Symmetry, Color Mixing, and Ndebele Art- 5th Grade

Objectives:
- We can identify the key characteristics in artwork of the Ndebele of South Africa.
- We can create artwork, in the style of the Ndebele, that uses symmetry, color mixing, bright colors, and bold outlines.

I wanted to jump right into the school year with a challenging, colorful, and fun project. I remember studying the Ndeble (En-Da-Be-Le) of South Africa during my African art history class, back  in Art school. I looked up projects that other teachers have been doing around the country, and saw THIS lesson over at http://artteacheradventures.blogspot.com. It's an excellent lesson, and decided to try it out in my classroom. I adapted the lesson, as best as possible, to Tennessee Art and Social Studies standards.

Standards:
Tennessee Art Standards:
1.5  Recognize and demonstrate levels of craftsmanship. 
2.1  Analyze and apply the elements of art.  

6.2  Identify connections between visual art and social studies.

    
Tennessee Social Studies Standards: 

1.01 Understand the diversity of human cultures.

1.02 Discuss cultures and human patterns of places and regions of the world.

I scoured the internet and put together a folder of pictures of Ndebele artwork, both historic and contemporary. Ndebele mostly paint these intricate designs on the outside of their houses, but in recent times, the designs have spread to clothing, cars, and canvas paintings.

We started out by identifying Africa using Google Earth, and then specifically locating South Africa. I walked the kids through the visual examples of the Ndebele artwork and discussed the traditions and processes behind the artwork. I made sure to emphasize the following Art vocabulary words during our discussion.

Symmetry
Primary Colors
Secondary Colors
Tint
Shade 
Outline

I supplemented the lesson using My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me by Maya Angelou. It is a lovely book, filled with excellent pictures, telling the story of the daily life of a young Ndeble girl in modern times. My class enjoyed seeing all the visuals in the book and realizing that this is a contemporary form of artwork in the world.

Image via Amazon

I gave every student a 11"x17" sheet of watercolor paper. Since the Ndebele do not use rulers, I told the students that they would have to free hand their symmetrical designs. We started by creating a large "X" from corner to corner on our papers. The rest was up to the kids. They had to create a symmetrical design, using the style of the Ndebele as inspiration. Students then traced their pencil lines with thick black paint.

Sketch and outline

On the second and third days of the project, students were given red, yellow, blue, white, and black. We discussed how to mix paint, with me giving demonstrations at the beginning of each class. The remainder of the goals for the project were to fill in the entire painting with at least one from each of the following categories.
Primary
Secondary
Tint
Shade

Primary colors, black, white

Mixing colors!

Assessment consisted of a post test. The test asked students to identify the primary colors, the secondary colors, tint, shade, and information about the Ndebele. If I were to do it over again, I would have started the unit with a pretest as a way to better monitor student learning. Ah well, next time I guess! I thought the artwork turned out pretty rad. This lesson was a neat way to learn about world cultures, and color mixing. Yay!

Heck yah! That kid can paint!