Friday, July 9, 2010

Ted Harrison

Canadian Artist, Ted Harrison came to Canada in the 1970's.  Originally from England, he settled in the Yukon for decades before moving to  Victoria, BC.

This is a wonderful project to do in conjunction with  a study on Canadian provinces. I use the book O Canada. All the pictures are created by Ted Harrison. Each province and territory is featured. (Nunavut is not included since it was not a territory yet when the book was published)

I begin by looking at the art and asking the students to guess  which province is being portrayed by looking at the symbols represented. I have made it into a game. Each centre has 3 art pictures and 4 province and/or territory names. Students have 2 minutes to figure out which province or territory is represented and why.

I then ask them what each of the pictures have in common. 
Curvy lines, vivid  "magic"colours, fore, middle and background, simple subjects

For the art project, I ask the students to choose a simple subject ( buildings, flowers, trees, sail boats, animals) and place in the centre ( middle ground) of their picture. Then to add a foreground and then a background. Remind students that things in the foreground are bigger than the middle ground object. I also encourage the use of  curvy lines. I also let them know that the horizon line is about a third of the page from the bottom.

Examples:
Foreground could be sidewalks, bushes, grasses, water, animals
Middle Ground: trees buildings, mountains, seashore, animals
Background: sky, mountains, buildings

The students can use pastels or paints to finish their pictures.

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