Activity Guide by Kate Kwasneski
Intern, Grinnell College Museum of Art
Look and Learn
There are many kinds of interior spaces, and an almost infinite number of ways to decorate an interior room. In this activity guide, we are going to look at some art that focuses on interior spaces, and look at how people depict different types of rooms. In the examples below, we see a bedroom, a great hall, a tool shed, and even a court house! The walls, floor, furniture, and decoration in a room can tell you a lot about the people who live there.
This image shows a studio apartment in a city. You can see a bed, a desk, and a stand with a teapot on it. The furniture pictured works together to give a sense of the person who lives here. You can see that this person likes darker colors, from the purple rug to the red blanket on the bed. What else can you guess about them based on this room?
This is a different sort of interior than the first one we looked at. In this image, we see the front hall of Terrace Hill, where the governor of Iowa lives in Des Moines! Sometimes Terrace Hill is open for tours or special events. In the background, you can see a large staircase leading up to the second floor. This hall is full of decorative objects, including plants and an ornate rug. Do you like the way this interior is decorated? What kinds of colors would you add to this scene?
This interior is another version of the one we just looked at. In this version, there is a tiger loose in the hall! How it got there is unclear, but it adds fantasy to this hall. Behind the tiger, you can also see several raccoons on the carpet. How many are there? How do you think the animals got here?
This image is a photograph, and it shows a smaller section of an interior even more closely than the other images. This toolshed is not exactly a living space in the same way as a bedroom or front hall, but it is still a part of someone’s home. How is the closer view of the tools different from the images of the full hall or bedroom? How is it the same?
This interior is not of any sort of house at all. This is a court house. This room is a public place, where judges and lawyers work every day. What things are different between a public building and a private building? What do designers have to think about when designing a court house that are different than designing a living room?
Create
Draw a room of your own! Do you want to create a bedroom, a kitchen, a church? You can create any kind of room that you want. Think about how large the room should be. Also think about the details of the room. Details give a room personality and help show what happens in the room. What should the floor look like, or the walls? Will the furniture match or all look different?
I drew this from an angle looking down at the room from above. You could choose to look at one part of the room from straight ahead, or you could draw a floorplan looking down from above. Think about how the angle you choose changes the look of your drawing.
Write
Tell the story of your interior. Who designed it? Tell a story of something that took place in the room. Think about how the setting of the room can affect what happens in your story. Is there a book on the shelf that contains useful knowledge? Is there a secret passageway somewhere in the room?