Watercolor Landscape: Drawing

I have to admit that this project takes several classes but I feel it is worth it. It took me a couple of years to master teaching this project. I hope this tutorial will be beneficial for all of you who are considering teaching your students landscape drawing.

Materials:

• Image of a landscape – I let them pick their own.
• 18” x 24” white paper
• Pencil
• Black Crayon
• Crayola Watercolors(used next post)
• Watercolor Brushes(used next post)

 

It was important that the students picked images that had a good use of space(foreground, mid-ground, and background) and color. Snow scenes are not the greatest.

I always have students start by drawing a horizon line. Even if they cannot completely see the line in the picture, it is a good guide for positions objects and it also continues to reinforce overlapping shapes.

Drawing foreground objects first will help them later when they need to overlap.

When drawing trees I always start with drawing the trunk and maybe some branches. Then I draw the foliage.

When the kids were working on tree and bush foliage I would draw examples of different trees using the document camera to project my drawings. I would go over pine trees, oak trees or whatever the kids needed me to show them. We would have a “tree drawing session”. I would sometimes point out that the Ed Emberely drawing books had some good examples of foliage.

Tree examples

The kids favorite Ed Emberley book. I think I love it just as much as they do.

A page from the “Make A World” book that shows you how to draw trees and bushes. So cute!

Another thing I tell the kids is no details until they get all the main shapes are drawn. The kids tend to spend WAY too much time on details, so I make them do it later in the drawing.

READY TO PAINT! Stay tuned, I will go over watercolor painting techniques in the next post.