Henri Rousseau Jungle Scene

Isla, Year 3, 7 years old

This week Thena’s class studied the works of French Post-Impressionist painter Henri Rousseau to investigate the use of texture in art. We spent some time looking at Rousseau’s series of jungle scene paintings and used them as inspiration for our own work depicting a tiger hiding in the jungle.

To create these artworks the students spent the morning painting, spongeing and dyeing paper. They painted the background using a dry brush technique to add texture and give the impression of vines in the jungle. Next they used crayon to draw patterns on newspaper which they then dyed and cut out into leaf shapes.

To make the tiger the students painted paper and dabbed it with a dry sponge to suggest the texture of fur. After studying images of tigers and doing a lot of practice the students drew their tiger faces with oil pastels.

Finally the students decided on the composition of a tiger hiding in the jungle. They layered the pieces that they had made to construct their artworks and glued them together. I really love the expressions on the faces on the tigers as they peer out of the jungle foliage.