TERM 3

GRADE 7
VISUAL ART

Contents
Mood ......................................................................................................................................... 2

What is mood in art? ............................................................................................................. 2

Activity1: Mood .................................................................................................................. 2

Proportion ................................................................................................................................. 3

What is proportion? ............................................................................................................... 3

Activity 2: Proportion .......................................................................................................... 3

Linear Perspective .................................................................................................................... 4

What is Linear Perspective? .................................................................................................. 4

Featured Artists ..................................................................................................................... 5

M. C. Escher ...................................................................................................................... 5

Art as a story form .................................................................................................................... 6

Activity 3: Idun and the Apples .......................................................................................... 6

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Mood
What is mood in art?
Mood in art is the feeling or emotion that the art generates when someone is looking at it.
When creating an art work you need to be conscious of what kind of mood you want the
viewer to have so that you can plan your work accordingly.

Activity1: Mood
Look at the two paintings below and answer the questions that follow.
1. How do picture A and picture B make you feel? (2)
2. What colours has the artist used in picture A to influence how you feel. (1)
3. Each artist used the space in opposite ways. Explain how they differ and why you think
they did this? (3)
4. Picture B is very symmetrical and well-balance. Why would this be said about it? (2)
5. How does the angle of the painting affect how you feel about it? (2)

Picture A

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Picture B

Proportion
What is proportion?
Proportion is the relationship of elements to one another and to the whole artwork in terms of
their properties of quantity, size and degree of emphasis. Usually in an artwork you try to
keep everything in proportion to one another. If you are drawing a still life with a table and a
chair you want the chair to be smaller than the table otherwise the picture will look odd.
Sometimes artists deliberately make objects in the artwork out of proportion. They do this
because it creates emphasis and forces you, as the viewer, to look at that particular thing first
because it is more prominent.

Activity 2: Proportion
Look at the picture by Salvador Dali called ‘Elephants’ and answer the following questions.
1. What is the first thing you noticed in the picture and why? (2)
2. Do the elephants’ legs, being out of proportion to their bodies, irritate you? Give a
reason for your answer. (2)
3. Why do you think Salvador Dali did this? (1)

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Elephants by Salvador Dali

Linear Perspective
What is Linear Perspective?
A painter works on a flat surface. The image the painter creates is not a real object, person or
landscape. He creates the illusion of space. Before the Renaissance, artists did not
understand how to create the illusion of space on a flat surface. Their landscape paintings
looked flat, like the backdrop of a stage set.

During the Renaissance, an architect named Filippo

Brunelleshci made a discovery known as linear perspective.
Linear perspective is a graphic system which shows artists how
to create the illusion of depth and volume on a flat surface. This
system enabled artists to paint figures and objects that seemed
to move deeper into the work instead of just across it. They
discovered that all the parallel lines converge and meet at a
specific point on the horizon. This is called the vanishing point.

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Look at the road the next time you drive through a landscape. It seems to get narrower and
disappear on the horizon.

An artist uses perspective in a painting to tell people how big or small things are. This is
called proportion. A large building we see in the distance looks very small, although we know
it is quite big.

Featured Artists
M. C. Escher
Maurits Cornelis Escher was born in 1898,
17 June, in the Netherlands. He is one of the
world’s most famous graphic artists. He is
most famous for his so-called impossible
constructions, such as the ascending and
descending stairs. But he also painted more
realistic paintings and sculpted. M. C.
Escher used the concept of perspective to
create 3D looking pictures that seemed to
be impossible.

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Art as a story form

Throughout history, paintings have been used to tell stories. Many artists painted stories from
religious texts so that these stories would be available to all even those that couldn’t read.
Art is also a very good medium to help express the emotions that go along with the stories
that they depict.

Activity 3: Idun and the Apples

Write a short paragraph of 50 – 70 words explaining what story this picture is depicting.
‘Idun and the Apples’ by James Doyle Penrose

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