Amate Bark Paintings

During our theme study this week our class has been learning about some of the native peoples who lived in Mexico long ago. We learned that the symbol in the center of the Mexican flag is an image from an Aztec legend. We also learned some about Aztec and Mayan culture including what types of art they made, what types of games they played (the Aztecs invented a game much like soccer!), and the fact that they made huge pyramids! Over the past several days we have been working on an art project that comes from the Otomi indians of Mexico. The Otomi made textured paper out of bark from Amate trees and would paint brightly colored pictures of birds, animals, flowers, and daily life on the paper. People in Mexico still make this type of art today! Mrs. Sorenson has two real Amate bark paintings from Mexico that we took a look at before starting work on our own. We used brown paper, instead of bark paper, and created our own paintings to look like the real ones from Mexico. Below are some photos of our process, including the examples on real Amate paper from Mexico!

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