Last month was all about line, patterns, and Mexican artist Pedro Linares López. Pedro came from a family of cartonería artists- artists who work with paper mache. After becoming very ill, Pedro had a fever dream of colorful, fantastical creatures that combined features of all different animals, such as a winged donkey and a rooster with a bull’s horns. Once he recovered, Pedro began sculpting the strange animals from his dream, and called them ‘alebrijes’. For our art project this month, we created our own alebrijes, and learned how to use lines and patterns to decorate them!
The kindergarteners started off by learning about our second element of art this year- lines! We practiced making many different kinds of lines, such as wavy, curly, and zigzags. We also discussed how lines are so important in art because they create shapes, movement, and other details in works of art. The first step was to trace two animals onto a colored piece of paper. The animals were an armadillo, a mexican wolf, a golden eagle, a crocodile, or a jaguar, all of which are native to Mexico. They cut out their animals, and then switched their heads. The students also added horns, wings, antlers, and tails to add even more details to their alebrijes. Once everything was glued together, they decorated their alebrijes with all sorts of line work to give their alebrijes the signature colorful look.
In addition to learning about line, the elm class learned how to use lines to make patterns. We defined the word ‘motif’, just a repeating element of either lines, shapes, or colors. The elm students used what they learned to make alebrije puppets! The could choose from a jaguar, crocodile, rooster, chihuahua, or dragon. They cut out all the parts of their puppets, added lots of colors, lines, and patterns with paint pens, and glued it all together. Even though most students used the same templates, each puppet was so unique! It was a fun project to celebrate Pedro’s legacy.
Check back in to see what we create next!