Lesson Fifteen

Integrated Concepts• Language Arts: setting, characters, details, fact and

fiction, inference, compare and contrast, oral language• Social Studies: location, occupations, agriculture, family• Visual Art: painting, printmaking

Take a few minutes and examine this painting carefully. Try to notice all the parts of the painting.

Explain what you see in the painting.

What is visible in the setting? Can you identify the structures, the plants and any other elements?

Describe the characters.

Can you explain what is happening here?

Is there any evidence to tell you when this scene takes place?

Are there clues to the location of this scene? Have you ever been in a place like this? Where and when?

Here is a different type of artwork. It is not a painting, it isa print. The artist cut away the white parts and left the black sections. He spread ink on the carved plate and pressed paper onto the wet ink to make the image.

This print has a setting, characters, structures, and other objects just as the painting does.

Take a minute and look carefully at this print.

Can you identify the location?

How would you describe the Characters?

Are there tools or other objectsyou can recognize?

What event is happening here?Support your answer.

If we compare and contrast the painting and the print, we can see that there are similarities and differences.

What do you notice about: • the characters; what are they doing, how they are dressed? • the buildings; what are they made of?• the ground, the plants, the sky?• color, texture, detail, space, light and shadow?

These people are working on a farm. They are “tying” tobacco. Do you imagine these people own the farm or are they workerswho are paid to work there?

How do you imagine they feel about the work they are doing? Do you imagine they are talking or singing? Tell why.

What about these workers? Are they working for themselvesor working for someone else? Do you think they are friends or relatives or are they strangers? Support your answers.

What kind of mood are they in? Are they laughing and talkingor are they quiet? What makes you think that?

If you wanted to make a painting or a print about people working together, what would you show the people doing?

Would they be enjoying their work or would they be tiredand unhappy?

What kinds of work do people often enjoy doing?What kinds of work do people often say they dislike?What kind of work would you like to do?

Information about the art and the artists

Title: “Tobacco Barn”

Artist/Dates: Robert Blake, American, born 1916

Medium: watercolor

Size: 14.25” x 19.75”

Date: 1959

Title: “Vegetable Women”

Artist/Dates: Claude Howell, American, 1915-1997

Medium: woodblock print

Size: 9.25” x 7.5”

Date: 1938

What else would you like to know about the art or the artists?How can you find out?