Materials: 12x18" lt.blue paper, white crayons, blue tempera, colored paper, construction paper crayons
To begin this project I distributed maps of Africa to my students. We found Nigeria and I gave a brief description of this country. I explained the process of creating Adire Eleko cloth, which is a cloth that has patterns drawn on with a paste. The cloth is then dipped into a blue dye again and again until the cloth is a deep blue. The paste is scraped off to reveal the designs underneath. The cloth is then used as a wrap around one's body. For our project I chose to use a crayon resist method to simulate the results of the fabric. I had students use white crayons and draw on light blue paper so they could see their designs. We then went over our entire paper with blue tempera.
For the second part of our project I had the students identify the village of Fakaha, which is located on the Ivory Coast of West Africa. The Senufo people are known for their mud paintings of stylized animals. My students looked at copies of the stylized animals and we discussed the qualities that make them stylized. I asked them to take these ideas and to draw a large stylized animal of their own on colored paper (the best ones were the ones created out of dark paper). We cut them out and drew patterns with construction paper crayons before gluing them on our painted paper.
