Lesson 3: Perspective
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Items in this lesson
Slide 1 - Slide
Re-establish contact with the class. You have the reproduction of The Harvest with you again. Explain that today you’re going to be drawing and taking photographs.
Slide 2 - Slide
Repeat what you said at the end of the previous lesson: that Vincent often made paintings that included objects which said something about their owner. Show Vincent’s chair and Gauguin’s chair. What do the students think the paintings tell you about these two artists?
Ask if everyone has brought something that says something about them. If not, they will probably have something in their bag that they wear or use every day, or that they like to eat.
Assignment: make small groups of two or three students and instruct them to interview each other about what they have brought and why. Listen to each other carefully, as you will have to say something about the other person’s object afterwards.
Suggest a number of questions they might ask:
- What have you brought?
- Why do you like this object?
- Do you associate certain memories with it?
- How often do you use it?
- What does it say about you?
Encourage the students to show an interest in each other and probe further with their questions. After the interviews, ask a number of students what they have found out about the object and their classmate.
Slide 3 - Slide
Explain that this lesson is about perspective. In a moment you are going to draw the object you brought from different angles.
Vincent often went back to the same subject to try and see it from a different vantage point (standing in a different place) . He did this with the landscape in The Harvest, for example.
Show some examples (on this slide and the next).
Can the students see elements in the landscapes that they recognise from The Harvest? (click on the hotspots)
Slide 4 - Slide
More than 10 months later, Vincent made another painting in the same spot, but facing a different direction. The Alpilles ('little Alps') mountain range is visible in the background, just as it is in The Harvest.
Slide 5 - Slide
Explain: for the photo assignment, we need to know more about different perspectives. Van Gogh often drew and painted landscapes with a very high horizon. This left lots of room for the landscape. The Harvest is a good example. You can see other examples on the slides. Ask the students to point out the horizon:
Daubigny’s Garden: high horizon
Tree Roots: only a little bit of horizon in the top left (we’re looking up a slope at tree roots)
Landscape with Rabbits: no horizon
Slide 6 - Video
Vincent often painted landscapes from a bird’s-eye perspective, so looking at it from high above. But he also painted landscapes where you feel you are standing firmly on the ground. Compare the two paintings in the slide. Why do you feel much closer to the ground in the landscape with irises? Point out the size of the irises compared to the church. This really low vantage point is called a frog’s-eye view.
Slide 7 - Slide
Vincent often painted landscapes from a bird’s-eye perspective, so looking at it from high above. But he also painted landscapes where you feel you are standing firmly on the ground. Compare the two paintings in the slide. Why do you feel much closer to the ground in the landscape with irises? Point out the size of the irises compared to the church. This really low vantage point is called a frog’s-eye view.
Slide 8 - Slide
You can use different vantage points in portrait photography too. Photographer AiRich likes to explore different extremes.
How do the people in the photo come across? How does the perspective contribute to that?
Slide 9 - Slide
Assignment: explain that the students are going to take photo portraits of each other in a moment.
You’re going to have your pictures taken with the object you brought along. Remember two things when taking the photo:
1. Perspective:
What do you want to say about yourself? What perspective would be best for that? Try out extremes, with low and high vantage points, just like AiRich.
2. Object:
Strike a pose that expresses your relationship with the object. Show that it’s part of you.
Think about this example by AiRich (see hotspot).
Slide 10 - Slide
Vincent often had his models pose with objects that meant a lot to them, too. Things that symbolise their knowledge, character, job or role in life. ‘La Berceuse’ is holding a cord which she uses to rock an unseen cradle, for example.
Slide 11 - Slide
Give the students 20 minutes to take the photographs.
If they have mobile phones with them they can use them for this assignment. Make sure you have an email address, cloud account or app where you can collect all the photos. You could also be the photographer, and take all the pictures of the students yourself. In that case, let the students decide how they want to appear in the photo. Give the others another assignment to do while they are waiting, such as writing a letter as if they were Vincent, imagining what it would have been like to be him. This lets them practise changing perspective in language.
Slide 12 - Slide
Discuss the photos. You might be able to show them immediately on the smartboard, or share them digitally, or otherwise show them on a phone. In the exhibition they will be printed, or shown on a larger screen. You can use the following questions.
- Who’s happy with their own photo?
- Who’s impressed with another person’s photo?
- Which perspective is really striking?
- Which objects look alike?
- Which photo tells a story?
