Greta is a working artist and is currently attending school for art education. This is her first semester working with Art Sphere. Her goal is to inspire her students to learn about the world through art, and express themselves freely.
This lesson teaches kids about composition, and how to create a landscape painting.
Grade: kindergarten-5th.
Vocabulary: horizon line, pattern, horizontal, and vertical.
Materials: water color paints, individual cups of water, heavy duty paper (watercolor paper works best), brushes, rulers, and sharpies.
Directions:
- Pass out paper, pencils, and rulers. Have the students write their names on the back of the paper.
- Demonstrate where to draw the horizon line using the ruler, and make sure everyone has drawn their horizon line using pencil.
- Start creating the building that make up your cityscape – use vertical and horizontal lines to make connecting buildings across the paper.
- Add detail to the buildings by making different patterns.
- Pass out sharpies and instruct the students to trace over ALL the pencil marks, once they were finished with their patterns.
- Pass out cups of water, brushes and water color pallets and ask students to color in their creations.
- Once the students are finished, collect the paintings and put them away safely to dry.
Looking into the deeper meaning of this lesson, I think it is a really good foundation for creating a proportional landscape view. From the horizon line one can get a better idea of how depth plays into a painting and how that can add more realistic or fantastical ideas into ones art.
Going through this lesson step by step gave the students a better understanding on how they could create the cityscape. At the beginning of the class many of the students were a little intimidated by this project, but by going at it slowly they understood how easy it actually was to create, and in the end the students really enjoyed this lesson a lot!
