Farmland landscapes using perspective

I did this lesson with seventh graders, most of who have not learned anything about perspective drawing. This was a wonderful introduction to perspective drawing & landscapes. I would recommend it for 5th-7th grade. We did a 1 point perspective worksheet first. 

The use of soft pastel on colored construction paper is no fail.

I love setting the kids up with a project that is destined to look great. 

Students had to draw a landscape and include crop lines some how.

Tracing in sharpie before applying the pastel was optional. 

These were a few of the examples I showed the kids. If you'd like my entire slide show leave your email in the comments and I'll happily send it along to you.

*** I now have my slide show available via this link. ***

There are so many great Van Gogh examples, you could easily tie it in with a Van Gogh lesson. 

Some more great finished products:

Long Night Moon

I found this book:

Long Night Moon 

by Cynthia Rylant and Mark Siegel

It goes through the moon in each month of the year with beautiful illustrations!

I was inspired by the February moon that was covered by a snowy haze. 

This project was simple but a great success. The second graders did a great job and were very proud of their pictures. One class I only had one 30 minute period and one class I had two 30 minute periods. Both worked out. The project timing can work for 30 minutes to an hour depending on your time block.

Step 1: Draw a circle with pencil about 2 inches in diameter. Draw the bare tree on the bottom of the page (we have previously done a lot of tree drawing so I did not need to spend time introducing this).

Step 2: Color in the circle with white chalk. CAREFULLY take your finger and blend around the edge of the moon to create the "snowy haze" effect. 

Then color in the tree using brown construction paper crayon. 

Step 3: Students can gently make clouds in the sky and snow along the bottom.

Step 4: Draw a mountain in the background by using less chalk to color it in so it is not as bright white.

Step 5: Dot stars in the sky using toothpicks dipped in silver paint.