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Project Grade 8 Art & Music

Painting the Corvey River Before and After the Lintwhite Dam Removal

A grade 8 art project in which students paint one fictional river valley before and after an old dam is removed, using atmospheric perspective and a wall label.

Objectives

  1. Students will explain how a dam changes a river by trapping sediment, slowing water, and blocking fish, and what changes when the dam is removed.
  2. Students will paint two views of the same place from one fixed viewpoint so that the differences between them read as change over time.
  3. Students will use atmospheric perspective and a planned order of washes to build depth in a landscape.
  4. Students will write a wall label that uses the painting pair to explain the causes of the changes and one tradeoff the town accepted.

Vocabulary

Dam removal
Taking down a dam on purpose, usually because it is old, unsafe, or blocking fish. Rivers can begin to recover quickly after a dam comes out.

Also: sediment, channel, riffle, atmospheric perspective, foreground, middle ground, limited palette

Teacher overview

Many small dams in the United States were built long ago to power mills, and some of them have outlived their purpose. When a community removes one, the river valley changes in ways that can be seen from a single viewpoint: the still pond drains, the river cuts a new channel through the sediment the pond trapped, bare banks slowly turn green, and fish that migrate upstream can pass again. In this project each student paints the fictional Corvey River valley twice from the same overlook, once with the Lintwhite Mill Dam in place and once a few years after its removal, and writes a wall label for a fictional library exhibit that uses the pair to explain what changed and why. The painting pair is a representation of one place at two times, which is the work the C3 geography indicator describes.

Two misconceptions shape the first session. On the science side, many students expect the river to disappear or shrink badly once the dam is gone, because they picture the pond as the source of the river. The same river keeps flowing into the valley from upstream; the pond was only water held back behind a wall, and after removal the river returns to a narrower, faster channel. Students also tend to picture the drained valley as instantly green, when the exposed sediment is bare mud and sand at first and fills in with plants over several growing seasons. On the art side, students commonly paint the distant ridge as the darkest, greenest, most detailed part of the picture because they know hills are green, and they paint reflections slanting off to one side like shadows. Address atmospheric perspective and the rule that reflections in still water fall straight down before anyone starts painting.

The pair only works if both paintings share an identical viewpoint, so Milestone 2 requires a traced line drawing checked by laying one sheet over the other. Watercolor rewards planning, so the milestones build each painting from background to foreground and ask students to reserve white paper for riffles rather than adding white paint.

Painting the Corvey River Before and After the Lintwhite Dam Removal — Grade 8 Art & Music
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Project Brief

Driving question: How can two paintings of the same view show a viewer what happens to a river valley when an old dam comes down?

The story of the Lintwhite Mill Dam. The town of Sedlow and the Corvey River are fictional. Long ago, builders placed the Lintwhite Mill Dam across the river so that falling water could turn the mill's water wheel. After the mill closed, the dam powered a small generator that supplied electricity to a few nearby homes, but that generator stopped working years ago. Today the dam does little except hold back a wide, still pond.

Over the years the dam caused several problems:

  • The river carries mud and sand, which settle to the bottom wherever the current slows. In the still pond, layer after layer of this sediment built up, and the pond grew shallower every year.
  • Fish that swim upstream to lay their eggs in gravel beds could not get past the concrete wall.
  • The aging concrete cracked, and repairing it would have been expensive.

The Sedlow town council voted to remove the dam. Some residents were sorry to lose the pond, where they fished in summer and skated in winter, while others looked forward to seeing the river flow freely again.

What changes after the dam comes down. A visitor returning a few years after the removal would see these changes:

  • The pond drains, and the river cuts a new, narrower channel through the old pond bottom.
  • Wide banks of mud and sand are left on both sides of the channel. They are bare at first, but crews plant willows and grasses, wild plants move in, and within a few years the banks turn green.
  • Where the river drops over rocks, the water ripples and turns white. These shallow, fast stretches are called riffles.
  • Some of the stored mud and sand washes downstream, where it settles into new sand and gravel bars.
  • Fish can once again swim upstream past the old dam site.
  • Stubs of the old dam may remain on each bank.

The view. Both paintings show the view from Gullbrook Overlook, a spot on the hillside just below the dam, looking upstream. The dam, or the gap where it once stood, is in the foreground. The pond, or the new channel, fills the middle ground. The hills of Cressing Ridge, where the river begins, rise in the background.

Rules for your painting pair:

  • Paint two paintings, each on a 9-by-12-inch sheet of watercolor paper turned sideways.
  • Both paintings must show the same view. The horizon, the ridge line, and the edges of the valley must match. You will trace them from one sheet to the other.
  • Use a limited palette of four paint colors plus the white of the paper. Use the same four colors in both paintings.
  • Show depth with atmospheric perspective. The far ridge should be paler, bluer, and less detailed than the land close to you.
  • In the "before" painting, the pond is still water. Reflections fall straight down below the ridge and the far shore, like a mirror.
  • In the "after" painting, the river is moving water. Reflections are broken up, and riffles are left as white paper.
  • At least four changes from the list above must be easy to see.

Your audience. The paintings will hang in a fictional exhibit at the Sedlow Public Library about the dam removal. Visitors of all ages will stand in front of them for less than a minute.

What you turn in: You will turn in your two paintings, a spot-the-change test record, and a wall label of 100 to 150 words. The label must explain at least three changes and what caused each one, and it must name one thing the town gave up when the dam came down.

Milestones

  1. Session 1, read and plan (50 minutes): Read the story of the dam with your class. Choose at least four changes you will show, and list them. Then make two small value sketches of the view, one for "before" and one for "after." Use only three values: light, middle, and dark. Place the darkest values in the foreground and the lightest ones in the background. Output: a list of four or more changes and two value sketches.

  2. Session 2, draw the shared view (50 minutes): On one sheet of watercolor paper, lightly draw the horizon, the ridge line, the valley edges, the dam, and the edge of the overlook in pencil. Tape that sheet to a light box or a bright window, place your second sheet on top, and trace the same lines. Then add the pond shoreline to the first sheet and the new river channel to the second. Your teacher will check your work by laying one sheet over the other. Output: two matching line drawings, checked by the teacher.

  3. Session 3, paint "before" (50 minutes): Work from back to front. Paint the far ridge first with a pale, cool mix. Paint the middle ground next. Paint the pond with flat, sideways strokes, and add the reflections of the ridge and the far shore straight below them. Save the foreground for last, and give it your darkest darks and sharpest edges. Output: a finished "before" painting.

  4. Session 4, paint "after" (50 minutes): Use the same order and the same four colors. Paint the far ridge to match your first painting. Show the narrower channel, the banks of mud and sand, and the young plants. Leave white paper for the riffles. Break up the reflections with short strokes that follow the current. Output: a finished "after" painting.

  5. Session 5, test and write (50 minutes): Run the spot-the-change test. A classmate from another table looks at your pair for 30 seconds and then lists every change they noticed. Compare their list with yours. If a change you planned was missed, decide what you would do to make it clearer, and make a small fix if the paint allows. Then write your wall label and mount the pair for display. Output: a test record, a finished wall label, and the mounted pair.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Rubric
Criterion Emerging Developing Proficient Advanced
Same view in both paintings The two paintings show different views, so the changes do not read as one place over time. The views are close, but the ridge, horizon, or valley edges shift noticeably between the two. The horizon, ridge line, and valley edges match, and the viewer reads the pair as one place at two times. The views match exactly, and the matching foreground frames the changes so the eye moves straight to them.
Depth and atmospheric perspective The far ridge is as dark and detailed as the foreground, so the painting looks flat. The ridge is paler in one painting but not the other, or detail is spread evenly across the picture. In both paintings the far ridge is paler, cooler, and less detailed than the foreground. Value, color temperature, and edge sharpness shift steadily from back to front in both paintings.
Still and moving water The water looks the same in both paintings, or reflections slant like shadows. Either the still-water reflections or the moving-water riffles are handled correctly, but not both. Reflections fall straight down in the pond, and the moving river shows broken reflections and white-paper riffles. Both kinds of water are convincing, and brush direction clearly follows the current in the "after" painting.
Accuracy of the change Fewer than two changes from the list can be seen, or a change is shown incorrectly, such as a dry riverbed. Two or three changes can be seen. At least four changes can be seen, and classmates in the test named most of them. At least four changes are clear, including bare or newly planted banks and new sand or gravel bars, and testers named them all.
Wall label The label is missing, or it describes the paintings without explaining any causes. The label explains one or two changes and their causes. In 100 to 150 words, the label explains at least three changes and their causes and names one thing the town gave up. The label explains the changes clearly, names the tradeoff fairly, and directs the viewer to specific places in the paintings.

Differentiation

Support

Provide a printed outline of the view, with the horizon, ridge line, valley edges, and dam already drawn, that students trace onto both sheets. This keeps the focus on painting and on the environmental changes. Give students a checklist of the six changes with a small sketch beside each, and a wall-label frame with three sentence starters: "Before the dam came down, ...", "After the dam was removed, ... because ...", and "The town gave up ..."

Extension

Ask students to paint a third, smaller painting from the same overlook showing the valley one year after removal, when the banks are still mostly bare and the river is muddy with moving sediment. They then write two sentences explaining how the three paintings together show that a valley recovers in stages rather than all at once.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "dam," "pond," "channel," "sediment," "riffle," "foreground," and "background" with a labeled sketch of the Gullbrook view. Pair each word with a gesture or a quick drawing on the board. Allow the wall label to combine short sentences with small labeled arrows drawn on a photocopy of the painting pair, and let the spot-the-change tester list changes by pointing and naming single words.

Extensions

Students can look for a real local dam, weir, or old millpond using a town history page or a county map and make a quick pencil sketch of it from a public viewpoint. They write a few sentences describing what the river above and below the structure looks like and which of the changes from this project they would expect to see if the structure were ever removed.