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Yesterday you learned that the Aborigines, the native people of Australia, paint on tree bark. They paint animals, animal tracks, spirits, and scenes that illustrate their beliefs. Today, paint your own animal on “bark,” just like the Aborigines.
Supplies Needed:
Paper Bag
Paints
Paintbrush
Q-Tips (optional)
Like any time you paint, cover your workspace before you begin.
Choose one or two animals that can be found in Australia. I chose a snake and a lizard. Other great options include kangaroos, koala bears, and emu.
The Aborigines paint on the smooth inside of the bark, but my paper bag had some ridges in it. To make it more even, I crumpled up the bag and then smoothed it back out.
Decide on a background color. I chose black but you could pick brown, white, or orange. Paint your “bark” with whichever color you choose. Let it dry before you continue. Mine took about 30 minutes to dry.
Paint your animals onto the bag. Let them dry.
Now add in details and patterns. You may wish to paint stripes onto your animal, or triangles and dots onto the background. (Q-tips are great for making dots.) This is the fun part so go crazy. If you need some inspiration, look at this gallery of bark paintings.
When you have finished your painting, and it has dried, you may decide to tear away any extra paper. That’s why the edges of my painting look fuzzy and brown. This is a great thing to have an adult help you with. You’ll want to be careful not to rip any part of your painting.
Hang your bark painting and enjoy!
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Plaid Kids Crafts has featured my Eric Carle inspired Valentines post. Check it out, along with many other great arts and craft projects, at their website. 
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Just came across this adorable Valentines Day project. I love the little boxes with the drawings on them. Since I wasn't the only person to wonder about sending unwrapped candy to school, you might want to try individually wrapped hard candies or Starbursts (always a kid-pleaser).More Aboriginal art to come...Return to main page.
Aborigines have lived in Australia for thousands of years. They are the natives of Australia, just like Native Americans are the natives of the U.S. Aborigines have a long history of creating beautiful art that shows their beliefs, Australian animals, and even the weather that is typical of parts of Australia.
Over the next few days, I’ll be posting about the art of the Aborigines.
A lot of Aboriginal art shows the beliefs of the native Australians. The Aborigines believe that magical creatures lived on earth long before humans did. These creatures created the earth from flat land. Aborigines believe that all the land forms were created in the shapes of animals. For example, rivers were created in the shape of a snake.
In northern Australia, in an area called Arnhem Land, Aboriginal artists often paint on bark. The artists strip the bark off of eucalyptus trees. They let the bark dry and then paint on the inside of the bark. They use natural colors like brown, yellow, white, and orange.
The patterns and designs used in bark painting have been around for a long time. They were painted on bodies during rituals and used to decorate logs during certain ceremonies. Aboriginal artists began painting on pieces of bark about 100 years ago.
The artists paint scenes about the way the land was created. These paintings usually include animals because many of the Aboriginal myths were about animals.
The Aborigines also have myths about spirits who were so skinny they could be broken by wind. They lived in caves and under rocks where they were safe from the wind. They taught the Aborigines to hunt and to paint. These spirits, called Mimis, are found in many Aboriginal bark paintings.
Some paintings show constellations. The Aborigines see different pictures than we do when they look at the stars, though. Their constellation paintings often include animals, too.
You will also see paintings of footprints and paw prints. This is because the Aborigines are good at tracking animals and they are good hunters. The Aborigines hunt for food so hunting is very important to them.
Check out this gallery of Aboriginal bark painting from Arnhem Land.
Tomorrow, create your own Aboriginal bark painting!
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I waited until Saturday to post this week’s Fabulous Fiction Friday post not because I forgot, but because I wanted to tell you about a book that is not related to art. Gasp.
But since we were talking about angles yesterday, I thought the story of a knight who uses angles to complete a quest would be a great choice for this week’s book.
Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland, written by Cindy Neuschwander and illustrated by Wayne Geehan, is the story of Radius and his quest to find his neighbor, King Lell. Armed with only a circular medallion (a compass), Radius travels through a cute little town full of houses whose roofs connect at small angles. He then makes his way through the mountains of Obtuse. Finally, he must solve a series of angle-related challenges to make his way through the castle to rescue King Lell.
This book is full of math puns (which I love), and even includes two dragons that belong to King Lell (the “pair of Lell’s”).
This is a fun story and a great introduction to angles.
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