What Do You See?

The British landscape is a work of art and a new project is teach children to stop, look, listen and see this for themselves, reports Katie Masters...

At first glance, Framing the Landscape seems to be a simple project. Renowned artist Ashley Jackson, in partnership with the National Trust and the University of Huddersfield, has started erecting huge steel frames – industrial-strength picture frames – in dramatic locations. The first has just gone up in the Peak District, on Wessenden Moor in West Yorkshire.

The purpose of the frames is twofold. Initially they provide an impetus to get people out into beautiful locations. Once there, they offer people a new way of looking at what’s around them.

“The artist L.S. Lowry once said to me, ‘The only way you can see the landscape is to get out into it’,” says Ashley. “The frame simplifies what people see, which can help give them a ‘way in’ to the landscape”.

In particular, he hopes children will be excited by the project. “We can all learn to draw and to express ourselves through drawing,” he explains. “Children are artistic. It’s there in them at primary school – that individual way of looking. But they need to learn to use all their senses and feel a place before they start to draw it. The secret ingredient of any drawing is soul and passion.”

Up on the moors, looking through the frame, Ashley says the children can engage all five of their senses – and learn to ‘feel’.

“They can listen to the birds, feel the wind, taste the rain, smell the earth, see the shadows. Out there, Mother Nature talks to you. It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. And that’s where drawing starts.”

The frames encourage children to spend time looking, rather than rushing to put pen to paper. That lesson – hard to achieve in a time-pressured classroom – is invaluable. The frames also show children how each individual see things differently.

“There are 100 – more! – different views through the frame,” says Rebecca Starrett, a Year 3/4 teacher from Wooldale Junior School in West Yorkshire, who has taken children up to the frame on Wessenden Moor. “It depends on where you sit and when you visit it. You see water, moors, sky, night views, dawn views. All of the children who visited found something different to focus on: one honed in on the reservoir several miles off, another created a drawing focusing on the tufts of grass up close.”

Changing views

Denise Basson, who runs the after-school art club at Yealdon Westfield Junior School in Leeds, agrees. “The children were talking about the way they were looking at what was in front of them,” she says. “They were taking longer to select what they wanted to do and really thinking about it. And they were noticing things. It was a really changeable day when we went out: breezy, then wet, then the sun came out. One girl was looking and looking and she turned to me and said, ‘The light keeps making the landscape change colour’.”

That time spent observing fed into the paintings that the children produced.

“It made their work richer,” says Denise. “There was more shading going on. They were looking at where the light was coming from and where the shadows fall and drawing that dark and light. And they were thinking far more deeply about colour. I could hear them discussing the colours with one another: talking about the shades they wanted being ‘muddy’, or debating how to create a particularly vibrant green, which one child called ‘limey’. They started blending colours in a way that they hadn’t done prior to the visit.”

The paintings were made after the children got back to the classroom. These were based on sketches they had done on the site, the quality of which improved the children’s confidence in their own abilities.

“The children were amazed by what they’d achieved with nothing more than a sketchpad and a pencil,” says Rebecca. “It was drawing in a place where they weren’t scaffolded with materials – there weren’t lots of paints or brushes or collage-y bits and pieces. It was stripped right back and it made them appreciate what they can really do.”

Closer to nature

“We all have these skills,” says Ashley. “Developing the ability to draw is a case of practise, practise, practise – and using your eyes, your heart and your brain.”

And while not every child who visits the frames will end up an internationally acclaimed artist, the experience will give them a new way of looking at the world around them.

“I want children to see the drama of Mother Nature and how a landscape changes every second,” says Ashley. “I want them to come away saying, ‘Wow. I didn’t know we had this land.’ I want a new generation to look at the land – and to look after it. The way to stop children kicking the daffodils is to make them plant them.”

“It has made the children appreciate what’s around them,” says Rebecca. “The ones I took to the frame have already started taking their parents up there, to share the experience with them.”

And Denise Basson’s art class have adapted the idea of the frame: creating their own small, portable frames out of cardboard and using them to find different perspectives and focal points for drawings closer to home.

“They were excited by the big frame, so that excitement has transferred to the small frames,” says Denise.

And the focal point of the frame can also be extended across the curriculum.

“As well as all the wonderful art work, the location lends itself to all sorts of cross-curricular activities,” says Rebecca. ‘It would be easy to do work on habitat or ecology or to do geography- based work on glaciers and valley formation. It gets children out into the environment. We don’t do that enough.”

For more information about Framing the Landscape - and for many more useful sketching tips - visit framing the landscape.co.uk

How to draw trees

Sketching tips from Ashley Jackson…

* Basic shapes

There are three basic shapes of tree: umbrellas, lampshades and teardrops. Umbrella-shaped trees should give the impression of weeping willows and oak trees. Lampshades are elms and sycamores and teardrops are poplars and Christmas trees. (See sketches)

* Paint the leaves first

If you are painting a tree with leaves, you must paint the leaves first or the trunk will bleed through. Paint the leaves and leave gaps so that the trunk and the branches can be painted in afterwards.

* Leave gaps

Remember to leave gaps through the leaves so that birds can fly in and out of your trees without breaking their necks!

* Paint from the trunk up

Remember that as a tree grows from the ground up you need to paint your trunk in the same way. That way the trunk will always be thicker than the branches, even at the top of the tree.