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Art Project of Class 2F

An Image of the World

Autumnal Trees

Large format brush print

Autumn is a wonderful painter. When the new school year starts, the multitude of colours in nature cheers us up. Looking at our school garden we saw that the changes of colour in the leaves of bushes and trees are all different. Each kind of plant has its own range of shades, and they do not all change colour at the same time.

On a large square piece of unbleached paper we had to place three autumnal trees so that the viewer sees that they are on different planes. Looking from their chairs towards the other side of the classroom or towards the blackboard, pupils observed that some things or some people in a room can only be partially seen, because they are hidden by pieces of furniture or by other pupils.

The pupils had to use overlapping in the planning of their pictures to show clearly which of the trees was in the foreground, which one was in the middle distance and which one was farthest away. As an additional challenge, no large areas of the paper were to remain empty. This ruled out choosing an avenue. In planning a good picture we have to consider a balance of the individual elements in it.

Each of the three trees was to have a different range of shades, so that the individual, partially overlapping trees could be distinguished. The shades on the trees are similar, but just like people in a family look similar, yet not identical, the shades on the trees are similar. By mixing just a very few colours however, variety can be achieved. This is what the pupils learned in this first task, and at the same time they acquired a new technique, brush printing. Depending on which kind of painter's brush you use and depending on the angle at which you put your brush to the paper, you will get differently shaped prints that look like leaves seen from a distance. The brushes were to be used in such a way that between the individual "spots" a little of the original black paper could be seen - similar to a mosaic - and that the chosen colour is slightly varied.

This is how the trees on our sheets of paper kept growing, until we were satisfied with the results.