La Boca House Collage

La Boca is a neighborhood, or barrio of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires and is a popular destination for it’s colorful houses. Looking at lots of photos of these amazing buildings is a good way to start this project.

1. I discovered these really cool Fiskar paper crimpers at JoAnn Fabrics, and brought several to class. Older students can try to roll the paper themselves, and younger ones can watch a demonstration to see how they work. I started with giving each student a white background paper, and then lots of crimped paper to experiment with. I prefer the nice stock used for scrapbooks, but I think any construction paper will do.
2. Ask the students to cut large rectangles and matching roof shapes for their homes, and distribute white glue for attaching them to the white paper. The buildings should all be sitting side by side. Rotating the texture adds interest to their collage.
3. Finally, flat paper may be drawn on with a marker to create windows and doors. These shapes are cut out and glued to the buildings.
CA Visual Art Standard: Creative Expression, Grade One
2.7 Use visual and actual texture in original works of art.

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How To Draw a Fall Tree

I found this project on Artsonia.com, and I love how it makes students think of trees as a series of branches, and not just a fluffy shape that sits on a stick (not a bad place to start, but can be left behind at some point).

1. Ask the students to draw a large "Y" on their paper.
2. Show them how to add smaller "Y"s on each side, alternating as they go up each branch. To make the "Y"s the most realistic, they should be directed toward the sky somewhat, and not at 90 degree angles.
3. When the lines are complete, they need to be thickened. The fattest part of the trunk should be at the bottom, and all the lines should gradually get thinner until they end in points at the top.
4. Lots of fall colors can be colored around the branches. I used my favorite Portfolio oil pastels here.
5. The background may be added, with grass and shadow and sun and clouds.

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Fall Pastel Landscape

This kind of loose, simple landscape lets chalk pastels do what they do best – make smudgy, soft shapes.

1. Give the students a narrow sheet of construction paper, and instruct them to draw a ground line 1/3 of the way down. (Skip the pencil and just draw directly with the chalk.)
2. Next they should draw 3 round circles for the trees and fill them in with fall colors. Rubbing with fingers softens the shapes.
3. The sky background should then be colored and blended in.
4. Add clean dark lines for tree trunks.
5. Divide the ground area into three sections, color and smudge to soften.

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Layered Landscape

I found this project at www.artsonia.com, a wonderful source for creative ideas.

1. Each student is to position a piece of paper horizontally, and draw three lines that tilt a little to each side. These sections will each represent foreground, middle ground and background in the picture.
2. Draw three simple tree shapes, one extending up from each line. All should be spread out to give the branches room.
3. The ground lines within each tree then need to be erased. The students will then trace all the pencil lines with a black sharpie.
4. Lastly, the hills, trees and sky are to be filled in with oil pastels. Most pastels have a dark and light green, orange and yellow and brown, which may be used to shade each section to give it depth. If you use water-soluble pastels, you can brush the artwork with water to smooth the edges between the colors.

CA Visual Art Standard: Creative Expression, Grade Three
1.3 Identify and describe how foreground, middle ground, and background are used to create the illusion of space.

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Scratch Art Landscape

You don't have to buy expensive scratch art paper, if you have some good oil pastels, you can make your own.
1. Give the students a heavy card stock sheet of paper, 8.5" x 11" is good. With a pencil, ask them to draw at least 3 simple upside-down curves to represent hills. Next they are to draw a circle sun somewhere in the sky, and then add concentric circles around it until the sky is filled. No houses or trees are needed.
2. Next the pencil lines are to be traced with a fat, black sharpie.
3. Ask the students to color in all the shapes with oil pastels, coloring slowly so that no paper shows when complete. Bright colors are best (yellow, red, orange, green and blue). No blacks, browns or navy as they won't contrast enough from the upcoming black.
4. Each student is to color over their entire picture with black pastel, the darker the better.
5. With a wooden stick, the black can be scratched away to reveal the bottom colors. Encourage the students to make their lines go in different directions to create the maximum amount of “energy” in their drawing.

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How to Draw a House

I had great success with this project for kinders recently. Several even came back later saying they went home to draw more houses. Love it when that happens!

1. I printed out 1/4" graph paper on 17" x 11" paper to help the students draw straight lines. Using just plain white paper would probably be fine though too. Start by showing the students how to draw a straight horizontal line for the ground. A basic house shape is added above it, sitting a bit to the left of the paper.
2. Show the students how to draw two horizontal lines for the edges of the roof. If possible, ask them to make them approximately the same length.
3. Starting at the top line, the two ends of the roof need to be connected and then a straight vertical line goes down.
4. Now the details of door, windows and sun may be added. All the lines are traced with a thin black marker, and then shapes are colored in. Encourage them to include the background so the image has lots of color.

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Watercolor Landscape

Here's a simple watercolor project I tried out last week. It turned out to be a good way to teach the very basics of watercolor, namely that if you paint on dry paper, you get clean lines, and if you paint on wet, you get fuzzy.

1. Working with 11" x 15" watercolor paper, the students first drew along with me in pencil. I asked them to draw a horizon line near the top, and then an upside down skinny "V" to look like a road that disappears into a dot when it goes far away. Curvy roads were also allowed.
2. The areas on either side of the road were going to be fields, so the students were to divide them into about 3 or 4 sections.
3. A simple house was added on top on the horizon line.
4. I gave each student a thin brush and choice of bright liquid watercolors. (I like to dissolve the Crayona tablets in spillproof cups ahead of time.) They were to "draw" with their brushes and paint over all their pencil lines, taking care to make them as neat as possible. When finished, they could dab at their lines to speed up the drying for the next step. This again is an example of "dry" watercolor painting.
5. For the "wet" technique, I showed students what happened if they painted their fields with a color, and then added small dots or lines on top. Fuzzy shapes would appear, which could be plants of any nature. Lastly some green landscaping was added on the horizon, along with a blue sky. And a new discovery, the pencil lines erase easily when the paper is dry, which makes for a much nicer looking painting when complete. I was so happy with the overall results, I'm putting this project in my keeper file.

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Sunset Cityscape

This is a project that lets even the very young make a bold and colorful image. I found it on the Artsonia.com website.
1. I gave the students a letter-size watercolor paper, and liquid watercolors. I found it helpful to have at least five color choices so that the background could have lots of variety. The students are to paint about 1" wide stripes from left to right until the paper is filled with color.
2. While the paint is drying, give the students long sections of black construction paper that they can easily cut down into buildings. Encourage different rooftops for variety.
3. Give the students long stripes of yellow paper that they can easily cut into window shapes. Those windows are then glued to the buildings.
4. Lastly, the buildings are glued to the painted paper.

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Glue and Pastel Landscape

Kids are SO lucky that new art supplies seem to constantly show up in stores these days. In my day, just having a 64-box set of crayons meant you were decked out.

1. I used Art Stix from Prismacolor for this picture, but any chalk pastel would work too. However, if your kids are squeemish about chalk texture, try these new Stix as they have none of that quality but all of the color. Give each student a piece of black construction paper. Have them draw, in pencil, a very simple landscape with hills, water, sun and possibly mountains.
2. When the drawing is complete, they are to trace all the lines with white glue squeezed from a bottle. Don't worry about wobbles, they end up looking nice and 'hand made' I think. Just try to not make huge puddles. Let the glue dry at least a day.
3. With either the chalk pastels or Art Stix, instruct the students to use at least two colors in each section of the picture. For example, dark and light blue for the water, dark and light green for the grass, etc. This will give the artwork some shading and depth and add a lot more interest to their work.

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Acrylic Dry Brush Landscape Painting

This lesson was to show young students how to layer color when painting with opaque paints, such as acrylic or tempera. Their tendency is to mix and mix and mix, which only creates a muddy palette. If you put some restrictions in place, the outcome is much cleaner and brighter.
1. I had the students paint the bottom third of a horizontal paper white. (This example was done with acrylic, but tempera would work fine too.) Then they chose a main cool color for the sky, as this was to be a winter scene. All the paint needs to be spread thin so that it starts to dry pretty quickly.
2. Next, an accent color was added to the sky as small dots of paint that were brushed with just a few quick strokes. Another accent color was chosen for the ground, and also smoothed with just a few strokes. (This student chose pink for the sky and green for the ground.)
3. After the sky and ground are dry, or even mostly dry, a black fence is painted in with thin horizontal and vertical lines.
4. Snow is added with white paint in the sky, on the fence and on the tree.

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Abstract Winter Trees

A simple illustration I came across in a website inspired this project.

1. Give the students 2 different sizes of narrow triangle cardboard templates, and ask them to draw 3 triangles (trees) across the middle of a sheet of paper.
2. Instruct the students to draw a curvy ground line, and then connect the ground with the trees in a straight line to make the trunks. "V" shapes may be added in the trees to look like branches.
3. Show the students how to divide the background into 3 sections.
4. Ask the students to trace all their pencil lines with a crayon.
5. Give the students watercoler to paint in all the shapes they have created.
6. Use a hole punch to create lots of small white circles. With dots of white glue, add the white circles to the painted pictures.
CA Visual Art Standard: Creative Expression, Grade Five
2.4 Create an expressive abstract composition based on real objects.

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