Wednesday, April 8

--No quiz today! We started with a whole-class discussion over ch. 10-13.
--I gave some background on Deepavali, or Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, and we worked the rest of class on some artwork related to that. The assignment is pasted below, but it would be good to look at some pictures of "Rangoli" first. (If you type "rangoli" into Google images you'll get an idea of what these designs look like.) We used black construction paper and colored pastels, but you can use sidewalk chalk instead. We'll be finishing these next class, too.
--Homework: Read ch. 14-18 (pgs. 83-112) for Monday; Eurasian Conference clothing assignment is due in history tomorrow!


Creating Rangoli

During Deepevali (or Diwali), colored patterns called Rangoli are created near the entrances of homes to welcome in Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.

Rangoli patterns are traditionally drawn with the fingers using flour, rice grains or colored chalk. They can be square, rectangular or circular—or a mix of all three. They are usually colorful, geometric and symmetrical, and the motifs are usually taken from nature—peacocks, swans, flowers and so on.

Rangoli were originally done in small patterns of about 2 foot square, but now entire areas of floor can be covered in intricate designs, often produced by first drawing gridlines in light chalk.

See examples below for some traditional Rangoli designs.

Directions:
Use a ruler to draw out an evenly-spaced grid of dots in white pastel onto a piece of black paper. These can be as close together (to make the design intricate) or as far apart (for more simple designs) as you like.

Now draw out an outline of your design with the white pastel. When you’re done, fill in with colored pastels. Most of your design should be colored in instead of just black.