Trends Modern Art

Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, is quickly approaching on November 2nd.

Of course, as a Mexican folk artist and teacher, this is my favorite time of the year! I love everything about it--the cool night air that Fall brings, the smell of copal (incense) burning,  the sweet sound of rattling shells on the ankles of the Aztec dancers and the colorful sights of the altars, the sugar skulls, the face painting....and of course, the artwork.

I am so excited!

My kids are equally excited about this day because I usually have an art activity planned for them, in addition to the other activities of the night. There are so many interesting and exciting aspects about this day, culturally and artistically--it's so much more than "Mexican Halloween".  It's a holiday steeped in tradition and every year its influence spans wider and wider.

In response to the demand, I've decided to create an activity plan to share Day of the Dead on the interwebz. It is perfect for the classroom--whether it be a traditional public school classroom, the charter school hybrid,  private school or a group of homeschoolers. It's suitable for all ages, and it's supported by twelve quality links for you to explore.

What makes this activity plan different from others you've seen is that I've created six custom coloring pages for teachers to share with their classroom. That's right, I've infused my own Day of the Dead style of art into these coloring sheets and they can be used in a variety of ways and incorporated into several art lessons for your students.

When you order this 10-page activity plan, you'll receive:

• Summary of the origins of Day of the Dead
• Vocabulary words
• Six unique black and white calavera coloring sheets that you are free to reproduce as many times as you wish*
• You can choose from a Frida Kahlo calavera, a dancing couple, a punk rocker, skulls with roses, a school girl and a large sugar skull (which you can use as a template to create a mask).
• In addition to several other ideas for you to celebrate this holiday with your students, there are 12 interesting and educational links for you to explore.

I can't wait for you check out my activity pages! The image above is a sneak peak of the first page. My own children have been coloring them with markers for days now and they are really enjoying all of the organic designs, especially the punk rocker and the Frida Kahlo calavera.

*All images on the activity pages are meant solely for personal use and use in the classroom. Do not reproduce for sale in any form.

I wrote "graffiti art" in quotation marks because Keith Haring's artwork is considered graffiti art, but in reality, aerosol artists were already wreaking havoc on subway trains and walls in NYC before Haring was ever called a graffiti artist.

But you can still put Haring in that category because the art he created was, in essence, the same thing those young vandals were doing on the walls in the middle of the night. While riding the subway, Haring noticed the billboards that were in the process of being changed were left with a black, matte board. That was when he began creating transitory rhythmic, line drawings on them, in white chalk. Sometimes creating as many as 40 a day!

I thought this would be a fun project to do in markers, to give the students another chance to work with the colorful markers.

• Hand out 9 X 12 drawing paper or poster board.
• Have a discussion about family and friend relationships. Haring devoted much of his time to public works that carried social messages. We decided to work on a family/friends theme.
• Each students lightly sketched their drawing, making sure to use Haring's iconic heart shape.
• Encourage each student to use a variety of colors and to fully color in their design, outlining in black for the colors punch through.

The artwork above was created by my son, who is in the fourth grade.

Finally, another female artist! Sonia Delaunay is the wife of Abstract painter Robert Delaunay and interestingly enough, their work is fairly similar in style. Throughout her career, she explored the concepts of geometric abstraction and Orphism. I thought this would be a great way to introduce repetitive shapes, using a compass and a ruler, and coloring with markers. Everybody loves markers!

At least they do in my house.

We had fun with these markers because I bought a few scented markers in the mix. So throughout the entire class, we were sniffing marker tips--which I only recommend if they are non-toxic, of course.
"Oooh, this is root beer!"
"This smells like chocolate."
"Blueberry!"
"Mmmm, cherry!"
and
"Ew, this smells like window cleaner."

• I bought several inexpensive compasses and rulers and passed them out to the students. They also got a 9 X 12 piece of drawing paper.
• Make sure to instruct your students how to use a compass, and make sure they don't poke huge holes in their paper.
• I brought several packages of Crayola washable markers because they had so many rich, color options and they flowed smoothly.
• After showing the students some of Delaunay's work and they were sufficiently inspired, we got down to drawing.
• The students were instructed to use the compass so they could draw circles of various sizes, careful not to overlap the shapes.
• After they were finished laying out their circles, they used a flat ruler to dissect their drawing.
• And then it's time to get to coloring! Instruct students to use the same color in at least two other places so there can be some sort of cohesiveness in the design and color scheme.
• Give the children tips on how to color with the markers, taking care to use the tip only when doing an outline. Teach them to color by using the sides of the marker, which makes it look more neat and smooth. Then you don't injure the tip of the marker.
• A big plus to using Crayola markers was there was literally no smell. I love Sharpies as much as the next person, but they stink up the classroom to high heaven.

This was a nice change of pace. We will definitely be using markers for our projects again.

The artwork above was created by my 8-year old son.