Aboriginal art is the oldest continuing art tradition in the world, dating back over 40,000 years. It historically included paintings on cave walls and bark but now often uses acrylic paints on canvas. Dot paintings tell Dreamtime stories through symbols and dots, with thousands of dots used to depict animals, sites, and stories. The dots are applied in patterns called pointillism, and allow flat images to take on movement and rhythm.

1. All about Aboriginal Art!
Aboriginal Art
Aboriginal art is a broad category which includes
many different kinds of artwork, including dot painting on
canvas, bark painting, body painting, batik, wood carving,
decorative and wearable arts, and more. Historically, the
Aboriginals used to paint on cave walls, bark and rocks and
also decorated some of their everyday utensils with this art.
Today, Australian Aboriginal paintings represent one of the
most vital art forms in Australia. The contemporary
Aboriginal paintings using acrylic on canvas are the latest
adaptation of an artistic tradition that can be traced uninterrupted and continuous for over forty
thousand years, making it the oldest living art movement in existence. The materials may have changed
but the stories and designs are traditional.
Dot Paintings
Aboriginal people communicated their Dreamtime Stories through art – a visual language. In
addition to cave and bark paintings, soil would be cleared and smoothed over as a canvas and Dreaming
designs were outlined with dancing circles and often surrounded with a mass of dots.
Simple in technique and style yet so full of detail and story. There can be thousands of dots and
many symbols, most often animals, all in one painting. The technical art term is Pointillism – a technique
of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image(s).
Symbols and animals were used to indicate a sacred site, the location of a waterhole and the
means to get there, a place where animals inhabit and as a way to illustrate Dreamtime stories.
The paintings often look like a map of circles, spirals, lines, dashes and dots. The paintings usually
include animals because many of the Aboriginal stories were about animals. Some paintings show
constellations, footprints and paw prints. Aborigines hunt for their food so these pictures told the story of
how and where to find the animals.
Historically they used the traditional colors of red, yellow, black and white produced from ochre,
pipe clay and charcoal. Then they are mixed with a number of fixatives, such as bee's wax, honey, juices of
orchid bulbs or egg yolk. Brushes are made simply, mostly from strips of stringy bark or pliant green
twigs. These are either whittled or chewed into shaped to make the bristles. Today, painters have the use
of all colors and an array of brushes.
Overlaying dots and superimposing patterns cause objects and shapes to merge in and out of one
another. The dot technique offers a sense of movement and rhythm causing a flat canvas to look as
though it is moving, jumping or dancing with energy.

2. Dot Painting
Symbols: