Landscapes

MIndfulness

Breathe in and out slowly through your nose. As you sit, let an image form in your mind’s eye, of the most magnificent or beautiful mountain you know or have seen or can imagine. Notice how massive it is, how solid, how unmoving, how beautiful, whether from a far or up close. Imagine yourself as the mountain. Solid and stable. Beautiful and Strong.

https://palousemindfulness.com/docs/mountain-meditation.pdf

Wieco Art Wheat Field with Cypresses by Van Gogh

See Think Wonder

This is an exercise to learn about the history of art and to learn to talk about art. What do you see in the picture? What do you think is happening and what was the artist trying to tell you with this picture? What does this picture make you wonder about?

Landscapes

A landscape is a picture of natural features and landforms such as mountains, lakes, and rivers that are depicted in an artwork. Landscapes include living elements A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features.^[1] A landscape includes the physical elements of geophysically defined landforms such as (ice-capped) mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, pondsand the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of land use, buildings, and structures, and transitory elements such as lighting and weather conditions. Combining both their physical origins and the cultural overlay of human presence, often created over millennia, landscapes reflect a living synthesis of people and place that is vital to local and national identity.

The character of a landscape helps define the self-image of the people who inhabit it and a sense of place that differentiates one region from other regions. It is the dynamic backdrop to people's lives. Landscape can be as varied as farmland, a landscape park or wilderness. The Earth has a vast range of landscapes, including the icy landscapes of polar regions, mountainous landscapes, vast arid desert landscapes, islands, and coastallandscapes, densely forested or wooded landscapes including past boreal forests and tropical rainforests, and agricultural landscapes of temperateand tropical regions. The activity of modifying the visible features of an area of land is referred to as landscaping.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape

Untitled by Diego Rivera

By Ted T. Ellis

By Qin Yun

Wangari's Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa - Top Storybooks - VooksWangari, grew up in Kenya, surrounded by beautiful trees. Years later, after returning home from college, she is shocked to see entire forests cut down. The land is barren and the people in the villages are suffering. She knows that if trees could return, then the land and people would flourish o...

Wangarĩ Muta Maathai (1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) was a renowned Kenyan social, environmental and political activist and the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement,^[2] an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wangari_Maathai

Foreground middle ground background

Creating a sense of depth to your picture will create interest and give you room to add details that tell the story of your artwork.

How to show depth

SIze

overlapping

Placement

What are things included in a Natural landscape:

Landforms:

Mountains, hills, bluffs, canyons, waterfalls, rivers, lakes, ponds, islands, sea

Landcovers:

grass, mud, rocks,

Transatory elements;

rain, lightening, stars in the sky, rainbows, sunsets,

Regions:

grasslands, tundra, arctic, bogs, prairies, swamp, forest, rainforest, mountains regions,

Assignment:

Draw a landscape with elements in the fore, middle and background. You should include at least 3 trees, one in each area of your composition. You may also add any of the other elements found in a natural landscape. Do not forget to draw a horizon line

Vocabulary:

horizon line: the physical/visual boundary where sky separates from land or water

foreground: The area of the picture space nearest to the viewer

middle ground: the visual plane located between both the foreground and background

background: the plane in a composition percieved furthest from the viewer

composition: the arrangement of elements within a work of art

Why this Project :

Learning how to create a compostion (or a picture) that has depth is an important step for and artist. It is part of the measure for becoming more sophisticated at communicating ideas. Learning to use tricks such as placement, size, and overlapping to create a fore , middle and background in a picture, will enable artists to tell a more developed story with their works.

Understanding the difference between natural and manmade objects is part of the lesson. While creating a natural landscape, artists will learn to fill the comosition with appropirate objects and colors that will communicate season, time of day, cilmate and other details that will lend to their artistic storytelling.

Sky Color

by Peter H. Reynolds

In this story Marisol learns to look around her for inspiration for her artwork. Often the rules we set for art can be pushed aside to make more interesting and exciting artwork. Draw a picture of anything you want and remember to use your imagination.