Terra cotta horse mural project

 

These large horses were created by villagers in Tamil Nadu so that the protector Aiyanar (the guardian of the fields) could ride them at night to chase away evil demons, thereby ensuring good luck for the town and harvest. Different horses from different areas were decorated with different types of objects and creatures. Smaller sections were created on the wheel, fired separately, and then attached to make these life sized creatures.

In an earlier post I mentioned ideas for individual projects responding to these giant horses, but I just learned about this website, that turns images into large scale half-tone pictures that can be printed out on multiple sheets of regular paper to create an enormous mural. It could be fun to run this image, or a picture of a regular horse, through this process, and invite kids to decorate the different horse sections using either red or brown paint on day one and detail brushes and black paint on another day, or any other material, like black marker for the decorations and pastels for everything else. This is also in keeping with the manner in which the actual sculptures were pieced together by members of the community, so there's a nice symmetry to doing it this way.

 

Gond painting

 

 

The Gond people believe that viewing a good image brings you good luck so it's no surprise that their paintings are so joyful. They make the paintings on the walls of their houses to mark special occasions and only recently started to paint on paper with poster paints. Animals and nature scenes dominate these paintings, which consist of a simple single color shape filled with dots and lines described here as being: like undulations of song, like fables within tales, colourful dots and lines chase each other in close succession. Immense patience and delicate brush strokes are part of the meditative process. The Gond tribe was known for storytelling and song, and a connection could be made between that and the rhythmic energy of their heavily patterned artwork. One artist I spoke to told me the inspiration for the dots and dashes that fill the animals is rice, and the article I linked to above says they are evocative of the tattoos on the Gond women. The simple graphics combined with intricate patterning and vibrating colors provide instant inspiration for artists of all ages.

 

After outlining their animal shapes with pencil, children should choose one main color in acrylic or tempera paint to fill them in. Good quality markers or sharpies could be used for the patterning, or detail brushes and paint in both bright colors, black, and white. This could also be a great collage project, a photograph of an animal could be traced and cut out of fadeless paper or traced once onto multiple layers of colored tissue papers. Once those papers have been glued to a white background, acrylic paint can be added with a detail brush or toothpick. Dots, lines, and dashes can be used or students could think of a pattern that has some special significance. Add a black marker outline for a final touch.