Patayan Inspired Intaglio ~ An Art Project

As Wes and I have been working our way through the different ancient people that are part of the 4th grade curriculum here, we have been incorporating art projects. This week we have learned about the Patayan people. Among the things we learned is that the Patayan left behind amazing intaglios. Here's a great article we found: America’s Nazca lines We decided to make intaglios of our own. The project was a lot of fun and very easy to do. So for all of you art teachers or arty moms, we'd like to share:

This is Westen's Intaglio. He wanted to see how many different symbols he could make. We gathered inspiration from a little book we have called Easy Field Guide To Rock Art Symbols of the Southwest.

I couldn't resist getting in on the fun. I made a big person and a little person who seem to be celebrating the sun and their thriving corn crop as the lizards dance by.

This was a very easy project to put together. We just cut out pieces of cardboard from a box. We used our hands to coat one side of the cardboard generously with regular white craft glue like Elmer's. Then we covered the cardboard with black craft sand that you can buy in most craft stores. Then we just let it dry in the sun. To create our intaglios which actually means "incised designs", we used the wood end of a small paint brush. The brush end came in handy to remove loose sand or we just blew on it. We had a really good time with this one so we wanted to share!