ISSN: 117-9915

MĀORI DESIGN

“The following factors could be useful in determining students’ levels of achievement in Māori art programmes:

·  the degree of understanding about Māori art works, their meanings, and their forms;

·  the depth of knowledge about the significance and context of the work;

·  the quality of personal art-making techniques, and of sensitivity to art-making materials;

·  the extent of knowledge of procedures for making Māori art (traditional and contemporary);

·  the degree of inventiveness in integrating Māori forms and techniques in making art works;

·  the level of ability in relating and contributing to groups working on common art projects;

·  general work habits and attitudes.”

Guideline to the Syllabus

Art Education

Junior Classes to Form7, page 65

Maori Design

Introduce students to the KORU and allow time for them to practice forming the shapes carefully until they can create them gracefully, and confidently. They might use crayon, pencil, brush, pastel, felt pen, scissors, or knife.

Traditional forms should be made carefully. They should include koiri, mangopare, ngutu kakak and spirals.

Maori Design

repetition

ROB MCGREGOR ● CHRIS GRAHAM 1

PART ONE

Fold your cartridge paper in half, form a

crease and unfold.

With coloured chalk. Make a gracefully curving line from one side to the crease. (The curve must be no greater than an S shape, must have no kinks or sharp bends.)

Now draw careful koru, koiri, mangopare which grow from this curved line, filling the spaces to the sides.

Make them touch edges of the curved line. Make them touch each other.

You will soon have an arrangement of koru shapes and enclosed spaces.

When there is a good balance of POSITIVE & NEGATIVE shapes, draw over your chalk lines with a dark crayon (black, blue or red).

Fold your paper again carefully along the crease.

Rub firmly over the back of your design with a firm smooth rounded object such as your elbows.

This will transfer a mirror image of your design on to the other half of your paper.

You have a SYMMETRICAL pattern.

If the first line meets the fold at the centre, you can rotate your pattern to repeat it.

ROB MCGREGOR ● CHRIS GRAHAM 1

Maori Design

repetition

PART TWO

Select some cool colours (blue, green, turquoise, purple and white.)

Use mixtures of these to fill in your enclosed NEGATIVE SHAPES.

You must always add white, even if only a small quantity. Sometimes change the order in which you apply the colour. Blue first, green second and white on top will look different from white first and the others on top.

Sometimes use the same colours but in different quantities e.g. heavy blue and little white or softly with blue and heavy with white.

You will finish with many TONES of cool colours.

For your next part, replace your cool colours with a selection of WARM colours (e.g. RED, YELLOW, ORANGE).

Again use white with combinations of the colours to colour your KORU, KOIRI & MANGOPARE.

When the colouring is completed you may need to re-draw your outlines carefully with a dark colour (black, blue or red.)

You might mount your work carefully on black paper for display.

Maori Design

using illustrations

Guide the students' observation of work by contemporary Maori artists by drawing attention to designs used in their illustrations in books of legends, school journals and school bulletins.

Illustrations by Para Matchitt, Robert Jahnke, Cliff Whiting and Robyn Kahukiwa, have their foundations in the traditional forms of kowhaiwhai, taniko, tukutuku, raranga, moko and whakairo rakau.

Encourage students to experiment, developing their own bird or fish shapes, plant, land and sea forms using these designs.

ROB MCGREGOR ● CHRIS GRAHAM 1