Art Room Britt: Winter Landscape with Animals in Motion

Teacher Sample

Landscapes are ripe with potential for teaching all kinds of art elements and principles. They can be simple or complex, depending on the cocktail of elements you choose to emphasize.

Most of the projects that come out of the Art Room are fast and furious - over and done with in one to two 90- minute classes. After a full semester of quick projects, I wanted my students to slow down a bit and engage in a complex and detailed project requiring the careful development of an action-packed winter composition. Additionally, I wanted them to work with gouache paint, a medium which they have little to no experience with, but which is a great extension of watercolor and a good lead-in to acrylic. Also, kids of all ages love to draw, and this project is full of opportunities for both close observational and free drawing.

To help them along, I provided students with a list of objectives which they had to include in their composition.

These include:

1. Middleground, Foreground, Background.
2. One to two different animals in motion on each 'ground' (jumping, running, eating, climbing, flying etc.)
3. At least two trees, shrubs and bushes of different varieties on each 'ground'.
4. A cabin or hut
5. Scale: attention to the comparative size of objects. Ex. A bunny is smaller than a deer, but if the bunny is in the foreground, it may appear larger than the deer that is in the background).
6. Atmospheric perspective: objects closer to us are more intense in color and have more detail. Faraway objects have no detail and are softer in color.
7. Colors must be mixed with white to create soft tints for that wintery feel.
8. Attention to shadows and highlights throughout.

Day 1.
Students used a practice sheet to practice drawing different animals in motion, trees and cabins. We referenced many photos and pictures from books, encyclopedias and web printouts. This process took nearly a full class period. Early finishers practiced more animal varieties or shaded their animals with colored pencil.

Researching for animal pictures

Practice sheet

Working on our practice sheet

Day 2.
Students drew out their composition in pencil on blue-grey multi-purpose paper. We roughly broke our paper down into thirds (foreground, middle-ground and background. Then animals, cabin and trees and other elements were placed throughout, with attention to scale and perspective.
Students began painting their composition in gouache. We started at the top of our composition and worked our way down, doing the snowy background areas first, then the animals and elements.

Drawing our composition

Painting the snow with gouache

Day 3.
Students continued painting, with attention to shadows and highlights. Colored pencils were used to add finishing touches, small details, definition and shading.

Teacher sample:
painting and colored pencil techniques

Painting details with a detail brush

This project was pretty intense, and the many required objectives kept students focussed throughout. It was a nice change to work on something in such detail over three class periods. Students went home feeling proud and accomplished.

Our results. Students aged 8-14: