Aboriginal Inspired Lizards

 

The idea for this project came from a picture found on Pinterest which lead me HERE to the Swedish Blog 'Creativ Company'. These reminded me of aboriginal punu (wood carvings) of lizards I had seen, so I decided this would be a good introduction for my grade threes to aboriginal art as well as mixed media sculpture. 

 

image via Artlandish.

image via waltja tjutangku palyapayi

 We began with a thick stick for each student and a couple of long pieces of soft wire. I decided rather than drilling any holes that I would have my students wrap the wire around the body. I instructed them to bend the end of each piece of wire to represent the toes and then each piece of wire was wrapped around the stick to form two sets of legs. Students then applied a base colour paint of their choice to the body and legs. 

After viewing Aboriginal paintings and carvings, students used a tiny brush and a matchstick to apply a pattern of stripes and dots in colours of their choice. Small googly eyes were glued on to complete and immediately these lizards had quirky personalities of their own!