Ancient Maya Art

This past term, in Year 5, we have been studying artwork inspired by the Mayans. We started by learning about the role of masks and looked at what colours, patterns and animals were used. The children then planned their mask before using oil pastels to bring their mask to life. The children remembered how to use the oil pastels to create a block of colour and we focused on trying to use a light colour to blend with as we know oil pastels do not blend as easily as the chalk pastels. The results are truly striking! We looked at the features of abstract from Kandinsky and then looked at the Maya calendar and used the symbols to create our own piece of abstract art. The children first had to use pencil to sketch out their design before using a black pen to outline the design. The finishing touch was to use drawing ink to block in parts of their design. The children were introduced to the word composition and learnt that this is the way in which all the elements work together to produce an overall effect. The children thought carefully about which parts of their abstract art would look most effective blocked in with ink.