This is an oldie but goodie for
my 3rd graders. I find the
years that I decide to embark on this landscape adventure, 3rd
graders love it and have such pride in their completed artwork. This is important for the effectiveness of an
art lesson. I have certainly tried other
ways to teach depth but I always come back to this one. I love that Henri Rousseau is a well-known
Folk artist and I think it is pretty neat that he was never to a jungle yet he
painted jungles based on pictures. This
is a fact that most 3rd graders can relate to … not many have been
to a jungle.
The focus of the project was to
show depth using many techniques from dividing our space into foreground,
middle ground, and a background to overlapping and size variation. We even touched on how the appearance of colors
and details lessen with greater distances.
Another thing we noticed with Rousseau’s jungle landscapes was the vast
variety of plant life. We also saw the
rainbow of greens any how this variety makes the artwork much more interesting.
After some visual thinking
strategies involving Rousseau’s art, we began by carefully observing and
drawing a variety of plants. Then we got
to drawing some landscapes.
