Monochromatic Landscapes

Here on planet Earth, we have a little thing called atmosphere, which makes it possible for us to stay alive. It also makes things look fuzzier the further away they are. If it is night-time, things will probably look darker if they're farther from you. If the sky is a light gray, mountains and buildings may look lighter and softer from far away. Atmospheric perspective is a way for artists to show depth in their paintings.

I think the easiest way to introduce atmospheric perspective and color schemes to students is with a monochromatic assignment. Mono means "one" and chroma is "color." Students pick a color and add that color to white to tint it. They add black to that color to shade it.

Before mixing paint, students had to research and draw landscapes or cityscapes, thinking about vertical placement of rooftops or mountains. The foreground is at the bottom of the paper, the sky is at the top, and there are several divisions in the middle.

The color, straight out of the bottle was used to paint the middle ground before tinting and shading in increments for the other layers. My students who were completely blind decided what they wanted to paint and what color to use. Then I cut out layers of cardboard and paper for them to paint on their own. Ultimately, we glued the layers together. This makes for a tidier end product for sighted students as well. 

If you try this assignments with students be sure that they add the darker color to the lighter color so as not to waste a gallons trying to lighten up a dark color. It's also helpful to look for how atmospheric perspective works in the real world, beyond the classroom doors.

Foreground, Middle Ground, and Background in Landscapes

When teaching my elementary students how to create landscapes, recently, I emphasized three vocabulary words: foreground (what is closest to you), background (what is farthest away from you) and middle ground (what is between the foreground and the background).  I started with three objects, a stapler, bottle of glue, and roll of tape. I asked which object was closest, which was farthest, and which was in the middle. Because my students are legally blind, they needed to figure out what the objects were and where they were located by touch. We touched each object and said, "closest, farthest, and the middle" than we continued touching saying "foreground, middle ground and background." I repeated asking, "What is in the foreground?" They'd answer, "the stapler." or "Where is the glue?" They'd answer, "in the middle ground." It took a lot of practice, but once they understood the concepts reaching back on a table, I brought out the art history posters like this one of a painting by Thomas Cole.

These images, I would describe in detail, and they would sweep their hand across the foreground, (usually at the bottom of the poster), the middle ground (usually in the middle of the poster), and the background (usually at the top of the poster). For older students I use the terms like "vertical placement" and "overlapping," when I talk about ways to show depth on a 2D surface.

Once they grasped that idea, we made very simple images with colored pencil and tissue paper with foreground at the bottom, middle ground in the middle, and background at the top.

The following week we started over with the same exercises, but this time, they choose a color of paper as their background. They painted branches for the middle ground, and then they each put cherry blossoms in the foreground, using either a sponge, a celery heart, or soda bottle to stamp blossoms. Our town is spectacular with its 10,000 cherry blossoms in bloom, so it's nice to celebrate while reinforcing landscape vocabulary.