Who Were the Mesopotamians?

What Was Life Like in Mesopotamia?

Mesopotamia… An Organized Society!

Mesopotamians had many social classes. The king was the highest authority. His family and the nobles were aristocrats. The priests performed religious rituals. The scribes could read, write, and count. Merchants traded goods with other regions. There were weavers, carpenters, and jewelers. Peasants worked in the fields. Slaves worked for the state, the church, and rich people, and had no rights. Women could buy and sell goods, own property, and work. Aristocratic women could be high priestesses, while poor women lived in terrible conditions.

Mesopotamians were polytheistic, meaning they worshipped many gods that they believed lived in temples on Earth.

The Mesopotamians had magnificent architecture and sculptures, such as stone statues of kings, gods, and animals. They also created reliefs with political and religious scenes. They built magnificent palaces like Dur-Sharrukin and the Ziggurat of Ur out of mud bricks. They invented the arch and vault for construction.

Why Is Ancient Greece so Interesting?

It’s All Greek to Me!

The Greek civilization was divided among an extensive area: on the Balkan Peninsula, on islands in the Mediterranean Sea, and on the coast of Asia Minor. Greece wasn’t a unified country because of this division. Since the land was dry and rocky, the Greeks got their food from the Mediterranean. They were expert sailors who sailed across the sea to trade with other countries.

Each territory had its own government and laws, but they shared the same culture, spoke the same language, and worshipped the same gods.

Greek history is divided into three eras: Archaic (9th to 6th century BC), Classical (5th to mid-4th century), and Hellenistic (mid-4th to 1st century BC). Before the Ancient Greek civilization, there were other civilizations such as Minoan Crete and Mycenae.

What Was Life Like in Ancient Greece?

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece had an unequal society. It was divided into two groups: citizens and non-citizens. Citizens were men who took part in politics, had full rights, and paid taxes. Non-citizens were not allowed to participate in politics. They were divided into three categories: metics or foreigners, slaves, and women.

Metics were free—they paid taxes and fought in the army, but they couldn’t own any properties. Slaves were not free; they worked in domestic service or in the fields. Women were free or were slaves. They had no political rights. Rich women ran their homes. Poor women worked for the rich or as peasants and sold food in markets.

Ancient Greeks had different types of economic activities: agriculture, long-distance trade, local commerce, and crafts like pottery and textiles. Greeks were polytheistic, meaning they believed in many gods.

Do We Need to Travel the Earth to Leave a Footprint?

Leaving Your Print on Earth

You need food and housing to live, and the earth's natural resources cover these needs. But do you know how much of these resources you consume? This is called an ecological footprint.

An ecological footprint is the measurement of human impact on the planet. This is calculated by adding all the farmlands, pastures, woods, and fishing areas used for producing food, and other products for consuming.

With each passing year, our ecological footprint is causing major damage to the environment. This is why the United Nations established international environmental policies for the following goals:

• Protection of spaces with great ecological value.

• Prevention of damage by evaluating the environmental impact of human activities.

• Recovery of degraded spaces by recycling waste, treating water, etc.

Many countries created environmental agencies to take care of these problems.

Why Are There Different Types of Drawings?

Drawings

Drawing is a part of human life. Since ancient times, it has been a way of expressing and communicating. Think of how drawing has evolved from the primitive drawings in a cave to the sophisticated digital drawings of today. Different types of drawings are classified by their technique and use.

• Artistic: used to express personal, social, philosophical, and aesthetic ideas; or emotions, feelings, and sensations

• Architectural: used to sketch any type of construction: houses, buildings, churches, etc.

• Geometric: uses geometric forms such as circles, rectangles, and triangles to structure a drawing

• Mechanical: used to draw a machine to represent all of its parts and to see where each one will work

• Technical: used to represent objects inside a machine in a precise manner to see how they might work

What Is a Technique?

Painting Techniques

You are ready to paint, but you don’t know where and how to start. You have your canvas or paper, watercolors, brushes, and palette. What techniques can you use while painting with watercolors?

There are two techniques: wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry. You’re probably thinking: what does that mean?

Wet-on-wet is a technique used by applying wet paint onto wet paper so the colors can blend and get smooth edges in your paintings.

The wet-on-dry technique is when you apply wet paint onto dry paper. This technique gives sharp edges to shapes.

Have you ever tried any of these techniques or seen them on any painting?

Next time you go to a museum, see if you can identify which paintings on display were created using these techniques.

What Is There to Making a Drawing?

It’s Time to Draw!

You previously read about wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques. Now, it’s your turn to make your own work of art by yourself.

Pick the drawing you want to create: a face, a warehouse, a street, a geometric figure, or anything that attracts your attention. Once you’ve decided, identify the type of drawing you want to make.

Choose which technique suits you best and the materials you need. For example, wet-on-dry requires painting over dry paint.

Trace a sketch of your drawing. Decide where the light will come from and which parts your drawing will have to reflect volume.

Sketch out figures without putting any attention to detail. Make sure your drawing is even. Begin to define volume with shade.

To get more texture in your drawing, use different traces. To finish, reinforce shading and check any details you can.

Do We Paint with Oil or with Water?

Water-based Paintings

There is a wide range of paintings, and one kind of them is called water-based painting. These are the most common types:

• Watercolor is the process of painting with pigments mixed with water. Watercolor artists work on paper. It can be used with wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques.

• Tempera is a powder pigment combined with egg, honey, or milk, and then mixed with water. Tempera artists work on board. These paintings were more popular in the Medieval and Early Renaissance eras.

• Pastel is a paste made of color pigments mixed with water, rolled, and pressed into sticks. It’s used on paper, sandboard, and canvas.

• Acrylic is a paint that is soluble in water. It’s water-resistant when dry.

What’s the Diference Between Oil and Solid?

Solid and Oil-based Paintings

There are many types of mediums used for paintings: pastel, acrylic, watercolor, encaustic, tempera, enamel, ink, oil, and solid color. In this text, you will learn about oil and solid color paintings.

Oil paintings have a glossy, shiny texture. Usually, a painter uses different oils in the same painting, depending on the effect that the painter wants to give it. The combination of many hues makes the painting colorful.

Solid paintings have a matte finish. Usually, the artist uses one solid color to paint an object within the picture. The combination results are colorful, too, but these colors don’t mix like in oil paintings.