Rousseau Rain Forests Filled with Surprises!
by Shelley Schoby, K-2 Art Specialist
Henri Rousseau was a French artist that lived from 1844-1910. Mr. Rousseau’s painting, Exotic Landscape, and Virgin Forest are filled with tropical scenes of fantasy or surrealism. Ideas for Mr. Rousseau's paintings were drawn from botanical hot houses, the zoo, postcards and books. Art students pulled ideas from books postcards and posters.
The plants and trees crowd upon each other creating overlapping. The artist placed a warm colored, red sun in his painting. By choosing the color red for the sun, Mr. Rousseau was helping people understand that rain forests are a hot place. Students compared the three artistic spacial areas of the painting; foreground, middle ground, and background to the four scientific levels; forest floor, understory, canopy and emergent layer.
Students created rhythm in their work by repeating lines, colors or shapes to form movement. Finally, students experimented layering oil pastels to discover unique and new colors. In the students’ works the sun was identified as the light source. Darker colors were used on the far side of an object for shadows.
