Of all the art we have ever done in our home, this project surprised me the most. To be honest, a sense of dread settled upon my heart as I wrestled with the idea of something so complicated, especially with two of our children who aim for each art project to be a masterpiece. How can I guide my children through a process of painting landscapes AND portraits that they will be happy with? (Especially portraits?) Somehow this came together, and the results were simply stunning. It was exhilarating to mentor my children through this process! The Gainsborough Art Study Pages (pictured at the top of this post) are from the Great Artists Picture Study Packet.
To prepare for this art project, we watched a simple, 3-minute video about how to paint landscapes. This was pivotal in helping my children understand my instructions.
I also printed out some templates to use for the portraits (or silhouettes).
Gainsborough Art Project: Portraits on Landscape
Supplies:
- Gainsborough Art Study Pages (pictured at the top of this post) from the Great Artists Picture Study Packet
- Gainsborough Templates (to cut out and paste onto landscape painting) OR Gainsborough Landscape Portraits (to print on cardstock and paint landscape on)
- Tempera Paints {affiliate link}
- Paintbrushes
- Paint trays, egg trays, lids, or styrofoam plates (for paint)
- Watercolor paper
- Jar of water
- Scissors & Glue (if pasting portrait onto landscape painting)
- Paper towels & plastic tablecloth
- Hairdryer (unless you are more patient than we are)
First, we studied the Gainsborough Art Study Pages from the Great Artists Picture Study Packet. (Print out the Gainsborough Art Study Pages and discuss with your student(s) if you would like to incorporate picture study.)
I printed out templates for our children to paint on, and all of them (except the two-year-old) opted to instead paint their portrait on watercolor paper and add a portrait on at the end. I was the only one to use a cardstock portrait “canvas.” For the sake of simplicity, I’ll show my portrait first to explain the process and then show how the boys did theirs.
Step 1. Paint a horizon line in purple or gray.
Step 2. Paint the sky using a back-and-forth swiping motion all the way across the page, emptying the brush. Color should be dark at the top and fade to lighter as you approach the horizon line as shown in this video. Likewise, paint a dark color towards the bottom of your painting and fade the color as you approach the horizon line. Although the photo below does not show it, I painted over the top of the portraits so that the landscape in the background would look more natural.
Step 3: Add a tree.
Step 4. Paint the portraits.
I made a few different versions of portrait “canvases” to use for this art project. I recommend printing them on cardstock for durability. If you’re wanting to cut them out, here’s the stencil-template version.
Because the boys chose not to use one of my prepared templates, they painted a horizon line on the blank watercolor paper
and then added the sky and ground, fading the colors towards the horizon line. After they painted a tree, David and Levi also painted a pond because they wanted to use a boy fishing as their portrait.
To ensure the paintings were dry before handling the portraits, the boys used a hairdryer to dry the landscape.
Because they both chose to use the fishing boy silhouette, I cut out the template. David glued the fisher-boy onto his painting and then added a fishing line with black paint.
Levi used the leftovers as a stencil and colored the silhouette onto his painting with a black marker.
Stephen chose to paint, cut out, and glue (to his landscape) a boy hiking with a backpack.
And, of course, we don’t want to leave out the two-year-old. He painted a cardstock image of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy.
I’m afraid the Blue Boy ended up brownish-purple.
So… here’s an example of learning something I have no idea how to do in order to teach it to my children. I am not a professional art teacher, and yet… this!! Portraits in the style of Gainsborough by the artistically-challenged Ferrell family. I love redeeming my own education as we aim to teach our children about truth, goodness, and beauty.