Egyptian Cartouches

After our King Tut/Cleopatra projects, my Grade 6 students learn about Egyptian hieroglyphs and how to write their name using the cartouche format. 

I provide a cartouche template and an alphabet translation for their name. 

They sketch their name out vertically in pencil, the go over it in Sharpie and colour the background however they want- watercolours, coloured pencils, markers. Let dry then cut it out.

On a sheet of heavy white paper/cardstock, students design a border in an Egyptian style. They need to measure it to make sure there's enough space for their cartouche in the middle.

Again, they use markers or paint.

Once dry, glue stick the cartouche in the middle of the background border.

Some Grade 6 finished artworks:

Cleopatra & King Tut Portrait Paintings

I teach an Egyptian Art unit every year with my Grade 6 classes. Alas not this year but please admire the work of my last year's class!

All the instructions are on my original post HERE.

Last year I gave the option of pencil crayons as well as tempera. I definitely prefer the tempera ones though as they're much more dramatic. 

Egyptian Portraits and Cartouches

My Grade 6 class completes a unit on Egyptian art every year. We do a portrait of King Tut or Cleopatra and then make a cartouche of our name. 

It's easy to find cartouche patterns/templates online. HERE for example.

My kids used a hieroglyph handout to translate their name and wrote it vertically on the handout. Then they coloured it with whatever media they wanted. Then they cut them out.

On heavy white paper they had to paint or colour some sort of border design.

Once finished the cartouche was glued on top of the border paper.

Egyptian Portraits

Here's a lesson I love teaching: portraits of famous Egyptians. It started off originally as a King Tut portrait, inspired by THIS post from Kathy from Art Projects for Kids. Since then so many students ask me if the can instead do Cleopatra or Nefertiti, so now I just call it "Egyptian Portraits".

You can find my original post HERE.

Grade 6 students drew their portraits on 12 x 18" heavy white paper. they outlined them in Sharpie and then panted them with liquid tempera (mostly blue and gold).

Stay tuned for our upcoming name cartouches!

King Tut Egyptian Portrait

This Grade 6 lesson was inspired by Kathy Barbro's lesson found here on 

the blog Art Projects for Kids.

It is an excellent simplification and good intro into portrait drawing. I showed my kids a video and powerpoint explaining why, in fact, King Tut is so famous. Then I did a demo of the  basic drawing steps on the board.  The kids always seem to know alot about Egypt as they tend to study it in elementary school.

Here are the project steps below:

Practice drawing in sketchbook.....

Draw good copy on large heavy paper....

I was super impressed by this drawing--- so sophisticated.

Then outline all pencil lines with a permanent black marker.....

Then paint with tempera, including gold. For the gold tempera, we used the Italian brand PRIMO which I really like. I find with metallic temperas, in general, you usually need two coats of paint to get it nice and opaque.

    

One girl asked to do a female, so I suggested Cleopatra- 

I will probably give this option next time I teach this lesson.