Cartoon Cartouche -- Draw Like an Egyptian

There have been many Mighty Andar's throughout history, including the Ancient Egyptian figure shown here. This is my example from a project in one of my fourth grade classes in which we all tried to "Draw Like an Egyptian. We studied shapes and designs in Egyptian art, and compared portraiture from this culture to human anatomy. It's fun to have the kids stand up and try to pose like this. Eyes front, but head in profile. Torso facing front, but legs in profile. Try it -- ow! Then we try to walk that way while playing that famous Bangles tune.

We all made self-portraits in the style of Ancient Egypt. We drew it within an Egyptian inspired shape and then tore around the shape in stead of cutting with scissors. We had some fun including things that we knew didn't exist in those times, but would make interesting drawings. Then we learned to write our name phonetically using hieroglyphics. There's a chart here that shows you what symbols represent what sound. This is a really good way to have students use the higher order thinking skill of translation. The drawing above reads "Mighty Andar does the laundry." and notice the laundry bottle says "owl, lips, lips" or "A-L-L". Andar's daughter dutifully carries the folded laundry away while two mischievous imps of the underworld scatter their dirty laundry on the floor. All art is autobiography.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. After making our drawings in pencil we outlined with Sharpie markers. Then we scrumpled the papers up. Yes, almost as if we were going to discard them. Then we flattened them out and painted over them with tea. Yes, tea at room temperature -- it gives it an antique look. We then colored a little with colored pencil.

There's an online hieroglyphics translator here, that's a lot of fun to try.