Seeing and Creating: How to Understand Different Ways of “Seeing” in Painting?

license：Seeing and Creating: How to Understand Different Ways of “Seeing” in Painting? © 2025 by Xurui Xie is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

 🤔Hook

Teaching Process (20-Minute Structured Plan)

🧐Introduction | At the very beginning

• Before showing the artworks, have learners keep their eyes closed for 10 seconds to recall a moment that light deeply impressed them (e.g., morning light, street lighting, sunset). Then ask: “In that memory, which appeared first to you—the object or the light itself?”

• First, the instructor asks learners: “How do we ‘see’? How does light influence our understanding of a painting?”

• Brief explanation: Today we will compare the “ways of seeing” and their differences in paintings from two distinct cultural backgrounds, and experience the meaning of “seeing” in different cultures.

    | When we get to around the 3rd minute

 🐱Tip→You only need to choose one image to participate

    Case 1: Rembrandt’s The Night Watch |

• Display a high-resolution image (from OER sources).

• Guide learners to observe:

• Where does the light come from?

• If you were a figure in the painting, where would your gaze be drawn?

  

  The Night Watch.Oil on canvas, 1642. 363 × 437 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

    Case 2: Fan Kuan’s Travelers Among Mountains and Streams 

• Display the image. Ask learners to observe quietly for 30 seconds.

• Questions:

• Is there a clear light source in this painting?

• How does Fan Kuan construct space through “blank space,” “ink wash gradations,” and “distance relationships”?

• Is the viewer’s perspective fixed or flowing?

  

  Travelers Among Mountains and Streams.Ink and light color on silk, Northern Song dynasty (early 11th century). 206.3 × 103.3 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei.

 🤗Practical Task | At the 12th minute, this will be the final 8 minutes

        The instructor assigns the following task:

• Choose one artwork and complete a quick reconstruction with a smartphone or pencil. The core is to imitate the artwork’s lighting or spatial construction method.

• Broaden the definition of creation: No need to be limited to canvas or paper painting. Professional painting skills and art history knowledge are not required—all forms are welcome to try.

Option A→

   You can:

• • Take a photo of any object with your phone

  • Keep one side bright and the other dark

  • Or use your hand to block light, creating directional lighting

To help participants understand, I took the photo myself. This resource is fully public. (CC0 — no rights reserved)

Option B→

    You can:

• • Take a photo with foreground/midground/background layers

  • Draw a simple “layered space sketch”

  • Collage three layers of images (bottom–middle–top) with your phone

To help participants understand, I took the photo myself. This resource is fully public. (CC0 — no rights reserved)

    You’re only “imitating a way of seeing”—not the artwork itself.

🥳✌️👍Evaluation and Reflection 

• Group Sharing: Each learner presents their media creation and introduces to other learners:

  • Which way of “seeing” is more in line with your own viewing habits?

  • With the explicit consent of the learners, please post a photo taken using the way of “seeing” learned today on Padlet (https://padlet.com) or Google Jamboard(https://jamboard.google.com), or write a brief new understanding of “light and seeing”.

————Recommended OER Resources for Teaching (Fully Openly Licensed, Free for Use)————

Rembrandt’s The Night Watch

1. • Source: Rijksmuseum (National Museum of the Netherlands) Open Resource Library
   • Link: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-C-5
   • License: CC0 Public Domain, free for use
   • （These are brief introductions delivered by educators to learners, with full consideration of the auditory and participation needs of visually impaired people.）This painting shows a Dutch militia unit ready to patrol. Exceptionally large—twice a person’s height and over ten steps wide—its focal point is two figures: the captain in black with a broad-brimmed hat, extending his hand to direct; his deputy in bright yellow, vividly lit by sunlight. Oblique light from the upper left illuminates them, darkening the dozen-odd soldiers behind—some with guns, others adjusting the flag or beating drums. The blurred, dim background highlights the leaders, creating a tense yet dynamic mood of imminent departure. A key golden beam cuts through darkness, making the figures seem to emerge from shadows.

Fan Kuan’s Travelers Among Mountains and Streams

1. • Source: Wikimedia Commons
   • Link: File:Fan Kuan – Travelers Among Mountains and Streams – Google Art Project.jpg – Wikimedia Commons
   • License: CC0 Public Domain, free for use
   • （These are brief introductions delivered by educators to learners, with full consideration of the auditory and participation needs of visually impaired people.）This tall landscape is divided into three vertical sections. Below, people ride donkeys along a mountain path, flanked by gnarled tall trees. The middle features layered, weathered rock formations with deep shadows. Above, a massive upright peak—occupying half the frame—towers toward the sky. Without clear light, ink wash depth conveys tones: lighter, mistier ink higher up. The scene exudes profound serenity, with humans dwarfed by mountain vastness. Its top-heavy composition draws the eye upward, shifting from human realm to heaven and earth.

Synopsis

It’s an open source tool, meaning anyone can edit and modify it as they wish, this teaching plan is mainly to guide the learner that there are lots of “seeing” in painting, and everyone can make something with “artist’s eyes”.

Brief Teaching Principles

• Openness: All images and materials are from public domain or openly licensed resources.
• Inclusivity: Learners are not required to master skills in traditional canvas or paper painting. Meanwhile, I choose to use electronic devices such as mobile phones— which are closely related to everyone’s daily life— as the medium to create each learner’s own “spatial experience”. There is no requirement for learners to have prior knowledge of art history to participate; anyone can join through observation and experienc
• Time Adaptability: The structure is compact and can be fully completed within 20 minutes.

Learning Objective

• Guide learners to understand the multiple “ways of seeing” in painting and the differences between them.

• Practice “how to see” through hands-on experience by completing a simple visual re-creation (no form restrictions) based on different ways of seeing.

• Let learners practice “how to see” through experience: Apply these understandings to produce an original and visual creation that reflects a chosen “way of seeing.”

You might find these interesting

No prior assumptions are made about participants, as these literatures are not part of this toolkit, just supplementary recommendations.

1. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972), chap. 1.
2. W. J. T. Mitchell, “Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture,” Journal of Visual Culture 1, no. 2 (2002): 165–166.
3. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Tavistock, 1970), part 1, chap. 1, “Las Meninas,” 3–15.
4. James Cahill, The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), chap. 2, “The Three Distances: High, Deep, and Level Viewing in Northern Song Landscape Painting.”
5. Ways of Seeing by John Berger