My wish was to present the idea of painting a landscape in a non-traditional way, without the horizon line and the representation of land and sky. The inspiration for this project came from the children going to the back garden to find things “that fall on the ground” and “things that are part of the landscape”, like bits of bark, sticks, dried leaves and seed pods they found and brought into the studio. I have always been fascinated by the bark of trees, the different formations, with shapes, lines and textures and one day I brought out my collection of close up photos of bark and other interesting bits from Nature to show the students. The students embraced the idea of looking at the photos and finding ideas for a painting project. They were encouraged to spontaneously respond to the photographs and imagine that the photos that they had in front of them were landscapes. They drew a composition using paint brushes and runny paint mixed with water in one colour. When they finished drawing they applied colour in a free and expressive way.
Art materials for this project
Art Materials for Painting — A Close Look at Nature
Chromacryl, Fluid Concentrate Acrylics in 6 Primary colours, cool yellow, cool blue, cool red, warm yellow, warm blue, warm red plus black and white to mix extra colours.
- 1 A3 size piece Cartridge paper per student
- 1 medium paint brush per student
- 1 piece of rag per student
- 2 water containers per group
- 2 ice cubes trays, to contain paint, per group
Notes:
Chromacryl, Fluid Concentrate comes in 250ml bottles, one set will be sufficient for several art projects as it is a Fluid paint that extends well and which can also be thinned down to create washes as watercolours.