Henri Rousseau Jungles

2nd grade artists have been learning about texture (the way something feels; bumpy, smooth, soft, hard, etc.) and implied texture (the way something LOOKS like it feels) to create an Henri Rousseau inspired jungle.


Rousseau was a French painter (1844-1910) who was a toll collector and self-taught artist. His best known paintings are of jungles, even though he never visited one himself. His inspiration came from books, botanical gardens and taxidermy animals.


In one art class, artists first created a horizon line (where the sky and the ground meet) with green paper by cutting a curvy, zigzag or bumpy line. Second, children used 2 different painted papers they made the week before to create grass. One way they made grass was by snipping the paper down the length of it. Another way was making skinny, sharp zig zag lines. Third, the sun was created by "scribbling" with warm colored construction paper crayons on orange paper then drawing a circle and cutting it out.


In another art class, children received brown paper to make two trees. After cutting out the tree trunks and branches, artists had to draw an implied texture with brown marker before gluing their tree together.


Next art, the children will add leaves to their trees along with adding a tiger to their picture.




 Jungle with Lion