Walk in the Woods

The very early work of Piet Mondrian shows us his love of trees.    The Woods with beech trees is a great example of how trees appear closer to us or farther away based on their size and placement on a flat surface.  It's called diminishing perspective.
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At the bottom of this article are two worksheets to help with practice of this lesson. One is for working on the computer and one for drawing on paper.

Our task was to understand and demonstrate how art can create the illusion of depth on a flat surface.  In order to achieve this we need to understand:

• ​Things that appear close are:
• 1. larger
• 2. Near the bottom edge of the paper.

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• Things that appear farther are:
• 1. smaller
• 2. Nearer the horizon line.

​We used oil pastels to make this work of art as color-filled as possible, pressing one color into another and mixing them for our own invented color schemes.

The following worksheet is designed to do on the computer on Word.  Just open the word document and click on a tree.  Drag the corner handle to enlarge or decrease the size of a tree.  Place the larger trees on the bottom lines.  Make sure the trees get progressively smaller as they go up the lines on the page.  This is a great way to get children to engage in visual thinking interactions on the computer.

worksheet_for_computer_drawing_of_diminishing_perspective.docx
File Size:	20 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

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The following worksheet is for printing out and drawing tree trunks to practice the principles of diminishing perspective.  Simply print out the worksheet. look at the example, follow the directions and draw.  

worksheet_for_drawing_diminishing_perspective.docx
File Size:	17 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

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Work in Progress

I was so inspired by this lesson and my own walks in the woods during this beautiful fall of ours, that I decided to make a painting of my own.  The children really inspire me with their choice of colors.  I'm not yet finished with this painting but I'm having a lot of fun playing.  Wolf Kahn used brightly imaginative colors to paint trees.  If you haven't already seen his work, it's very uplifting and he is popular in the calendar world, in case you need to brighten up a wall in your home.