Painted Pūkeko

I had a wonderful time with Ashleigh’s Year 3/4 class today creating beautiful pūkeko paintings. I used a lesson that I have taught many times before from the fabulous Toi Matarau Visual Arts resource by Vonnie Sterritt and Denise Tohiariki. I studied at Massey University and was lucky to have Vonnie as my lecturer during this time. I still have all of the art lessons that I created and I refer to them often.

Many New Zealand artists use bird life as a subject for their art. We looked at the works of Fiona Pardington, Bill Hammond and Don Binney. We then watched a video about pūkeko and looked at images of wetlands to get familiar with our subject matter.

The students drew their pūkeko with white crayon and then under painted areas in white. While this was drying the students made the flax and raupō (bullrushes) scenes by glueing ripped newspaper to the background and then dyeing them with a wash of three colours.

The students then returned to their pūkeko paintings and added the red, white and black paint. When the pūkeko were dry the students cut them out and glued them to their beautiful backgrounds. The final touch was to add detail to the eyes. Some students chose to do a red eye, just like the pūkeko actually has, and some chose to do a black and white eye. I love how charming and unique each of the pūkeko are. Ashleigh’s class were wonderful and I can’t wait to see them in the art room again.