WELCOME TO ART!: LANDSCAPE PAINTING BASICS

student example practice painting

7th and 8th grade students practiced their landscape painting techniques today. It is really simple to paint landscapes if you know the following tips:

Objectives:

I can practice painting a landscape by:

*First doing the background (sky), then the foreground (this means you will be painting distant objects first)

*Neutralizing each color very slightly to remove some of the intensity/saturation by mixing in a tiny amount of the opposite color (to neutralize blue, you add a very small amount of orange). When painting a "realistic" landscape, you want your colors to look natural, not fake. If you use the blue or green straight out of the paint container, your landscape will not look very natural!

*Painting the sky all the way to the bottom of the paper; this helps when you are overlapping because there is no empty space between the land and the sky. It also helps to have a little bit of the sky colors showing in the land - it looks more natural! (The sky usually looks darker at the top, near outer space, and lighter near the horizon.)

*Overlapping mountains with the sky; using the clean edge technique to create a neat, crisp edge between the mountains and the sky (not blurry)

*Using a detail brush to sketch in a tree silhouette, then a texture brush to add foliage (time allowing)

Below are Mrs. Nichols' first demonstration and her painting example:

Classroom Demonstration

Teacher Example (10 min.)
(Mini-painting; the camera fell at the end of the demonstration so the last 10 seconds of tree foliage and grass are not on video)


teacher examples (unfinished mini-paintings)

Here are a few more quick mini-painting examples by Mrs. Nichols. There are so many ways to paint landscapes! This one on top is a monochromatic "Pink Out" design based on a photograph I took a few weeks ago. There are tints and shades of red to create an eerie, otherworldly effect. It is fun to mess around with color!

This center painting is based on colors from nature. Each color has been slightly neutralized to make it look "real." I enjoy painting with realistic colors because it is challenging to analyze the colors I think I see. Sometimes it takes more than one attempt to match the colors!

The last one is based on the same landscape, but I used colors straight out of the cup. This is not the way to go! The colors look fake and childish. I really don't care for this painting at all.

Remember, part of your assignment is to mix your own colors, whether you are making a "Realistic" painting or an "Expressionist" painting.

Below are a few quick practice paintings by the students (our formative assessment): they painted the entire sky with blended colors, then overlapped mountains with the sky. Colors had to be mixed, not used straight out of the container. Students who had a few extra minutes tried their hand at painting a tree as well. These are not finished pieces; they were meant to give students a chance to try out new techniques. We will begin a landscape of our own choosing tomorrow - today we were just practicing techniques. Students will be given the option to find an image online by using their digital devices during class, or to use a photograph that they took themselves. Mrs. Nichols also has a large collection of landscape images available for students who do not have access to a digital device. The assignment is to create an original landscape painting that is based in realism, expressionism, or Impressionism. I am excited to see the final paintings!