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Henna tattoos were traditionally done in India as part of a bride's preparation for marriage. Henna, a natural dye, is drawn onto the hands and feet of the bride in traditional and special designs. One legend is that as long as the design stays on the hands and feet, that's how long the honeymoon will last! Alas, henna will eventually wash off.
As we have become a more global community, henna tattooing and Mendhi designs have become popular all over the world. Students in 7th grade added their inspiration to traditional designs in a printmaking assignment.
After tracing the outline of a hand on a piece of printmaking foam, students drew their own versions of traditional Mendhi designs. The hands were cut out of the foam and ink was rolled onto the surface with a brayer. The foam was then pressed onto paper to transfer the image. Two hands were required for this assignment. They could be the same color or different, or the students could trade and print their own and someone else's. The results were stunning, but not yet finished!
The image of two hands working together inspires thoughts of peace. To integrate our school's bully busting initiative, students were required to write an inspirational quotation about peace around the frame of their hand prints.
The internet was used to search 'quotations about peace' and the results were infinite. I selected about 75 that I thought my 7th graders could relate to and asked them each to find one that they could use as their border design. Since they had to write the same quotation over and over to fill up the frame, they had time to reflect on what they were writing. Although some of the quotations were quite lofty, the 7th graders were able to relate them to situations that could occur right here in the hal |
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