Landscape Painting
How do artists render the foreground, middle ground, and background in a landscape painting?
In this 9-12 lesson, students will analyze the foreground, middle ground, and background of landscape paintings. They will plan and create an original landscape painting using various techniques to portray illusions of depth and reflection.
Lesson Content
Learning Objectives
Students will:
Analyze the features and techniques in a landscape painting.
Apply foreground, middle ground, and background techniques.
Emphasize reflection in a body of water.
Paint a landscape.
Critique works of art.
Standards Alignment
Demonstrate openness in trying new ideas, materials, methods, and approaches in making works of art and design.
Demonstrate persistence in developing skills with various materials, methods, and approaches in creating works of art or design.
Demonstrate willingness to experiment, innovate, and take risks to pursue ideas, forms, and meanings that emerge in the process of artmaking or designing.
Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 11-12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Recommended Student Materials
Editable Documents: Before sharing these resources with students, you must first save them to your Google account by opening them, and selecting “Make a copy” from the File menu. Check out Sharing Tips or Instructional Benefits when implementing Google Docs and Google Slides with students.
Teachers should have basic painting and wet wash skills, knowledge of color mixing, and an understanding of critiquing art. Art Critiques Made Easy offers helpful tips on how to lead classroom discussions about works of art.
Student Prerequisites
Students would benefit from previous experience with the concepts of foreground, middle ground, and background.
Accessibility Notes
Modify handouts and give preferential seating for visual presentations. Allow extra time for task completion. Provide assistive technologies during the visual analysis and the art-making process.
Engage
Introduce students to the . Discuss and provide clarification of the terms. Students can share examples they are familiar with.
Tell students they are going to look at art together. Play the Teaching Artists Present video, Looking at Art Together with Tami Wood, to discover ways to examine art to gain a deeper understanding of a piece of artwork.
Display a . Although this is a pastel and not a watercolor, it is a great example of background, middle ground, and foreground.
Share other landscape paintings with students. As students explore, have them identify the background, middle ground, and foreground. Background areas are usually neutral (duller colors) and have vague detail. The foreground shapes are typically brighter, larger, and placed at the bottom of the page.
Build
Distribute the . Students will use the instructions to follow along with your landscape painting demonstration and utilize it when they paint their own landscape.
Model painting a landscape. First make a light sketch using water-based paints to create the sky and background. Then, using watercolor paints and the wet wash technique, fill in the middle ground. With tempera paints, add foreground objects and details. Finally, incorporate the illusions of reflection and depth.
Discuss the sequence and methods used throughout the painting process. Tell students they will use the same process to paint a landscape with a creek as the main focal point.
Apply
Allow time for students to paint landscapes with water reflections. They will follow the same that you modeled.
Assist students throughout the process. They can reference the teacher example or the landscape painting examples from earlier in the lesson.
Set-up a gallery to display the paintings. Have students work together to display the art in the classroom, hallway, or common spaces in the school. On an index card, students include the title of artwork, date, medium, and first and last name.
Reflect
Hold a classroom critique. Encourage students to look at the art using the strategies from the video, Looking at Art Together with Tami Wood. Have them examine and discuss the foreground, middle ground, and background techniques in the paintings.
Assess the students’ knowledge of creating a landscape painting. Evaluate the techniques they used to create a foreground, middle ground, and background.
Extend
Study other artists who use water-base paint for reflections. Focus on painting that is transparent or translucent. What messages does this technique send compared to those that are opaque? Are there other art forms that are related to watercolor (i.e., impressionistic music, classical guitar, ballet, etc.)?
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Visual Arts
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