Art at Hosmer: Colorful Countryside Landscapes, Inspired by David Hockney

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Colorful Countryside Landscapes, Inspired by David Hockney

After our Romare Bearden inspired mixed media collage cityscapes, 4th grade artists looked at and discussed the colorful 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)

Students noticed that in comparison to the urban cityscape, Hockney's country landscapes had a lot more fields, hills, trees and details like bales of hay. Students also 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. Even areas that are all green contain different marks to show the texture of the grass.

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, during the following class we added patterns on top of the different areas, such as stripes, polka dots, and various lines and shapes. We talked about complementary colors and how you might use these colors for the patterns to help provide contrast with the background color.

Using smaller brushes, students also added details such as trees, houses, animals, cars, clouds, etc. We talked about how using the smaller brushes can really help with painting small details and sometimes it is about choosing the right tools for the job to make it easier. When we were done with our paintings, we participated in a gallery walk so we could see everyone's work. We noticed that students used many different colors and patterns and included a lot of fun details, such as animals, barns, hot air balloons and tractors. Below are examples of our colorful David Hockney inspired landscape paintings.