4th Grade began with a fairly quick project that started us out in the Ancient World, focusing on "The First Drawing." We took a look at Lascaux Cave in France and learned about some boys discovering these incredibly old cave drawings while they were out walking their dog. The largest drawing was actually over 3x larger than Mrs. Fisher stacked one on top of the other!
Our DSS friends taught us:
ABOUT LASCAUX CAVE
In 1940 a cave was discovered by teenage boys in southwest France. When they entered the cave, they were surrounded by paintings on the walls and ceilings. The paintings are estimated to be 17,000 years old. Most of these prehistoric paintings are of large animals, such as horses, cattle and bison, and were painted with black, red and yellow mineral pigments.
We followed up with a few links:
As for our project, we began by creating texture on our watercolor paper edges by tearing all the way around the page. Then we used regular washable markers to draw one of our example animals (or one of our choosing if we reeeally wanted to try). We focused on contour lines and didn't worry about mess ups because of the process that we were using. Once our animal was drawn, we talked about how Mrs. Fisher never lets anyone throw away markers that are dried up from no caps because we dip them in water to continue using them...we were learning yet another way we could use markers! We took paint brushes with plain water and painted from the edges of our animals toward the inside to make our ink bleed inward. We used more than one color to outline our animals so the colors could mix and swirl. Then we used liquid watercolor to paint our "cave wall" yellow, since it's the lightest value, and add the red slowly for a wet on wet technique that made part of our paper red, part orange, and the untouched area yellow. We discussed proper splattering etiquette and proceeded with that only if we wanted that effect and then finished up by adding some strong lines back to our animals with our original markers. We could dip them into the water first if we didn't want them TOO strong. See below for pictures and objectives!
Today I will learn about LASCAUX CAVE, so that I CAN create my own CAVE ART inspired by the PREHISTORIC drawings and paintings found on the walls and ceilings of a cave in France.
Today I will learn about EMPHASIS, so that I CAN make my animal drawing STAND OUT by CONTRASTING it with the light-colored background.
Today I will learn about LINE, so that I CAN draw the CONTOUR LINE of a CAVE ART ANIMAL with marker. I’ll know I have it when my ANIMAL take up most of the space of the paper.
Today I will learn about VALUE, so that I CAN create light and dark areas on my CAVE ART ANIMAL by painting water on my marker drawing
