Dia de Muertos

5th and 4th grade artists learned about Día de Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, holiday celebrated in Mexico on November 1st and 2nd. Families gather to honor and remember friends and family members who have died. Traditions include building altars to honor family members and decorating them with sugar skulls and marigolds, a kind of flower.  

We watched Google's recent doodle of the day about the holiday. The skull or calavera is a common symbol of the holiday. We looked at examples of sugar skulls and noticed that they had a symmetrical design and were usually very colorful. We drew our own skulls and created a symmetrical design, using permanent marker to finalize our details and colored pencils to add color. 

We learned about blending the colored pencil together to form gradients, going from dark to light or light to dark using the same color family.

Ava, 4th Grade

Then we cut them out and glued them onto a colored paper background, selecting a color that helped make our skull stand out. Some of our Día de Muertos skulls are featured on the bulletin board outside the art room (some of the flowers were made by students who finished early):