MS: Van Gogh Landscapes

Maxx B.

Oli

Amelia

Daniel

Middle school's first project was based on Van Gogh's field paintings. He was a Post-Impressionist and to better understand what Post-Impressionism was about, we looked at Impressionism and discussed the similarities and differences between the two. To put it in a nutshell (and I'm no expert BTW!), Post-Impressionists still applied thick brushstrokes, but were not limited to capturing light like the Impressionists were and used color more expressively. Van Gogh was a great example because in some of his work you can sense the psychological turmoil he was going through just by looking at his vivid color palette. After our discussion, I showed several different references of Van Gogh's paintings and encouraged students to take different elements into their own landscape drawing, but I also gave them the option of focusing on one specific painting. I demonstrated how to color multiple layers of oil pastels as the foundation and then how to add strokes on top of that. When they were done, I had students go outside and do their own interpetation. I think every student was successful with this project and I hope they'll submit these for the Original Works fundraiser!

UE: Hiroshige's Mountains

Emmie

Emma

Cooper

Jordan

Kevin B.

UE's first lesson was based on Ando Hiroshige's
print, Lake By Hakone. Hiroshige was a ukiyo-e artist, a general name for Japanese woodblock prints or paintings, but the English translation means "floating world". I told students to think of this description when choosing their colors so their painting would express the beauty of a surreal place. After students sketched out their landscape, they painted the mountains gradationally, going from dark to light. The last steps were to add trees and outline everything with black pen.

UE: Remembered Landscapes

I was inspired by one of my RISD professors, Thomas Sgouros, who paints beautiful large scale landscapes with billowing clouds based on memory after progressively losing his eyesight. There wasn't a single cloud outside to look at for this lesson, but like Sgouros' own process, students painted them out of memory.