Adding Trees to our Winter Landscapes

After reviewing the little tricks artists use to create the "illusion of space", students in first and second grades started painting their trees on their snowy landscapes. Many of the tricks these students were using included changing the size of the trees, the trees became smaller as it receded in space. Students also changed the value of their trees. As the trees reached the middle ground and background, the trees become lighter in value. The third trick that we discussed was that as the trees receded in space, the trees became higher on our paper.  This painting required a lot of thought as students needed to consider those three items (value, size, and placement) as they painted their trees in the winter landscape.

Kindergarteners, instead of painting their trees, are cutting their trees from three different sizes of construction paper; small, medium, and large. The trees will be decorated with crayons and glued in the appropriate area of space within their winter landscapes; large trees in the foreground, medium trees in the middle ground, and small trees in the background (5 trees total). Using the rectangle paper, students made a dot at the top of their rectangle in the center of the paper, draw two straight lines down from the dot in the center to the corners at the bottom.  After cutting on the lines to make their triangle, each child made sure their names were on the back so as not to get their trees mixed up with someone else's at their table section. The trees are stored in their table section's drawer and will be decorated next time with construction paper crayons.

 

 

As we are working on our landscapes, we constantly refer back to Grant Wood's and Pieter Bruegel's landscapes to see how these artists, even though centuries apart, are still using similar techniques to create the "illusion of space" (objects up close and far away).