Author: Mitch Johson
One of the types of the tent which we can use is tepee, which is an Indian typical tent. Once the tepee is built and stretched out, we can have a little fun to decorate the tepee. Below is some guide to print your tepee.
Painting the Tepee.
Cave dwellers decorated their caves with drawings; the Indians painted their tepees, taking the motifs from their lives: hunting and war. They also drew their totem figures, the sun and the moon, and animals. You can decorate your tepee in the same way. The Design. Designing consists of first making a drawing of, for example, an animal you are going to paint and then simplifying your sketch. If you are drawing a lion, first make a realistic sketch, then reduce it as far as possible to simple single lines, and finally intensify and stylize those lines. In the same way, if you wish to paint an elk, first draw it.
For your tepee decoration you don’t need any perspective, so you can simplify the antlers and place the legs decoratively. Then further simplify all the forms, exaggerating those parts of the elk that are typical and distinctive. And you finish with a decorative pattern for painting. Another method is pure stylization. In the illustration, the “photographic” image of an eagle is intensely simplified and the typical elements are completely exaggerated, but the bird is still recognizable as an eagle.
You might like to make Indian shields, too, and paint them with the same motifs as your tepee. Be sure to adapt the design to the shape of the shield.
The Painting Process.
Use ordinary oil paints, choosing pure tones and avoiding the mixed colors such as gray, purple, brown, light blue, and so forth. Use black, Prussian blue, red, and perhaps even green and chrome yellow. The paints should not be too thick or they will not penetrate well into the fabric. Thin the paint with turpentine, but not so much that the paint is watery or runs down a vertical surface while you are painting. Add a drying compound, such as varnish, to the paint to speed up the setting. You can wash out any unwanted strokes or drops with turpentine as long as the paint is still wet. Have one brush to use for each color long-handled brushes with short bristles, of an inch to 1 inch wide.
Fasten the piece of tenting to be painted against a wall, first putting up a heavy under layer of newspaper to protect the wall from the paint that penetrates through the material. Outline the figure with charcoal before painting. The composition and thickness of the paint determine how long the tent has to dry. It will probably take at least three days to a week. Be especially careful about putting on too thick a layer of paint apply it just heavily enough so that the paint sticks together. Otherwise the layer of paint will break and crack when you fold the tepee. You can even add a bit of humor to your stylized drawings. For example, look at the squirrel. The eye, the pointed nose, and the ear give the whole picture an amusing touch. This is also true of the rooster, with its half-angry, half-proud expression. On the other hand, it’s the arrangement of the wings and tail which gives the albatross its dash of caricature.
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