Japanese Notan Design

The last of our multi-cultural lessons...Notan is a design concept involving the play of light and dark as they are placed next to each other in art.  This is a cut paper project and is a good one for teaching about positive and negative space.

This project only takes about two class periods to complete and the results are always impressive! On day one. each student received a four inch square and was asked to draw two to three shapes per side.  Drawing a shape within the shape was an added challenge.  Then they cut all the shapes out and placed them in an envelop.  On day two they put there puzzle together.  Then they start gluing.  The remains of the square or the "negative space" goes down first in such a way that the longer shapes have enough room to flip out.  Now they flip all of the shapes a out to create a mirror image.

I am amazed at how some were able to achieve such high levels of detail with our not so great scissors.

Aboriginal Dot Paintings

Some stunning student examples of this project!  I am consistently blown away by what my students create given some basic guidelines.  I very much enjoy observing their process.

These paintings are inspired by the Aborigines of Australia who created paintings composed entirely of dots.  Their paintings  feature mostly animals and symbols and are created to tell a story.  The artistic process is emphasized. They are also well known for the X-ray style which is a technique where the artist envisions what might be on the inside of an animal.

The Aborigines believed  in a creation philosophy known as Dreamtime where the earth and all its inhabitants were created by ancestral beings that moved across the earth.

These paintings definitely have a special glow to them.

Well done!