Cool Color Abstract Lanscape

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Materials Needed:

Crayons; 9"x 12" manilla paper; Pencils; Black Marker

# of 50-minute Class Sessions Required:  3

Concepts and Vocabulary:

Lines; Space; Perspective; Cool colors; (This project could be adapted to warm colors by changing the subject matter to a summer theme.)

Day 1:

Show various landscape paintings and discuss how the feeling of distance and space was created.  Students will use pencils to draw a winter landscape showing distance.  They were directed to draw 2 snowmen - 1 far and 1 near; 2 houses - 1 far and 1 near; and at least 2 trees - 1 far and 1 near.  Those were the minimum requirements.  They were encouraged to add more detail to their drawings.  After they were finished with their drawing, they were to trace over all pencil lines with a black marker.  Then they were to use the black marker to draw 3 lines starting at the top of the page to the bottom, and 3 lines from the left side of the paper to the right side.  This was done in marker so that the new shapes created by the segmenting of the picture would be easier to see when coloring in the shapes.  They were encouraged to use a variety of different kinds of lines when drawing the 6 lines.

Day 2 and 3:

After the drawing was segmented with the extra lines, I showed them some examples of Cubism and directed them to view the drawing in terms of shapes rather than objects.  They were to color in each shape rather than each object.  (I directed them to use cool colors because it was a winter landscape, but if you did a summer or fall landscape, you could do the same lesson using warm colors.) The only rules I gave the students about coloring their picture was that: a. They had to use cool colors. b. They could repeat the use of any color as long as they didn’t use the same color on a neighboring shape. The same color could touch at the corners of the shapes, but not on a neighboring line.  The explanation that best explained the concept was – each time you come to a line, change color.

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