Earth Paints

We have been reading about Earth Paints. Earth Paints are paints made out of crushed clay or soil and mixed with water. In the story the children found different coloured soil in the vegetable garden, compost, near a swamp, beside a stream, under the bark on the playground, clay off a bank, building site and from the river.

Aborigines used to use Earth Paints to paint pictures on cave walls or bark. They used twigs, bamboo sticks and sometimes their fingers to paint. So that the paint stuck they mixed emu and fish oil or beeswax with the paint.

Here is my earth paint painting.