Abstract painting: ethno-motives of the Australian aborigines. Australian visual arts

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In my travel blog, I have already talked about a package from Australia that I received a few days ago.

Souvenirs from a distant, mysterious country were painted based on Australian Aboriginal art. In Australia it is held in high esteem; it is even studied in universities. And, of course, they put it on souvenirs. After all, what can tell better about a country than its ethnic art?

This was drawn by Australian artist Ron Potter.

I have never seen anything like this in my life. My daughter and I admired it and, of course, decided to try to portray something similar.

It seemed to us that we would do it beautifully - after all, the patterns are not that complicated. We first drew with a simple pencil (contours), then with a gouache brush, and then applied the gouache with cotton swabs (this was the most exciting part of the drawing process).

However, the simplicity of the image turned out to be very deceptive. Well, of course, we are not such masters either. In general, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t achieve the same beauty.

And this is what I drew...

This picture shows a kangaroo - the totem of the coastal Aboriginal clans. Australian Aboriginal art is very symbolic. And in each drawing there is a whole story. The totem kangaroo makes its way to the central part of the continent to sell goods and get money.

Ocher patterns symbolize money (gold). And traces mark the trade route. Do you see how difficult it is?

By the way, Australian artists are engaged in promoting Aboriginal art for a reason, but for charitable purposes. And the percentage from the sale of souvenirs to enthusiastic tourists goes towards maintaining and preserving this art, which brings a good income to the aborigines. Great idea, right?

And this is what my daughter tried...

Australia is a very rich country in terms of beauty. And absolutely unknown to me and my children.

I think our drawings are just the beginning of our acquaintance with Australia. And my daughter and I will definitely read about Australian animals and draw some of them.

Well, you can find my story about the parcel from Australia here - worldroads.ru/posyilka-iz-avstralii. I'm sure you will find it interesting!

Do you know anything about Australian Aboriginal art?

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Before you learn how to draw an Indian, I should tell you a little about the subject. The Indian is a red-skinned bro, so named because of the absurd mistake of Mr. Columbus (Famous, who did not even suspect that he had discovered not India at all, but America). According to generally accepted concepts, the Indian always looks thoughtful, smokes a pipe and wears a feather kokoshnik. When a stranger sets foot on their land, the Indian (slapping his palm on his lips and making the sound O-O-O) runs headlong to his tribe, where they kindle and sharpen their spears and arrows. But when strangers present them with overseas gifts, the Indian buries the hatchet. Later, the leader of the tribe and the guests sit in a circle, in the most customized wigwam, and light a pipe of peace (most likely with some unusual herb, since the leader very often sees all sorts of visions prophesying evil).

The Indian is perfectly adapted to life, knows how to kill animals with his tomahawk and skin them, grow corn and make popcorn from it. An Indian woman plucks poor birds and sews dream catchers from their feathers. The female Indian is most often beautiful, judging by the cartoon Pocahontas.

Currently, there are practically no Indians left as such. A special court order was adopted to move all Indians to museums, and to build naphtha derricks, factories and clubs with poker and courtesans in their habitat. And a little later, the blacks rebelled and filled all of America. So it goes.

How to draw an Indian with a pencil step by step

Step one. To begin with, let’s designate the person’s position. Step two. We draw the elements of the face: eyes, nose, mouth, designate the plumage. Step three. Let's add hair and strokes all over the body. We'll do the same with feathers. Using shading we will create shadows. Step four. Let's erase the auxiliary lines and detail the objects. Somehow it should work out this way. You can also color with colored pencils. In addition, we have other interesting lessons, for example.

The amazing artistic output of Australian Aboriginal people was unknown in the West until the 1970s. Within a decade, Aboriginal art had transcended the boundaries of ethnic or primitive expression to take its rightful place among contemporary art movements, appearing in prestigious museums and galleries around the world. An unprecedented artistic revival has emerged in an Aboriginal community living in the middle of the Western Australian desert. Various groups of Aboriginal artists have emerged, using modern techniques not only to express the traditional and religious motifs of their culture, but also to interpret relevant contemporary themes.

Later, a surge in the artistic creativity of the natives was discovered in various regions of Australia: the Aboriginal community of the city of New Gal in the south, the province of Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia (clans Koori, Mirrie, Nyonga) ... Such artistic activity played a vital role in the awareness of the aborigines of their rights in their demands gain a political and social voice in addressing various issues within the Australian community. In Aboriginal art, the making of such demands is combined with the manifestation of absolute spirituality and attachment to one's land.

Today, Aboriginal people move freely across the continent. Even if the distinctive features of their artistic production are determined by the roots, traditions associated with their geographical origin and determined by the culture, individual characteristics of a particular artist, projects, themes, ideas are constantly mixed. Much of the production defined as "traditional Aboriginal art" is created in communities hundreds of kilometers apart.

Australian Aboriginal artists use a variety of media, including bark painting, leaf painting, wood carvings, rock paintings, sand painting, ceremonial clothing, and tool decoration. In Aboriginal culture, art is one of the key rituals and is used to mark territory, remind of the past, and tell stories about time immemorial. The Aborigines believed that their world arose as a result of an act of creation. It is difficult for non-natives to understand the critical importance of art to their lives.

Researcher Howard Morphy wrote: “Art was and remains a central component of the traditional Yöligu way of life, and is of great importance both in the political sphere and in relations between clans. And it is an effective component of a system of strictly defined knowledge. And on a more metaphysical level, art is the primary means for Aboriginal people to recreate events of the past, honor ancestors and communicate with the spirit world.”

The history of Aboriginal art goes back 50 thousand years, as evidenced by ancient bark paintings discovered in the most remote regions of Australia, created before the appearance of rock paintings in the caves of Lascaux and Altamira.

Initially, the function and value of Aboriginal art was sacred and reflected the emotional, political and even practical aspects of the lives of the first settlers on the continent. Nowadays, although Aboriginal art has lost the sacred nature inherent in the past period and has turned out to be adapted to the demands of the international public, nevertheless, modern Aboriginal artistic production still has roots in the ancient mystical perception of the world.

The concept of “dreaming” plays an important role in Aboriginal culture, referring not only to creation myths, but also to the landscape and the close connection Aboriginal people have with it. Moreover, according to their totemic beliefs, the spirits of their ancestors continue to live among people today. And the social identity and spiritual responsibility of the aborigines depends on the spirits of their ancestors. Therefore, dreams provide a connection with the past, with time itself, with the source of primary knowledge.

It is not at all surprising that dreams form the context and subject of much of the work of Aboriginal artists. Many symbolic objects and weapons depict drawings illustrating these myths, emphasizing their sacred nature. Carvings on stone, paintings on bark or earth indicate that such creativity is itself a ritual act.

Tree bark painting is the most common form of art among Aboriginal people. Used in ancient times to build homes, often decorated with symbols and motifs, the bark taken from eucalyptus trees is a flexible, smooth material that is at the same time durable. The style of the designs varies between different zones of Australia. In some regions the designs embody a figurative tendency, as in the area near the town of Oenpelli, to the west of Arnhem Land. And in the east, as in the vicinity of Yirkala, more abstract and geometric motifs appear in the designs. And the drawings on the bark on the island of Groote Eylandt, on the contrary, are distinguished by the depth of the black background on which the images appear.

Aboriginal Art Symbols and Their Meanings

Australian Aboriginal culture and traditions have evolved over several millennia. And the symbols in their art are a continuation of this tradition and are no different from the rock paintings and cave paintings created by the aborigines in recent centuries. Traditionally, these symbols were used in sand paintings and body tattoos during ceremonies and corrobories, an Aboriginal Australian folk dance. Moreover, in each region of Australia the symbols have their own characteristics. The art symbols of North Queensland were dominated by images of the river bank in the specific style of “cross lines” or “X-rays”, native to the natives of these places.

The natives of Central Australia in their creativity focused on “sand” or “dot” paintings that convey the image of the desert.

Australian Aborigines believed in the magical power of “dreaming” or the act of creation of the surrounding world called Tyukurrpa. This culture developed when Aboriginal ancestors settled the Australian countryside. They attached particular importance to springs, rivers, mountains and rock formations. The Aboriginal relationship with nature and identification with it, especially the earth, space and sea, was deep and exclusively spiritual in nature.

Modern Aboriginal art is based on these ancient and traditional symbols, Aboriginal artists create very simple configurations, patterns, but full of meanings from them. Such symbols are also used in tattoos for ceremonies and are applied to objects, weapons and other things used by the aborigines. They believed that artistic symbols had enormous power over people. This ritual meaning of symbols can be traced back to several generations of Aboriginal artists and spiritual leaders.

The traditional connection with dreams is still important in the work of Aboriginal artists. Although the basic concept of art symbols is quite simplified, the natives actively use it to create spiritual and whimsical configurations in which complex stories are encrypted. The V sign is an art symbol denoting an Aboriginal man. If the V symbol is accompanied by a circle or several concentric circles, it indicates a man sitting near a source. Spiral lines are a symbolic image of flowing water. And they talk about the power of the Aboriginal man. This is the story of a water bearer who uses his natural ability to make rain. Each additional symbol gives even greater power and meaning to the painting.

A dot, a spot, is one of the main symbols among artists of the Western Desert and Central Australia, giving their paintings such originality. Dots and spots can represent stars, sparks from a fire, or earth. Contemporary Aboriginal artists argue that ordinary viewers can only see the external story in the paintings. Only experts in the true meaning of symbols are able to understand the inner, mysterious history of paintings. But today, Aboriginal artists use dotted punctuation, spots, to obscure or encrypt the meaning of symbols in their paintings.

Religious and cultural aspects of Aboriginal art

Traditional Aboriginal art almost always has a mythological overtone, relating to the life of the Aboriginal people in ancient times. Many modern Western art critics believe that if such art does not reflect the spirituality of the Aboriginal people, it cannot be considered authentic native art, embodying their true essence. Venten Rubuntya, an aboriginal landscape artist, completely disagrees with this opinion, believing that it is difficult to find any art that is devoid of spiritual meaning. Storytelling and totemic imagery are found in all forms of Aboriginal art. Moreover, a specific female form of Aboriginal art exists and is often used - in the Arnhem Land region.

Today we look to Australian Aboriginal art for inspiration.

Thousands of expressive dots, captivating rhythms, extraordinary subjects, amazing colors, mesmerizing ornaments... All these epithets are just a small part of how one can describe the art of the Australian aborigines.

Australian Aboriginal painting

These bright, interesting and surprisingly harmonious stories were created by people who had no knowledge of color or composition. With the help of these pictures, the Australian aborigines tried to express their feelings, relationships, show the world around them, everything that worried them, pleased them, surprised them, scared them and...

Since these stories are drawn very simply, we can easily understand their meaning, or feel the author’s emotions. Paintings of Australian aborigines are woven from an incredible number of dots, smooth “flowing” lines - which gives these creations a special charm and mystery.

Australian Aboriginal painting Dot painting, kangaroo
Abstract painting, crocodile
This is painting, eagle
Ethno painting with dots, lizard
These are ornaments, a snake

I hope that most readers will find dot painting based on the stories of Australian aborigines interesting in terms of contemplation and practical application, as well as the search for new creative ideas and their own unique style.

So, if you are interested in today's unusual plot, let's move on to practice.

List of materials for painting an abstract painting

For the work you will need a canvas (this time you can also take a canvas on cardboard), I used a 50 x 60 cm canvas, but I think here you can use either a much smaller format or, on the contrary, a very large one.

Today we will paint with acrylic paints. To create such a plot you will need

the following colors:

black;
titanium white;
red;
brown van dyck;
blue ciruleum;
blue Prussian;
violet;
yellow Neapolitan;

decorative acrylic paints:

gold;
chameleon;
graphite;

and, as usual:

jar of water,
spray,
brushes, large flat and thin round No. 2-3,
hygiene sticks.

This is a picture, sea world

Which story should you choose?

Today I just I give you an idea, something new interesting and quite simple to execute plot, and I want to urge you not to repeat exactly after me what is depicted on my canvas. Today, you can safely give free rein to your imagination , and are not the least bit afraid that you won’t succeed. Take an idea as a basis and develop it in your own way, use your own colors, change the plot….

Based on this, the list of the above paints becomes a little meaningless, use the colors and paints that suit you .

Are you afraid to make a plot that is too colorful? Narrow the range, or choose several harmonious colors.

Let's get started

Painting background

Creating a background : cover the canvas with a fairly thick layer of paint , so that it would not be visible at all. The background may be filled with one color, or there may be some stripes or spots of similar shades (for example: red, orange, yellow, brown; or blue, violet, light blue...).

The background paint can be applied rather “roughly” with quick strokes using a large fluted bristle brush. Traces from strokes can be shaded, or left. It all depends on your plan.

Pencil sketch

After the background paint has been applied approximately sketch the plot with a simple pencil . I depicted some kind of endless oval, along which two lizards run one after another. I found a similar story on the Internet.

Next, take a thin round brush No. 2 in your hands and carefullydesignate the contours main facilities . I outlined the outlines of the lizards in Neapolitan yellow. Using light blue (black, white and Prussian blue) I outlined the outlines of the ovals along which the lizards move. There may be several lines indicating the contours of objects, running one after the other.

Working with color

Set the color , different from the background to our little animals, other solid figures and objects. My lizards are painted inside the outline with a mixture of red cochineal and brown Van Dyck (1/1). The ovals are filled with: blue ciruleum with white; Prussian blue with white; and purple.

Applying points

After all the colors have been set, we pick up hygienic cotton swabs and use them as a full-fledged artistic tool. We fill our objects with multi-colored dots.

Ethnic motifs, paintings of Australian aborigines

I tried to paint these dots with a thin brush and sticks. To be honest, putting dots with chopsticks is much faster and more convenient. To make it even faster and more convenient, I advise you to first place dots of one color, then move on to another, third, etc. If later some dots are missing, you can always add them.

There is one small drawback to cotton swabs: if the cotton wool is not wound very tightly around the rod, then after several strokes with these tools, the fibers are pulled out, which interfere with making accurate strokes. However, this is not a problem, just a note; buy high-quality sanitary sticks for such creativity.

If you choose a geometric pattern for your plot, in which there are no images of any animals, but only certain directions, rhythms, and the appearance of a pattern, you will first need outline with a pencil exactly these guides (waves, spirals, circles, etc.). Then, inside between the given guide lines, fill the rest of the space with dots, not forgetting about the uniform rhythm in each of the small particles of the large drawing.

Decorate with decorative paints

When everything is almost ready, all objects of your canvas are filled with dots and lines - let's give our work a little gloss:

I painted the nails and tongues of the lizards with decorative paint "gold" , this somewhat embellished the work. The patterns in the central oval are painted with the addition of decorative paint "chameleon" . Also, the dark background - I covered it with wavy lines of paint "graphite" then I rubbed them a little so that they wouldn’t be too conspicuous.

And in my opinion, a very successful technique is shadows under the figures of lizards . Using liquid Prussian blue diluted with water, I outlined a translucent line-shadow under our lizards, not with a wide synthetic brush. This shadow gave our rather flat work a little more volume - the lizards moved up above the ovals along which they were moving.

That's all, the picture is ready!

Painting based on Australian Aboriginal painting

I really like my work, although I’m almost sure that many of you will come up with a more fascinating and interesting plot.

Video painting lesson

I wish you good luck, creative success and inspiration!

In addition to the termite mounds, which were cool in principle, but of little interest to contemplate, we wanted to see something more valuable and unique that has survived to this day in Australia - Aboriginal rock paintings. But we still went to look at the drawings. They just climbed, because getting to them is not so easy.

And, seeing very, very elderly Japanese women on the rocks, who were helplessly examining the stones, not understanding how they could get out of there, I had to help!

I am always amazed by the older people I meet abroad. I myself am already a pensioner, but I often see very old tourists who climb with the help of crutches to the idols of Easter Island, or, like now, onto steep cliffs to the drawings of the aborigines. And nothing stops them from trying to see as much interesting things on this Planet as possible at the end of their lives...

And not because they have more money than our pensioners, they just haven’t lost interest in life until their gray hairs. Local Aboriginal tribes seriously protect these paintings and do not allow any research to be done with them, which is why so little is known about this rock art to this day.

And although almost every drawing has a sign with a narrative of what is depicted, it personally seems to me that all this has no scientific basis, because no one actually knows for certain what the ancient artist was trying to depict.

In June 1997, three elders and a young disciple from an Aboriginal community left their homeland of the Kimberley Plateau in Australia's far north-west and traveled to Europe to exhibit photographs of their holy rock paintings and explain what they meant.

By their actions, which until recently were punishable by death, they are trying to deny access to their holy places to livestock, which are driven here for grazing, mining companies, tourists and souvenir hunters.

Rock art is a kind of visual document for the aborigines, who never had their own written language. This is a “written law” written in their terms. The white man's law changes every year, but these drawings never change. The illustration of the transfer of an object from one person to another, for example, has never been modified, and it has always been there for the aborigines. For Aboriginal people this is the force of law.

These drawings differ significantly from European Paleolithic painting, primarily in their peculiar x-ray style with an absolutely cute name - “Mimi”. On them, what is depicted is made in the form of a skeleton and internal organs, both animals and humans.

The oldest drawings are fifty-three thousand years old, and they are the oldest known examples of rock art on Earth, but it has not yet been possible to establish this with complete certainty due to the taboo of the local population on any research.

For millions of years, Australia was part of Antarctica before breaking away and moving north toward the equator. Until now, no one knows exactly how the first aborigines appeared here, their past is still shrouded in mystery, but finds indicate that this happened about 50,000 years ago, exactly when the rock paintings date back.

Although the complex of paintings on rocks and grottoes in Kakadu National Park, where we photographed, is included in the World Cultural Heritage List, their safety is under constant threat, both from nature (forest fires, erosion) and from tourists visiting them. And in order to preserve this information, in 2013, the Australian company Maptek began work on a large-scale project - scanning Aboriginal rock paintings in Kakadu Park.

If you try to describe what is happening, captured in the rock paintings, using the description in English on the nearby tablet, you will get something like this...

This drawing is the most frequently photographed drawing.

Main character - Namarndjolg (No. 3). It is believed that he and his “sister” violated the law against marriage between “relatives”. Namarndjolg later became Ginga, saltwater crocodile. The “sister” in this case is not a blood sister, but a woman from that clan/totem that was forbidden to marry into the Namarndjolg clan. Even today, if a European marries an Aboriginal woman (or vice versa), he will be “enrolled” in a certain clan, so that it is clear which clan his children will belong to, and who they can/cannot marry.
Namarrgon (1) - Lightning Man ( Lightening Man), drawn to the right of Narmarndjolg.

The "horns"/"Whiskers"/"Arc"/"Bandage" on his head are lightning bolts. He has a stone sword (near his knees) and generates thunder with his elbows.
Legend has it that Namarrgon, his wife Barrginj (2) and their children Aljurr came from the northern coast in search of a good place to live. Namarrgon now lives on top of the Lightening Dreaming plateau. His children Aljurr are lightning bolts, but they can also be the bright orange and blue grasshoppers that come at the very beginning of the rainy season. It is believed that they are looking for Namarrgon. For the aborigines, the appearance of such grasshoppers meant that it was time to look for shelter from storms. Barrginj, Namarrgon's wife, is drawn just below Namarndjolg.
Men and women (4) in the picture they are heading to the ceremony. The breasts of nursing mothers are covered with pieces of cloth.

Guluibirr (5) , Saratoga fish - popular for the waters of streams and rivers of those places.

This is the story of life, imprinted in stone and reaching us!

More than 50 thousand places where drawings were discovered have been discovered throughout Australia, but most of these places are kept a closely guarded secret not only from tourists, but also from the authorities.
In general, according to my observations, the aborigines are not very friendly people towards the “white” population, although this is understandable. What the colonists did here is comparable to Nazism at its worst. It was only in 1970 that the government stopped taking children away from Aboriginal people under the slogan “Assimilation of Aboriginal Australians.” These children were even called the “stolen generation.”
Today the situation with the natives has changed somewhat, but frankly speaking, this is not particularly noticeable. Among them there are a huge number of alcoholics and drug addicts, and there is even a law in the northern territories prohibiting the sale of alcohol to aborigines and there are cards with which it can be purchased in a store. They are issued, for example, to tourists upon check-in at a hotel. But on the road we also met very friendly local people, although we still tried to stay away from them (just in case) and not leave the car unattended, because “the laws are not written here” and there are no police at all. In addition, here in the north of the country we encountered a completely unprecedented case when a gas station refused to sell us gasoline!!! We were asked the question “is our situation with gasoline critical?” They answered that it was kind of running out, after which the answer followed - well, then you’ll be fine until the next gas station…………. "Gogol's silent scene"

Communication in these places is also a complete disaster, nothing works, neither mobile phones, nor navigators,Wi- FiI don't even stutterJIn a word, you need to be very, very prepared if you want to venture to the north of the country.
I would also like to give a little warning to travelers who want to come into contact with local aborigines without having guides (rangers) accompanying you. Australian aborigines have very strong magic, which allows them to achieve the desired effect without using anything belonging to a person (while usually it is a person’s personal thing that is a kind of conductor for influencing a person). For this purpose, special chants are used and the sorcerer’s thoughts are concentrated on the person being influenced.The sorcerer can even sing death to a person in this way. For many, Australian magic is a way to solve the problem of not having access to things related to the object. Is she strong? Yes! But none of the scientists can explain what its action is based on.Therefore, be careful!