Elementary

The Essential Question
How can students create a landscape showing distance and spacial relationship?

Objective
Students will draw a landscape that includes at least one scarecrow and depicts distance through foreground, middle ground, and background, as well as overlapping, size relationship, texture variation, and diminishing details.

Materials
black fine-point permanent markers, watercolor paper, watercolor paints, paint brushes, water cups, crayons, reproductions and illustrations of landscapes

Procedures
1. Discuss and view landscape reproductions and illustrations. Concentrate on landscapes sketched during the fall season. (E.g., illustrations with farmland, fall foliage, etc.)
2. Talk about how to show distance and spacial relationships. Provide examples of foreground, middle ground, and background.
3. Discuss and show examples of scarecrow illustrations.
4. Distribute paper and fine-point permanent markers. Ask students to draw a fall-themed landscape that includes a scarecrow.
5. When the drawings are finished, distribute watercolor paints, brushes, and water cups and have students paint their sky.
6. Students color in the rest of their landscape with crayons.

Assessment
Did students draw a fall-themed landscape showing distance and spacial relationships?

Wendy Libby is an art teacher for the Bangor School Department in Bangor, Maine.