3rd Grade Chumash Rock Art

3rd Grade Artists started off the year with a multi-step collage based project based on Native American Chumash Rock Art. It took us a few weeks to get through but we definitely had a lot of fun while working through it.

Our friends at DSS introduced this project to us by teaching us:

This mixed media art project highlights the California Chumash Native American’s

tradition of rock art. Modern artist Mitchell Robles, who has Chumash ancestry, takes the symbols and rhythm of the original Chumash rock art and pairs it with bright colors on

canvas. His bold artwork provided the inspiration for this third grade lesson on balance, rhythm and variety.

ABOUT CHUMASH ROCK ART

The Chumash people of southern California have created paintings in caves and on cliffs for thousands of years. Common rock art subjects of the Chumash include humans, animals and abstract circles. These paintings are likely linked to religion and astronomy.

After Patty Palmer, our DSS "YouTuber" (we have video recorded informational sessions that aren't actually on YouTube but it's the easiest way to explain it to the kiddos) talked to us about the above, we step by step discussed how we were going to lay out this project. We used handouts with Chumash symbols to design our own projects. We started with oil pastel and tried to create a "Balanced Composition" where we focused on the weight of our drawings and their layout. Then we utilized that pastel as our watercolor resist and painted with liquid watercolor to create bright patches. Then we used Sharpies to create more symbols on origami paper and bubble cut around the contour to add more symbols into any empty space left around the paper. We could add extra paper shapes if we chose but we finished up with Sharpie accent details, in an effort to balance strong values in color. Check it out! Pictures and Objectives below!

Today I will learn about CHUMASH ROCK ART, so that I CAN create my own composition of SYMBOLS inspired by the art of CHUMASH Native Americans.

Today I will learn about BALANCE, so that I CAN create a stable composition by arranging the VISUAL WEIGHT of the elements in my composition.

Today I will learn about RHYTHM, so that I CAN create a feeling of organized MOVEMENT by including many SYMBOLS, COLORS and LINES in my artwork.

Today I will learn about VARIETY, so that I CAN design a composition that holds the viewer’s attention by including many styles of symbols that are made from various mediums.