Saturday, June 18, 2011

American Impressionist landscape with Birger Sandzen



Discussion: 
Birger Sandzen and the artwork
PINES AND ASPEN, ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, COLORADO, 1929, crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Impressionism
Pointillism
light values 
stencils
matisse method of painting with scissors for stencils
pollack method of spraying paint (we will use toothbrushes)

Artist: Birger Sandzen  (5 February 1871–19 June 1954), 
he was a Swedish-American painter best known for his landscapes. 
He produced most of his work while working as an art professor at the Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas.[1]
A painter and printmaker, Birger Sandzén was one of the first European-trained, avant-garde artists to settle in the American heartland. 
Born in the village of Blidsberg, Sweden 
Took classes with the internationally known Swedish Impressionist painter and etcher Anders Zorn. 
In 1894, he moved to Paris to attend a painting class by Edmond François Aman-Jean and encountered firsthand the Pointillism of Georges Seurat. 
Sandzén was drawn to Kansas to teach at Bethany College
He immediately assumed a leading role in the cultural life of the Midwest, exerting enormous influence upon the development of art in Kansas and surrounding states. 
He traveled to find his subjects, not just in Kansas but extensively in the desert Southwest and Rocky Mountains of Colorado. 
This painting of Rocky Mountain National Park is a scene that the artist depicted often. 
As in much of Sandzén’s production, the subject matter of rocks, water, and trees is secondary to the artist’s expressive color and application of pigment. 
With thick areas of impasto and brushwork left evident, highkeyed colors exist side by side in full intensity, mixing optically to produce an expressive surface that celebrates both the topography depicted and the art of painting.

PROJECT: students create pointillism landscape using stencils tape resist and toothbrushes
picture landscape in your mind: trees in middle ground, mountains behind, pond in foreground
Step1: in the middle ground draw a rock shape
Step2: in the foreground draw a pond
Step3: using blue tape tear and place in your tree onto your rock in the middle ground
Step4: using poster board cut a mountain range
Step3: place mountain range on to your paper protecting all below
                tape down your painting and the mountain stencil so that they won't move during the 
                splattering
Step4: using a toothbrush and scissors spray in your sky in teh background
Step4: remove mountains paint in mountains and middle ground using the side of your medium brush like oval dots
Step5: paint in your pond using the tip of a q-tip small round dots
Step6: remove your tape from the trees using the side of your small brush add in black side brush ovals creating a birch tree
Step7: using the small point dot of the tip of your paint brush add in the leaves of the tree.
MATERIALS: 
watercolor paper and paints
q-tips
blue tape
poster board
card stock or poster board for mountain stencils







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