INTRO: Introducing the painting: If possible, a full print out of this is amazing to roll out in front of the kids. Printed on a standard printer at home, the full scroll takes up 18 or 19 8.5x11 pages, almost the length of the whole classroom.

 

Discussion Prompts: Li means mile - look how long the painting is. What colors did Wang Ximeng use? Do you notice any small details? (trees, bridge, houses, boats, the sun.) Where would you go swimming in this painting? Where’s the highest place you can climb?

 

Wang Ximeng was born in 1096 and painted this when he was only 18 years old! Name pronunciation is similar to “Wong Shimen(g)” with the g very soft and elongating the n sound.

 

PROJECT GOALS: “Ink painting” big and little details with soft brushes like Weng Ximeng did. Blending colors together to make gradients. Practice mindfulness.

 

MATERIALS: Tempera cake, water, watercolor brushes, large 80lb drawing paper for chalk pastel or oil pastel, mixed media paper for liquid watercolors, scrap paper, paper towels.

 

LESSON: 

Tempera Cake Practice: Have the kids make DARK ink on some scrap or some table paper– they can learn to use less water but not too much less that the ink looks scratchy.

 

Part 1: Painting the Mountains. Start with one or two big bumps at the top of the paper and work your way down to the bottom. with some smaller mountain bumps, paint some tiny trees or teeny houses or people. 

 

MINDFULNESS TIP: Tell students to inhale and make SLOW whooshing noises with their mouths while they paint. Smaller brush strokes make shorter wooshing sounds, larger strokes make longer and slower sounds.

 

Part 2: Coloring the Mountains. After a break, the paint should be fully dried. Show kids how to use chalk pastels, oil pastels, or watercolors to color in mountains and background. 

FOR CHALK: Use the side of the chalk to add blocks of color next to each other, for blue-green mountains, use finger to blend colors together into a pretty gradient. Fill in background and blend smooth. Add circle for sun.

FOR OIL PASTEL: Overlap blocks of color to blend oil pastels together. Go slow and do not scribble so that you can get all the nooks and crannies.

FOR WATERCOLOR: Demonstrate the unpredictability of watercolors by showing what happens when you allow your wet brush to go over the black ink. It will bleed into the mountains if you don't go around it. Students can fill the whole mountain with green and introduce blue into the same wet spot at the top, so that the colors will blend in a gradient. For watercolors only blue, green and yellow liquid watercolors are recommended as options to reduce accidental muddy color mixing and keep focus on practicing with the medium.

 

MINDFULNESS TIP: The artwork is inspired by “blue-green landscape painting” but depending on the attitudes of your students, they don’t have to use blue, green and yellow for their piece. Students can use whatever colors they want– but the catch is they’re NOT allowed to color the sky blue. Tell them to use “unexpected colors” and encourage them to think about all the different colors that the sky can be.

 

FINAL: If desired, lay each painting in the class side by side to create our class’s own “One Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains” inspired painting.