During the month of November students of Lancashire learned about the holiday Diwali and created a variety of art projects related to traditional folk art in India. Diwali is the five-day festival of lights, celebrated by millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Jains across the world. The festival, which coincides with the Hindu New Year, celebrates new beginnings and the triumph of good over evil and light over darkness.
Connecting to the Visual Arts STandards
Anchor Standard 10: Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art.
Essential Question: How can making art help us learn and reflect on community and cultural traditions?
VA:Cn10.1.Ka
VA:Cn10.1.2a
VA:Cn10.1.4a
Essential Question: How can making art help us learn and reflect on community and cultural traditions?
VA:Cn10.1.Ka
VA:Cn10.1.2a
VA:Cn10.1.4a
Student Artwork Slideshow
Art Lesson Information
Traditional Warli Art
| Warli painting is a style of tribal art mostly created by the tribal people from the North Sahyadri Range in India. The simple pictorial language of Warli painting is matched by a rudimentary technique. The ritual paintings are usually created on the inside walls of village huts. The walls are made of a mixture of branches, earth and red brick that make a red ochre background for the paintings. The Warli only paint with a white pigment made from a mixture of rice paste and water, with gum as a binder. A bamboo stick is chewed at the end to give it the texture of a paintbrush. Walls are painted only to mark special occasions such as weddings or harvests. |  Kindergarten & 1st Grade ProjectUsing white crayons and oil pastels on brown paper Kindergarten and first grade students created Warli style artwork depicting people, nature, and houses using symbolic geometric shapes. |
Diya Lanterns
 2nd & 3rd Grade ProjectUsing construction paper, oil pastels, scissors, and glue 2nd and 3rd grade students constructed small diya lanterns. Each student practiced new blending techniques with oil pastels and Q-tips to create realistic looking flames for our lanterns. | A Diya is an oil lamp used in the Indian subcontinent, notably India and Nepal, usually made from clay, with a cotton wick dipped in ghee or vegetable oils. Diyas are native to the Indian subcontinent often used in festivals such as Diwali. The lightening of Diyas forms a part of celebrations and rituals of the festival. The houses are decorated with small diyas being placed at boundaries and entrance of houses. In fact, the name of Diwali is derived from the Sanskrit word Deepavali, which means the row of lights ("deep" means Diya and "avali" means row). |
Mehendi "Henna" Designs
 | Mehndi or mehendi is a form of body art from Ancient India, in which decorative designs are created on a person's body, using a paste, created from the powdered dry leaves of the henna plant. Practiced mainly in the Indian Subcontinent, mehndi is the application of a temporary form of skin decoration. Mehndi decorations became fashionable in the West in the late 1990s, where they are called henna tattoos. |
Using a variety of skin color construction paper, pencils, permanent markers, and scissors 4th and 5th grade students created realistic Mehendi hand and arm designs. Students researched popular Mehendi designs and their symbolic meaning before creating their own unique and personal design. Individual Mehendi hands were cut out by students and then glued in small groups to collaborative painted canvases.
National Bird & Mammal
Classes that finished their Diwali art lessons early did animal studies on India's national animals using oil pastel, water color paint, and pencil.
 | Did you know that a Peacock is the national Bird of India? |
Did you know that a Tiger is the National Mammal of India? |  |
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