CC Art Week 5: Perspective

My very favorite project to do with my class for week 5 is a One Point Perspective project.  I have done this with kids 9-12 years old with good results. I first learned about it on Deep Space Sparkle.  The original site for it is here, and it includes step-by-step instructions, which I absolutely, positively recommend that you write down and practice and then take your class through.

I start the lesson by explaining what perspective is, how perspective changes a square into a cube, how it can give depth, etc.  I bring some art to show some examples.  If you can bring a laptop and show the pictures on the original site for this project, that would be perfect.  I get big pieces of paper ready ahead of time, by either folding the horizon line and the diagonal lines, or lightly drawing them on with a pencil.  This just saves time and frustration since we only have 30 minutes in CC to do this project.

I tape my own sheet of paper to the white board and I draw every step along the way, explaining and showing as I go, what they are to do.  I think it helps them to see the actually demonstration.

We go through each step.  Room moms help make sure the kids are understanding and following instructions.  The process is quite counter-intuitive, so there may be some erasing involved.  Explain what parallel means, because it will be a helpful word for them to understand!  I found that the step where they put the sidewalk lines in is pretty hard for them.  They all want to make the lines diagonal, but they need to be parallel with the bottom of the paper.  (straight across)  Have extra pieces of paper ready because some will need to just start over rather than erase madly.

In the half hour that we have for art I have always been able to have all the kids have the street, trees, buildings, and some windows and doors on the buildings.  We just sketch it all in pencil.  Encourage them to take it home and add color to it!  Or, for week 6, since it's sort of a free choice week, you could have them continue to work on this piece.

My students this year (11 and 12 year olds) seemed very excited to realize that once they understood the concepts for the slants and so forth, that they could apply this to make different types of landscapes and scenes that they were interested in.

Good luck!