You don't need to travel to exotic places to create a "jungle" landscape. Sketch or photograph animals in your own neighborhood, and invent a fantasy landscape by exaggerating the perspective and scale of everyday flowers and plants.
Visit the zoo and the botanical gardens for artistic ideas. Bring along a camera or a sketchbook. It's fun to watch the animals. Spend some time observing their behavior, then try to capture their individual personalities in your art.
Put together a scrapbook, album, slideshow, or blog with your favorite pictures.
Create animal cartoons using online art tools such as PaintBox.
Use pictures in old magazines and newspapers to make a jungle collage. Select images of animals and plants, along with colorful patterns and shapes. Add swatches of leftover fabric, foil, construction paper, or leaves. Arrange the pieces on a sheet of cardboard or posterboard. Once you have the design in place, carefully paste down the pieces layer by layer.
You also can make a collage-style jungle on your computer using digital images. Assemble the pictures, then use a paint program to resize the images or to crop out parts that don't seem to fit your design. Overlay the snippets in layers. The composition below mixes photos of zoo animals with a screenshot of the NGAkids Jungle interactive.
If you have an ink-jet printer and iron-on transfer paper, design a T-shirt and wear your art.
Create an animal costume or mask.
Play with the NGAkids Art Zone JUNGLE INTERACTIVE
The exhibition Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris closed on October 15, 2006.
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National Gallery of Art