Art at Hosmer: David Hockney Inspired Colorful Landscapes

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

David Hockney Inspired Colorful Landscapes

After our Romare Bearden inspired mixed media collage cityscapes, 4th grade artists looked at and discussed the countryside landscapes of British artist, David Hockney. We looked at a few examples of his landscape paintings, including the one below.

David Hockney, North Yorkshire (1997)

Student noticed that Hockney used some very bright colors that are not necessarily natural to a landscape. In the painting above, many students thought the purple lines represented a river, while others thought it was a road. Students also noticed that Hockney included different lines, patterns and textures to add interest to the landscape.

Students spent one class exploring color mixing, mixing different colors by combining two colors together, then three colors together, and even four. We noticed that when you mixed four colors together, they often got a little muddy. Students thought about colors they might want to use in their landscape painting.

The following class, students sketched out their own countryside landscape, focusing on using lines to create different areas for color. They painted in the different areas of their landscape, mixing their own colors and including at least one tint, or a color mixed with white. Students referred to their color mixing experiments to help mix new colors.

After this layer of paint dried, we added patterns on top of the different areas, such as stripes, polka dots, and various lines and shapes. Using smaller brushes, students also added details such as trees, houses, animals, cars, clouds, etc.