Warm and Cool 3-D Cityscapes

 Yes, I know the windows are totally incorrect in the painting above. Ignore it.  The 3rd grade artist who painted it was happy and so am I.  Below, another 3rd grade painting.

I realize this is a project you've likely seen posted in many variations, on all sorts of blogs, including right here on this blog!  But anyhow, I thought I'd share the variation done recently by the two second graders and two third graders who attended my spring "Scapes" session of DragonWing Arts, that I've talked about before on the blog.  These, obviously, are cityscapes.  The next two paintings below are by 2nd graders. 

It is "fake perspective" - a way to get young kids to make things look 3-D without actually teaching them about vanishing points yet.  I like to wait to teach linear perspective until the 4th grade, when I think the kids are beginning to be developmentally ready to understand the concept.  Still, there will be some kids won't "get it" then, or ever....

We began by drawing arrows pointing straight up, and then drawing a line straight down from each point of the arrow until it meets the bottom of the paper, or until it bumps into another building on the way down. 

Once the drawings were done, I gave them warm colors of tempera, and told them they could paint either the buildings or the sky, but not both.  One child chose a warm sky, and the other three picked warm buildings.

In a subsequent class session, I gave them just cool colors, the paint the opposite part of what they'd previously painted.  I didn't take pictures of the kids that day, because they wanted to keep their work secret from their parents until the last day of class!  They knew I'd be posting them and that their parents would look!

Finally, the kids used long cotton swabs to outline.  I gave them white and/or black paint; one student chose white, two chose black, and the fourth selected to use both black and white.  We were down to the wire getting these done, or I think the kids would have added more windows and details, but honestly, I think they are fun just the way they are, especially with the limited time we had!  We quickly glued them on black construction paper and finally onto pieces of bright colored tag for display.  We were in such a tight squeeze getting these done, I rushed to shoot pics of the finished pieces, which is why they are not flat and straight in the pictures above!  But as you can see, in the photo below, my students were quite proud of their completed work!!!

Warm and Cool 3-D Cities!

My 3rd graders painted these totally awesome tempera 3-D cities! I'm so proud of them!!

We started out by drawing arrows pointing straight up, using a Sharpie marker without pre-drawing. No such thing as a mistake!

Then, to create the "3-D" buildings, the ends of the arrowheads were connected straight down to the bottom of the paper, or until they bumped into another building.

Finally we added our concentric circle skies, which is an idea I adopted from another blogger.

To paint them, we first used a palette of only warm colors and white, to create various colors and tints. The kids chose whether to use them for the buildings or the sky.

In our next art class, students were given just cool colors and white, to paint the opposite of what had been previously painted in warm colors.

For our third session, we finished any warm and cool colors not completed, and then used black paint to re-outline and add windows and doors. Some kids got the hang of slanting the window tops and bottoms along with the slant of the roof line, and others found this a bit more challenging. A number of kids will have to finish in their next art class. Good job 3rd graders!

*** I have tried.. and tried... and tried... to post 3 more photos of the most spectacular paintings in this batch that I really wanted you to see, all photographed at the same time, same camera settings, same everything, but each time I insert them, they show up SIDEWAYS. They were NOT rotated on the computer, and the camera was not rotated, so I am totally befuddled. Anyone have a clue why this might be happening? HELP!!