Winter Landscapes

In this winter tree inspired project, students studied the art element of color. They reviewed the color families of primary and secondary colors and then learned about the intermediate colors. They learned that intermediate colors are made by mixing one primary and one secondary color together. For example: yellow plus green equals yellow green. Students practiced using watercolors to create all the colors they needed for their painting and learned how to blend them together to make gradual color changes. When they were done with the watercolors they used black paint to carefully add the silhouette of evergreen trees to their painting. Then, since it is a winter inspired painting they splattered paint it snow on their artwork.

A Magical Forest

I love the outdoors, so bringing landscapes into my classroom is always a great joy for me. The first thing my little artists created were the painted paper trees. We divided the paper into sections and drew patterns with crayons. Students then painted over these patterns with different shades of green. Day two consisted of setting up the landscape. We created the ground with construction paper, an orange sun and some clouds. We talked about the secondary colors (orange, violet and green) because they made up most of our beautiful landscapes. In the end, we added some texture with sponges and cut out different sized trees with added white paint branches. This is an easy and fun project that is abstract just enough so all students felt confident and created a masterpiece!

Southwestern Landscapes

Middle School students painted these southwestern landscapes to learn the art principle of space. We learned about aerial perspective; that when you go back farther in space objects become duller in color and smaller. Students then designed their own original landscape and painted to show depth in space. 

Summer Landscapes

The 4-6 classes ended the year with a project exploring brightly colored summer landscapes. We began by looking at some paintings of flowers, suns and oceans. Students then worked on sketches that needed to include an enlarged subject that went off at least one edge of the page. I also gave the students the choice to include some elements similar to Japanese prints, such as enormous waves or stylized sun rays. After drawing on the large paper, we covered the lines with a black glue. This gives the lines a dynamic and fluid look. We then filled the rest in with vibrant liquid watercolors. The finished paintings were a great representation of summer!

Value Landscapes

Students in grades 4-6 created these beautiful winter landscapes exploring value and depth. We began by painting the sky. We learned about value- the lightness or darkness of a color. Students chose a cool color to paint the sky and needed to create a minimum of five values with at least two tints and two shades. We attached tissue paper to another white paper with glue water and cut that into triangles for winter trees. We talked about how artists use space in their artworks- objects that are closer are large and towards the bottom of the composition while things that are far away are smaller and higher towards the horizon line.