Concept for Tafe display using dreamcatchers

Concept - Bedroom made out of Eco friendly products, ensuring sustainability needs are met. Measurements of area are limited so I'm going to create the illusion of a bedroom with a one point perspective drawing and include props made out of recycled products as the furniture.

Bedroom drawing/painting - Butcher paper or flipchart paper
Bed - created from a cardboard box, painted with organic paint made the way the Aborigines made paint.
Bedside tables - created from recycled beer cartons also painted with organic paint.
Dreamcatchers - to be hung with bio degradable fishing line.

Research.

Idea of a one point perspective drawing below.

 

Organic paint

What you need

To do this activity you will need:

• jar for mixing paint
• hammer
• tablespoon
• teaspoon
• two freezer-style sealable bags
• a large stick
• coloured chalk in colours of ochre – yellow, brown, red or a mix to make these colours
• one egg yolk
• one ice-cream stick
• rock, paper, bark or object to paint
• water
• paper towel
• sticks, fingers or straws for painting.

What to do

1. Place one freezer bag inside the other. Place one large stick of coloured chalk into the inner bag and seal both bags. Using the hammer, break the chalk into a very fine powder (or use a mortar and pestle).
2. Pour the powder into a clean jar. Add one teaspoon of water to the container (or saliva if you are sticking to traditional methods). Mix the powder and water with the ice-cream stick until you have a fine, smooth paste.
3. Add one tablespoon of egg yolk to act as a binder.
4. Slowly add water until you have paint the consistency you desire. It will probably take about three tablespoons.
5. Start painting.

What’s happening

Paint is made of tiny coloured particles floating in a liquid, instead of dissolving. This is called a colloid. The coloured particles in the chalk are suspended, or floating, in the egg and water mix. When you paint, the egg hardens and protects the pigment from washing off.
This is the paint-making method Aborigines used many thousands of years ago. However, because many of the paints were made without a binder (saliva was mostly used), the pigment was not protected from being washed away. As a result, only the rock art paintings in sheltered caves and rock over-hangings have survived the weathering of thousands of years. Today, however, Aboriginal artists use man-made binders.

Making paint the indigenous way

The colour pigment for Aboriginal painting is called ochre. With a crumbly to hard texture, the rock that ochre comes from is heavily coloured by iron oxide (Fe₂O₃). It comes in a variety of colours, including yellow, deep purple, dark red and brown. Chemically, all ochres are the same, their difference in colour is due to the different conditions in which they were formed, their crystalline structure and other minerals in the rock.
White coloured ochre is produced from kaolin, which is a product of weathering often found in creek beds. The colour yellow is collected as water-worn pebbles and is thought to be a limonite-stained form of kaolin. And black is made from charcoal, and is often mixed with white kaolin to produce grey.
For many Aboriginal people the colours of ochres represent the colours of the body:

• white is the colour of bones
• brown is skin
• red represents blood and is a sacred colour
• yellow is similar to the colour of body fat.

Ochre paint is made by grinding rock to a powder and mixing it with a fluid, such as saliva, blood, orchid sap or yolk of turtle eggs. It is painted onto bark, bodies and rock using a variety of methods, including brushes made from small bunches of hair or chewed twigs.

To be continued