Backyard and Beyond: Drawing Landscapes

Our beautiful drawings and paintings need beautiful settings. In this class, we will talk about landscape drawing - for very young artists. We will look at the trees, houses and buildings carefully and draw them using simple shapes. We will observe the sky and try changing the mood and the weather in our pictures with color. We will learn some art terms: landscape, cityscape, horizon line.
Week 1: Let’s draw trees. We will look at the main parts of the tree: trunk, roots, branches and leaves, and how those might be different for different kind of trees. We will practice drawing them using simple shapes we observe, and add texture and color to our drawings to show leaves, bark, and grass. 
Week 2: Let’s look at the sky. We will look at paintings and photographs where the sky is the subject. We will try to observe how the sky changes with the weather and the time of day. We will draw a very low horizon line in our picture and concentrate on our sky, whether it means adding clouds, rainbows, or experimenting with color. We will talk about how to control our materials to make the sky appear darker or lighter. Learners will be encouraged to complete more than one picture to see how the sky could change the mood of the entire drawing or painting. 
Week 3: On an Island. Let’s practice putting a horizon higher this time, so that half of our drawing is the sky, and the other half is the ocean. We will place an island in the ocean. Adding trees, boats, and creatures is optional! 
Week 4: A city street. We will draw houses and buildings made up of geometric shapes. We will try to use overlapping to show distance.