![]() Those that have time start on toning the stones: Using softly blended greys, tans and browns to add a little warm emphasis to the frame. We also talk about drawing shapes that could actually be stones: Not too wiggly-edged, and not too skinny: but good, solid stuff! Students ultimately used a thin Sharpie to go over the lines of the frame and stones. Students can draw organic blocky shapes for this, or more free-form “field stone” shapes, but either way, the goals for this include keeping the spacing between the stones consistent to suggest an illusion of mortar. The next step is to free-hand draw the “stones” on the window. Here’s a student choosing and tracing her window template: (Most students just use the given width of the ruler for this.) They will need to hand draw the inner frame for the top arch shape, which can get a little tricky and requires some creative ingenuity! Then, using a ruler, students mark an inner frame on the left, right, and bottom edges. These are traced with pencil on 9” by 12” light blue construction paper. I provide 7 different templates with various arched tops for the window shape. The one that remains close to the face will loom large and blurry while the one on the extended arm will look diminutive in comparison. Have them close one eye, (to remove depth perception,) and have them extend one arm straight out, while still keeping their fingers lined up, visually. An easy and fun activity is to have the kids hold up two fingers very close to their nose. Size perception is a major way we can do this. You can even link this discussion to science and mention how our ancestors needed to be able to gauge the distance of prey or predators accurately for survival. This observation governs the rules of our landscape: and provides an opportunity to discuss perspective and the way our curved eye lenses see the world. ![]() We then delve into the reasons why the left cottage does indeed appear closer and the kids are able to figure out these two reasons: Once they realized they’ve been tricked, I will ask the students to determine HOW I was tricky and they of course realize that instead of saying “which cottage is closer?” a more fair and accurate question would have been “which cottage appears closer”. I emphatically slap my hand against the white board and say “this is a flat surface! Neither of these cottages is closer or farther from us, -they’re both the same distance!” I then tell them that they are all wrong. When asked for agreement or disagreement on this, the class will almost always wholeheartedly agree. Invariably, a student will raise his/her hand and answer that the left cottage is closest. Here’s some more step-by-step information:īefore we draw anything, I put a simple picture like this on the white board and ask the kids: “which cottage is closer?” We used small touches of color pencil and white paint as final embellishment options, but the light blue paper also works very nicely unadorned and gives these landscapes a hushed and quiet feeling! This immediately established a close-up feature, thereby making it easy (and automatic!) to create the illusion of depth as things got smaller, relatively, higher up in their picture plane. How do you do this successfully? Two ways:ġ.) Start at the BOTTOM and work your way UP.Ģ.) Everyone started with a LARGE tree on either the right or left of their paper. ![]() Students then drew their landscapes to include foreground, middle ground and background realistically. We used these size relationships to help create a wintery scene as though we are looking out a castle window.Īfter a tracing an arched window template on pale blue paper, students added a one inch border in which they drew stone “blocks” to suggest a castle window frame. We learned that when viewing a landscape, things that are closer appear larger and lower in the picture, while things that are far away are higher and smaller in comparison. Creating the illusion of depth on a flat surface isn’t as hard as you think!
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