Art theme: landscapes

The term 'landscape' is broad and encompasses seascapes, cityscapes and townscapes too. Historically, landscape painting has been associated with scenes of the natural world. Sometimes the landscape depicted contains no figures or shows human activity as secondary to the environment. The category has become looser over time and representation can range from accurate depictions of the area to much more abstracted depictions of the land and sea.

Look, describe and discuss

Open a full-screen version of the zoomable image in a new window.

Ask your students to describe the artwork, encouraging them to simply say what they can see.

You can start by showing the whole image, and then use the zoom feature to explore details of the painting. Or you might like to start by using the zoom feature to show a detail from the image, and then zoom out to see more.

Encourage your students to look carefully – this is their superpower! It's best to not give too much background information about the artwork at this stage, so students can develop their own ideas and opinions.

Nudge questions

Now when looking at the painting, ask more specific ('nudge') questions:

• Imagine you could step into the painting. How would it feel? What would you want to do? 
• What is the mood in this scene?
• Is this a realistic painting? Why/why not?
• What do you notice about the brushstrokes? Do you think the artist painted it quickly or slowly? 
• When do you think this painting looks best – when you look up close or when you look from a distance? Why? 

Questions from The Superpower of Looking Kit

Now we can start to explore the 'elements' of the painting.

For this artwork, you will focus on the following areas from The Superpower of Looking Kit:

• Colour
• Light
• Figures

Ask your students to evidence their points:

• where exactly are they looking when they make a statement?
• can everybody see what they see?
• slow down, take time to really look closely

You can introduce knowledge from the contextual background for teachers while asking these bespoke questions with helpful responses which can be found in the teachers' notes.

Everyone learning

You can find out more about The Superpower of Looking SEND/ASD/ALN/ASN approach on our Everyone learning page.

Now it's time to explore the artwork in different ways. This list of sensory activities encourages students to apply their learning and can suit a variety of learning needs.

Make
We suggest creative activities for all learners, including a tactile option to support students with vision impairment: these activities explore the tactile qualities of materials or involve gestural mark-making to further explore the artwork.

• Look closely at the impasto method used by the artist, noticing heavily built-up and textured areas of paint. Try building up layers using large dabs of paint in various colours. Encourage students to press or dab the colour rather than using a drawing or sweeping motion and to keep their dabs consistent in size. When students look at their completed work from a distance, do they notice the dabs of paint blending together?
• Tactile option: the painting captures a fleeting moment, like a snapshot in time, where presence is temporary and always shifting. The figures may leave behind subtle traces in the sand, evidence that they were once there but which is already beginning to disappear with the tide. Use found natural materials to leave your own mark. Press items such as shells or stones into wet sand to create impressions and patterns. You could also use your hands and fingers to record your movement. If you don’t have access to sand, you could use air-drying clay or salt dough to capture the same sense of touch and imprint.
  
  

Experience

• Take a sensory journey to the beach with BBC Bitesize. Gather together objects associated with the beach to explore while listening to the sounds of the seaside. You may even like to fill a tray with sand to experience the feeling of sand flowing through your fingers.
• Invite students to imagine they have stepped into the painting. Working in groups, challenge them to create a soundscape of the sounds they think they would hear on the beach using the BBC Sound Effects Mixer.
  
  

Communicate

• Imagine you are one of the figures in the painting and you are on holiday at the seaside. Write a postcard to someone at home, capturing your day. You might describe the warmth or chill of the water, the feeling of sand beneath your feet and the changing light across the landscape. Consider how the figure you have chosen from the painting is feeling. Are they excited, hesitant, playful or reflective?
• Learn the Makaton sign for ‘beach’. 

Final stage: review

Ask your students to:

• share their sketchbooks in groups and discuss the 'elements' they have identified
• choose an element/aspect they find most interesting about the artwork and record it in their sketchbooks
• choose their own name/s for the title of the artwork
• think of a question they would like to ask the artist

Congratulations!

You have now completed this lesson resource on The Superpower of Looking.

There are more resources in this theme to try – have a look at the 'next lessons' section below.