Art Class: Space and Perspective

We have been loving our monthly art classes with Paul Halferty from Lilywork Tile.  We have been studying the basics of art such as line, color, and texture.  Today we learned about space in art.

Space can refer to the place where the sculpture or painting will be displayed, but it is most often used to refer to how perspective is shown in a drawing.  Two of the most common ways to show perspective is to layer items in the picture and to have objects in the distance be drawn smaller than closer objects.  Of course, he showed us both of those techniques in some paintings and photographs during his powerpoint presentation.

With Mr. Halferty's help and direction, the students went on to complete two different drawings.  First, they worked on a drawing with a single point perspective.  

Students used a ruler to draw a straight line horizontally across their paper.  This line is the horizon line.  They then drew a single point on that line to be their vanishing point.  

Next, they used their ruler to draw two lines diagonally down from the vanishing point.  Lines were then drawn between the two diagonal lines.  Mr. Halferty explained that drawing the lines closer and closer together as you get closer to the vanishing point will also show perspective.

Finally, students added trees, signs, and bushes on the sides of their railroad tracks.  They focused on making the items in the front larger than the ones that were farther away.

For our second drawing, students used atmospheric perspective. {This is apparently the technical term for why mountains look lighter in color the further away they are. If you didn't know that, don't feel bad.  I didn't either.}

Students drew wavy lines diagonally across their paper to make a mountain range.  Using only one color, they colored each section of mountain getting lighter and lighter as they worked their way backwards.  

We learned many new, big words today, and the students really seemed to grasp the concept of perspective {larger to smaller, darker to lighter}.  I know my son was still talking about it and noticing how things looked smaller in the distance on our way home from school today!  So I'm sure many of the other students will remember this lesson for a while as well!