Aboriginal Dot painting for kids.

 While my older art students were studying Yayoi Kusama, Princess of Polka Dots, younger students were learning how dots and pattern have been used in traditional cultures in Australia. I gave a simple lesson that touches on the wildlife, geography, and art of Australia, then we discussed the symbols used in the art, including arrows, circles, hands, wavy river lines. Animal motifs are also very important. Some students chose to do turtles or snakes, others traced their hands, and others used more abstracted symbols. They dipped the backs of pencils or paint brushes into latex paint, which makes tactile dots when it dries. That, along with high value contrast is the perfect combination for my low vision students.  You can see from the picture, that some students, with no vision used Wiki Stix to use as guides as they painted their pieces.

Japanese Brush Art

I got my Japanese calligraphy kit in Asahikawa 25 years ago. It is the same kit school kids carry to school to grind their ink and practice their brush strokes to master shodo (the way of writing). My low vision students appreciate the high contrast of black ink on white rice paper. My students were amazed at the fact that there is a phonetic alphabet called hiragana, and a separate one for foreign words called katakana, on top of the thousands of kanji characters. No more complaining about our 26 letter alphabet, which by the way, Japanese kids learn as well. I just wrote each student name in Katakana for them to practice.

Then we learned a few brush strokes for a bamboo ink painting. This was just a tiny sampling, as it would take hours and days for them to get very good at it, but there is something relaxing about repeating lines and trying to make them a little better each time. I brought in a piece of bamboo that is much taller than me and could be used to construct a hut, as well as the thin, leave covered bamboo shoots, cut fresh that morning. I showed them bamboo skewers for kabobs on the grill and bamboo paper fans, which they then used to write their name or paint a bamboo image.