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Dahlov Ipcar |
A Colorful Puzzle
Visual Arts Lesson, Grade 4
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Students will be able to:
- Describe and analyze Ipcar’s Blue Savanna.
- Compare and contrast Blue Savanna with Albert Bierstadt’s landscape painting Royal Arches, Yosemite Valley, California (c. 1872) to understand space, composition, realism, and stylizing.
- Understand how Ipcar stylizes her animals and draw their own stylized animals.
- Create their own animal painting in the style of Dahlov Ipcar using patterns and geometric compositional devices.
LESSON ACTIVITIES
Discussion and comparison of Blue Savanna (one 45-minute class)
- Begin the lesson by displaying Blue Savanna and having students do a “sixty second silent search” to explore all the details in the painting. After a period of silent looking, have students share their observations. Ask them to describe what they see. Use the Art Vocabulary Checklist to track students’ responses.
- What animals do you see?
- What shapes and lines did the artist use to create the animals’ forms and details?
- What are the animals doing?
- How are they moving across the canvas?
- What shapes do you see in the background?
- What colors do you see in the background?
- How do the animals interact with the shapes? Where do they fit into the shapes and where to they overlap?
- How do the shapes contribute to the sense of movement in the work?
- Next, display Bierstadt’s Royal Arches, Yosemite Valley, California and ask the students to compare and contrast this painting with Blue Savanna. Ask students to discuss how the paintings are different in terms of how they show space and how they represent nature.
- As students discuss how the presentation of space is different, have them note how Ipcar divides her composition into geometric shapes that flatten the space and create a decorative surface for her animals. Bierstadt uses atmospheric and linear perspective techniques to create an illusion of depth and to give us the feeling that we are looking out a window onto the scene. In Bierstadt’s painting, objects get smaller and fuzzier as they recede into the distance; in Ipcar’s painting, all the animals exist on the surface plane and they have the same scale and intensity of line and color.
- Ipcar’s animals are easy to recognize, yet their colors, patterns, and designs give them a decorative and stylized appearance. Bierstadt’s natural details are painted with exacting precision and detail to give the appearance of real objects.
- Explore with your students the colors used in the Ipcar and Bierstadt paintings. How are the colors similar or different? Review the primary and secondary colors with the students. How does Bierstadt use color to create a sense of depth to his image? How does Ipcar use color to flatten and stylize her image?
- Students will describe Royal Arches as being more realistic, and will learn that while Ipcar’s animals are recognizable, she uses a technique called stylizing to create her animals.
Drawing Animals: Realistic and Stylized (one or two 45-minute class)
- Show students a photograph of an animal found in Blue Savanna, like a zebra, and have them compare and contrast the animal’s characteristics between the photo and the painting. Students will identify ways Ipcar stylized the animals:
- Simplifying the overall contour shape of the animal
- Creating patterns out of the lines and shapes of the animal’s details
- Elongating, shortening, or flattening the forms
- Using exaggerated curvy lines and angles
- Using flat blocks of color
- Simplifying the patterns of their fur
- In the science class, students will choose an animal as the basis of their research project. Have students bring a photograph of their animal to the art class. Students can explore how Ipcar stylized her animals by practicing in their own drawings.
- Students should fold a piece of drawing paper in half, and first draw their animal realistically by carefully observing the photograph.
- They can practice stylizing the animal by simplifying, exaggerating, elongating, shortening, flattening the shapes and form of the animal, and by creating patterns out of the lines and shapes of the details on the other half of the paper.
Animal Paintings inspired by Blue Savanna (five 45-minute classes)
- Once students feel comfortable with stylizing their images, have them move to their sheet of 12” x 18” white paper. Using pencils and rulers, have them divide the surface into geometric shapes, keeping in mind how the animal is going to interact with these shapes. Remind the students to keep the geometric shapes large to create a pleasing composition.
- Students should consider the overall composition when they place their animal into the geometric background. Some elements of the animal should fit into the geometric shapes, and other should overlap. Review the design principles of movement, balance, and rhythm as students work. Ask students, “How will you emphasize your animal?” As students draw their animals into their composition, they may add other elements (other animals, elements of its habitat, etc.) to create a full, balanced image, or they can make their animal large to fill the paper.
- Next, have the students can use fancy shape paper punchers and “silly” scissors to cut a variety of shapes out of wallpaper or other patterned paper. These will be used to create patterns as they paint.
- Before students begin painting, have them complete the Self-assessment—Is my composition ready to paint? and review it with them.
- Review primary and secondary colors, and intermediate and complementary colors. Return to Blue Savanna to explore the color. Have students note that while the animals are very colorful, the geometric shapes in the background are painted with different values of just a few colors. Have students consider limiting their color palette so the geometric composition won’t look too confusing. Show students how the animals’ colors change value when they overlap different geometric shapes and ask them to experiment with this effect. Also, have students explore contrast in their work by carefully selecting the colors that they place next to each other.
- As students begin to paint their compositions, they can place their cut paper shapes into the wet paint to create patterns. It will require several class periods for students to complete their animal paintings. When the paintings are dry, additional patterns, details, and textures can be added using colored pencils.
- Have students complete the Student Reflection sheet.
- To assess students’ understandings of art vocabulary in a fun, interactive way, play the Art Detective Game.
MATERIALS
- Photographs of animals (the ones the students are studying in science class)
- 8½ x 11” or larger white paper for animal sketches
- Pencils
- 12 x 18” white paper for animal paintings
- Tempera paints, brushes, water
- Patterned papers, like wallpaper samples
- Shaped paper punches
- Scissors
- Colored pencils