Sunflower batik

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A4 size
2. oil pastels
3. pencil
4. tempera paint brown or black
5. liquid soap
6. brushes

Draw some sunflowers on the sheet and on the edges. Colour them with oilpastels, press heavily. Wrinkle the sheet into a ball; make sure the picture is on the inside.

Smooth the paper out. Use black or brown tempera with a tiny bit of liquid handsoap, and paint over the entire paper.

Then rinse the paper under cool water. The paint sticks in the little crinkle wrinkles giving it that batik look.

Leave the work to dry and press it flat between two books.

Made by students of grade 4

Sunflowers in five different materials

You need:

1. sunflowers or pictures of them
2. white drawing sheet A1 size, cut in strips of 30 by 65 cm
3. five different colouring materials, like colour pencils, tempera paint, watercolour paint, oil pastels, crayons, coloured ink, aquarell pencils etc.
4. brushes
5. pencil, ruler
6. coloured paper
7. scissors

Look with the students at some sunflowers or pictures of them. How thick is the stem, what can you tell about the leaves, how are the petals divided, what colours do you see in the heart of the flower, etc.

Divide the sheet with thin lines into five strips of 13 cm high. Draw some sunflowers. Make sure the flowers themselves are drawn at the demarcation of the strips. Make sure too that in each compartment at least half a sunflower or leave is drawn.

Choose five different colour materials. Use in every compartment a different material. Consider yourself the order of the materials, for example from bright (markers) to less bright (aquarelle pencils).

Paste the work on a coloured background. Or cut the five compartments and paste them with some space between on a coloured background.

Made by students of grade 5

African adire

Made by a student of grade 4

You need:

1. white drawing paper A4 size
2. crayons
3. liquid watercolour
4. brush
5. ruler
6. pencil

Yoruba women in Nigeria make a type of resist-dyed cloth that they call adire. They make some adire by folding, tying, and/or stitching cloth with raffia before dyeing. This is called adire oniko, after the word for raffia, iko. They also make another type, adire eleko, by painting or stenciling designs on the cloth with starch. Both types are dyed in indigo, a natural blue dye.

The dye-resistant starch can be either painted freehand or stenciled onto the fabric. When freehand painting, the artist usually paints a grid of squares or rectangles onto the fabric first. Then she fills these squares with geometric and representational motifs.

Stenciled patterns are even more diverse. New motifs, both geometric and representational, are constantly being created. They can include everything from simple shapes to elephants, keys, letters, and skyscrapers. The metal stencils are made by men, who sell them to the female adire artists.

Show some pictures of african adire and discuss them. Show African symbols and talk about their meanings.

Students use pencil and ruler to divide their sheets in squares of 5 by 5 cm. Draw with a yellow or white crayon symbols and/or patterns in these squares. Paint the sheet using coloured ink.