Grecian UrnGrecian Urn

 

This project uses a crayon resist technique to create a replica of an ancient Grecian urn.

 

Materials

  • Red and orange oil based crayons
  • 9"x12" white tag board paper
  • Black tempera paint
  • Brushes
  • Tools to scratch off the paint such as:
    • popsicle sticks
    • toothpicks
    • coffee stirrers

Directions

  1. Discuss several examples of ancient Greek vases. Look at some of the various shapes of vases. Discuss the development of the two main styles of Greek pottery. There are two main styles in Greek vase painting – black figure and red figure. Mostly before about 530 BC people painted in black figure, and after that time people gradually began to paint in red figure. Black figure is called that because the people (the figures) are black, and the background is red. In red figure, on the other hand, the people are red, and the background is black.

Black figure is done all with one type of clay. The clay found near Athens, Greecehas a lot of iron in it, so it looks black when it is wet. But if you fire it in an oven where there is plenty of air getting in, the clay rusts, and turns red. This is because the iron mixes with the oxygen in the air. If you fire it in an oven with no air getting in, the iron can't mix with oxygen, and the pot stays black. So you can have either red or black pots.

So how do you get a picture? You make a pot the regular way, and let it dry a little ("leather-dry"). Then you mix a little of the wet clay with a lot of water, to make a kind of paint (called the slip), which you use to make the black part of the picture. (You can't see it now, because it is all the same color). And you let the whole thing dry. When your pot is dry, you fire it in a kiln. First you give it a lot of air, so the whole pot turns red, slip and all. Then you shut off the air supply, but just for a little while right at the end of the firing. When the air runs out, the fire sucks oxygen right out of the clay of the pot. But the places where there is slip, the slip is thinner and easier to suck air out of. So the slip turns black (the color of iron with no oxygen in it) faster than the rest of the pot (which is red, the color of iron with oxygen in it).

At first the Greek potters didn't know much about drawing people, and their people look a little funny. Later they got better at it. They began to care more about drawing the muscles and the eyes right. They were especially careful about arranging the people in the picture in a pleasing way. Black figure vase painting lasted until about 525BC.

Around 530BC, Athenian potters were more and more frustrated by the black-figure way of vase-painting. They wanted to paint figures that overlapped, for instance, which was very difficult to do in black figure without the whole thing looking like just a big black blob. And they wanted to be able to show the muscles better too.

So somebody had an idea: instead of painting the people black, why not paint the background black and leave the people red? This is harder because you have to carefully paint all around the people in the picture, but it makes the people look much more real. The slip and the firing are exactly the same as in black figure. Some of the greatest vases are in red figure.

But by around 450 BC, just eighty years after the invention of red-figure painting, hardly any vases were still being produced. We don't really know why this happened. Maybe it just went out of style. Some people think that the Athenians became so rich that they all used metal (bronze or silver) dishes instead of pottery. Maybe the Athenians were rich enough that they didn't need to sell their pottery to other people. Also, the Etruscans, who had bought a lot of this pottery, were no longer doing very well by 450BC, and maybe they couldn't afford to buy Athenian pottery anymore.

  1. Have students draw a vase on 9" X 12" paper that resembles the style of the ancient Greek ones.

  2. Color the entire vase in with heavy crayon in random blotches of red, orange or both.

  3. Paint black tempera paint over the crayon. Add a squirt of dish soap to the black paint to help it adhere to the crayon.

  4. After the black paint has dried, cut out the shape of the vase. Create a repeated pattern on the vase at the top and the bottom of the vase by scratching through the black paint until the orange or red shows beneath.

  5. Next, scratch out a scene in the center of the vase. Decide if you are going to make a red figure or black figure vase. The key is to scratch away the color behind the drawings not just scratch out the drawings.