Saturday, March 21, 2020

Maya Glyphs in Charcoal


Starting today I'm going to try and post art lessons that use simple and/or minimal supplies, to help those of us who are teaching from home (including me!)

This lesson only requires charcoal and some type of drawing paper. It helps if you have white chalk pastels as well for shading.

I introduced my Grade 7-9 students to the ancient Maya civilization. I showed them a map of the world where they are located as well as some images of their glyphs. I also showed the video below:








I created handout from images I found online of Maya glyphs and their translations. Students could also choose to write their name as per instructions in THIS PDF file. 
First they sketched out their glyph(s) onto grey construction paper.
I did a demo on the different types of charcoal (vine, conte and compressed) and let them choose between conte or compressed. I also showed them how to shade these to make them look like carved glyphs. 




They fill in the center areas with white then outline them with black or brown and then blend it all together using their fingers or a blending stump.



Charcoal does erase and I recommend that you keep specific erasers separate just for charcoal and chalk pastels projects- mine were so dirty afterwards, lol


Some finished Grade 7-9 artworks- our school shut down mid project!













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