Wednesday, January 19, 2011

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)

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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

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

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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.

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

Saturday, January 1, 2011

New Year, New Blog, New Challenge

I love being an art teacher and I devote so much of myself to my students. One thing I struggle with is creating artwork outside of the classroom. I’m sure many of you understand this dilemma! I have found that having this blog has been a great motivation to share and work on new ideas. I decided to start a personal art blog and I am challenging myself to just create something new each month. I welcome all of you to follow me and even to take on an artistic challenge of your own! Click the picture below to go to my new blog, Chromo Life.

Happy new year bloggers!

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