Vista de Hormiga paintings--Emilio Gonzalez Morales

I met Emilio at his studio in San Pedro la Laguna a few years after my first visit to Guatemala (when I first saw Angelina Quic's 'birds-eye view' paintings). Emilio said that artists were being pressured to create similar paintings--since the tourists seem to love them and they sold so well. His own rebellious tongue-in-cheek response to this pressure was to develop his own style of painting--from an ant's point of view.  He calls them 'vista de hormiga.'  

This would be a great lesson to do after the birds-eye view lesson, OR in conjunction with it...just to expand everyone's options. Children could begin these paintings by tracing their own feet, and then filling everything else in with what would be above the feet.  They might have to model this unique perspective for each other...to get ideas about how to attach legs, bodies, etc. Because of the bare feet, this would also be a great lesson for teaching skin-color mixing. I usually do this by giving kids a see-through cup with a little bit of water in it, and then have them add to the water--until they've found a match for their own skin.  They'll need to have white paper, or a white paper towel, for testing their colors.  I give all the kids the same palette of colors--white, brown, yellow, orange, red, pink...and encourage each child to use at least three different colors to find their 'recipe,' demonstrating as I go.  

Angelina Quic--Birds Eye View Paintings

We were struck by all of the birds-eye view paintings all over San Juan la Laguna, on Lake Atitlan. It takes a moment to understand what you're seeing--all of the fanciful details and colors and circles and symmetry combine to create a strong abstract effect, until you notice an upturned face, or a hand, or a braid, and it all comes into focus. On a subsequent visit I went up into the mountains north of Antigua and visited another small artist town--and learned a bit more about that style of painting.  An artist named Angelina Quic made the style of painting famous, and her paintings sold so well that other artists were trained by the government to replicate them. On a visit to another town along Lake Atitlan I encountered a small group of rebellious artists whose work challenged this particular perspective. I describe that movement here.
This would be a wonderful project for kids of all ages--anything that challenges their perspective is helpful, as it opens the door for all kinds of experiments with composition, zooming in, zooming out, etc.  You could 'jumpstart' the project by tracing a few circles on a large piece of paper and challenging kids to consider overhead views of different kinds of situations before settling on a final idea, and filling in with marker, colored pencil, paint, oil pastel, etc.  Of course satellite views, googleEarth, and instagram feeds like daily overview would be great inspiration for this as well.