feeling a bit minimalist in style and effort – decided to paint a pattern that looked a bit like an explosion or fireworks.
My 8 year old used the dots to construct a face and then used his hand prints to complete the figure.
My 12 year old has a penguin obsession so he used dots to create a penguin.
My 6 year old just had fun making patterns with circles, lines and dots and ended up creating what I think is a very successful piece.
I love, love, love using dots of paint in my art work (as you may have noticed!) so I decided to go dot crazy and create concentric circles filled with dots of different sizes. I was amazed I did not get bored working on the piece. Instead, I found it very therapeutic and calming to be doing something so repetitive and focused.
You can see my Dotty Bunny – part of my 100 Crazy Critters series – over on my art blog.