Aboriginal Art
A Journey Down Under
Aims of today’s Lesson
Today we are going to
• discover a little bit about Australia and the Aboriginal
People
• learn about aboriginal culture and art
• study the symbols used in aboriginal art and put
them into our sketchbooks to use at a later date to
create our own artwork
• And we will look at colour and understand how
different colours may have different meanings
Introduction to Australia
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The country's largest & best known
city is Sydney but the capital is
Canberra.
The Gold coast is a seemingly endless
stretch of beaches.
Australia is the size of western
Europe.
When you leave the cities, Australia is
open and almost empty, you can go
days without seeing a person.
In the centre of the country is the
great Ayers Rock (Uluru), it rises 1400
feet from the desert plane & is 5.5
miles round its perimeter.
The rock is considered sacred and
spiritually significant to the
Aboriginal people (red sandstone).
Famous images of Australia
Sydney Opera House
Ayers Rock
Bush Fires
Australian Flag
Outback
Bondi Beach
Animals
Sources say that the Aboriginal culture
settled in Australia around 50,000 years
ago. After settling in Australia they told
FORM & SYMBOLISM
stories about visions and rituals by painting
The Aboriginal flag is divided
with pigment found naturally in the outback.
horizontally into halves. The top half is
black and the lower half red. There is a The method they used for painting is
yellow disk in the centre of the flag.
referred to as bark painting. The process
involved cutting bark from trees during the
The meaning of the three colours in the wet season and placing it in a fire to cure.
flag, are
Black - represents the Aboriginal people When the bark was taken out of the fire it
was flattened with stones or logs. This was
of Australia.
Red - represents the red earth, the red then used as the painting canvas. Finally
ochre used in ceremonies and
they would apply paint or pigment using a
Aboriginal people’s spiritual relation to technique called ‘dotting’. Brushes, sticks
the land.
and fingers were used to create designs
Yellow disk - represents the Sun, the
that reflected dreams, rituals and a rich
giver of life and protector.
cultural history. Some researchers say that
most of the paintings had some sort of
mythological undertone.
AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL FLAG
Aboriginal People
Aboriginal Facts.
• Aboriginal people told stories about
their life and history in their
paintings.
• They would dot their paintings using
brushes, sticks and fingers.
• They tell stories in words and
pictures.
• The stories are called ‘Dream time
stories.’
• Aboriginal art uses Earth colours
(colours of the desert) such as
browns, reds
• Symbols are used to tell stories
• The canvas is covered in small dots of
paint
• The dots make patterns or symbols
• Frogs are respected in Aboriginal
culture because they lead to water.
Aboriginal Art
Aboriginal Colours
Black
Black stands for the colour of
the Aborigine people and
night.
Yellow
Yellow is the sacred colour.
The colour of the sun.
Red
Is for the colour of the land and
for blood. ‘We are all of one
blood, from the land we come
and to it we will all return.’
White
White is the spirit colour, like
smoke, wind and lightning.
Aboriginal Symbols
Meeting
Emu
Man
Witchetty grubs
Child
Coolamon
Campfire
Woman
Kangaroo
Goanna
Bushbannana
Dingo
Yundee
Fire sticks
Aboriginal Symbols
Aboriginal images.
Aboriginal Artists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC8z8rAYLHw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T20Twjiu9Y4
Examples of Artwork
Digital Aboriginal Art
By the end of this Project……
• We will have a better
understanding of Aboriginal Art
• Have learnt about the symbols
used in Aboriginal Art
• We would have experimented
with paint and used dot art like
the Aboriginal Artist – maybe
using tools like sticks and pen lids
• Will have discovered Aboriginal
Dreamtime Stories
• And we will have all made our
own Aboriginal Painting!
• We should have had lots of fun!