This is an advanced crayon resist NightCityScape Reflection assignment (take a breath)
that I plan on doing with my kids someday.
It may be a little too technical, but I had fun doing it myself.
It could be busted into half a painting just focusing on the crayon resist method of the night lights and overlapping of the city to show visual perspective.
The reflection piece could be left out.
First I drew an overlapping city on a hill.
Draw in pencil, outline in Sharpie.
This could be linked by talking about Grandma Moses or Grant Wood and how they showed their towns and life as they knew it. Both of them have similar paintings of towns shrinking in the distance.
If reflection portion of assignment is desired,
choose something to float or sit in the water
(frog on a lily pad, beaver and dam, platypus peeking out, or anything desired).
I chose ducks sleeping.
(I am also doing a day version of this currently and the ducks are awake.
I will post this later.)
Draw in pencil, outline in Sharpie.
Fold under the object in water and trace with and trace the reflection of object in pencil.
After the floating image is traced, then trace the image of the city on the hill to paper with water reflection, avoiding tracing city in any part of the floating object.
Use construction paper crayons to color windows in with white and yellow. Some brighter colors can be added to night signs as well for pizzazz.
Inspired by VanGOgh's Starry Night as well,
I added radiating contour lines around all the lights in the sky.
I then lightly shaded in all of the city life with Crayola Watercolor Pencils
(right on top of the crayon, it will resist the color).
I only used cool and dark colors (black for buildings, purple for sky, and some green for trees with black mixed in).
I used a blue sharpie to outline the reflection in the water.
Then I used the crayons in the reflections of the windows in the water as well.
I shaded the ducks in with black and went heavier on the darker crevices.
I washed over the black watercolor, then later came back with colored pencils to add in some color to ducks.
I then used the brush and water to go over the entire picture with a wash being careful not to mix the sky color with the buildings.
Here is a slightly less tedious lesson for another reflection done as the daytime...
The beginning drawing and tracing is basically started the same.
This is not a crayon resist.
The top city is traced with Sharpie and watercolored. I did add some emphasis after the watercolor using colored pencils to deepen the shades and make it "pop".
For the reflection, I also watercolored it the same as above, but instead of tracing it with Sharpie, I used the colored pencils to give the edges of the buildings in the reflection a little sharpness, without the harsh black.
I then added horizontal sharpie lines to the water to make it appear slightly rippled.
I was inspired by the artist Kathy Hovart before doing this assignment...
You may want to look her up. She is amazing!
Here is the altered lesson i tried with my kids 7th grade, leaving out the reflection aspect...
To see a simpler reflection method I do with 6th graders,
visit my school site here...
http://classroom.mineolaisd.net/default.aspx?Mrs. Tabitha Seaton/Water Reflection Resist
