First Nations Headresses - Art Project

Well we finished our Headresses in time for Parent/Teacher interviews and here are the results.  This project is in relation to the Fur Trade unit Grade 5 are taking in Social Studies.  We discussed how furs were often traded for beads to decorate clothing and ceremonial objects.


You can click on photo to see larger.

Great job Grade 5!!

We started out by drawing a head in profile...the kids used a 1/2 sheet of 90lb watercolor paper.  I asked them to try and fill the space with the head as we were mounting them on a full sheet of black posterboard.

We talked a bit about placement of features....to try and keep the tip of the nose as the center of the head and not the eyes..to extend out with a rounded skull that connects back to the jaw line...to add a jaw line so the head and neck are distiguished from one another.

I then asked then to draw a band for the headress that sort of looks like a boomerang and a large circular medallion.  We cut these out of white posterboard.

You can test the size ...the heads were already cut out and we measured on the posterboard where the forehead was and where we wanted the band to end.  This made the sketching out easier.

I had printed off some reference photos for them to help them along.

Then the painting started.  They had to paint the head...the band (it needed to have a design as it was to show beading), the medallion, and then as many feathers as they could fit on another 1/2 sheet of watercolor paper in assorted sizes.

The kids are using disk tempera.

I also asked them to paint a square of newspaper in at least 2 colors using liquid tempera for the beads we were going to make...you could also use photocopier paper for this.

We then cut out all our components.  It was easier to paint our feathers uncut and this also decreased the amount of curling when they dried.

We then glued our heads down on our black poster board taking care to move our heads to the side giving us room for the headress.

Using fine sharpies we added lines to our medallion and band to make it appear beaded...we are trying to alternate our lines like shingles on a roof.

We then hold our band up to the head to see where the feathers should go and start gluing them down...here we have a board over the face to help the glue dry flat.


We used some real colored feathers as well to help fill out our headress.

We then glued our band into place.

We took our bead paper and cut it into long triangles. 

We then took a pencil and began rolling the paper starting with the wide end first.

When you are about 1/2 way down the paper apply some glue to the center of the remaining paper.

Continue rolling.

And then slide the bead off the pencil.

We made a hole thru our medallion...strung some beads on a piec of yarn with some pony beads mixed it and knotted our yarn.  We then glued our medallion in place on the band about where the ear would be.

...and that was it.

We had lots of Leprechaun traps arriving on Tuesday.......

but no Leprechauns were caught yesterday although they mixed up everyone's shoes in the classrooms.


I'll see you next time with some photos of the school wide art display that was put together for Parent/Teacher interviews.

Take care.