Teach students complicated perspective with a city they design from their own imagination.
Teaching perspective can be HARD work, but by going from the starting point of something students love, they will be very motivated to use tricky techniques to create an incredible artwork. For WA teachers, one point perspective is in the Year 6 curriculum, but there are good applications for simplified techniques in the Year 4 curriculum, such as diminishing perspective. I have had pretty good success teaching it to Year 4 students with a lot of scaffolding.
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Important to note: I am writing from my own experiences in the classroom and do not in any way guarantee these projects will work for you. Some of these project ideas are exactly as I did them in the classroom, others have changes to reflect how I would do them next time. You know your student's capabilities and behaviour best. As with anything, always check the safety of all materials and processes and read product instructions carefully before you introduce them to students. Consider the age and maturity of your students before trying any of my ideas.
Major Outcomes
Space: A variety of shapes placed in diminishing perspective using one point perspective.
Shape: Views from top, side, below
Line: Lines of varying weights
Presenting an idea to an audience
I paired this project with an exploration of the Artwork The Arrival by Shaun Tan, which was a good look at narrative artworks and how symbols and art elements can be used for expressing mood. From this, students could establish what kind of cities they wanted to design- futuristic, candy-land, sporty or run by animals! We discussed how we could express these ideas with the elements we choose to put in the artwork.
Materials we used
A3 Canson mixed media paper
Pencils
Rulers
Erasers
Step by Step sheets
Assorted weights of felt tip black pens -0.4, 0.6, 1mm, 2mm
Exploration of Techniques
The most important part of this task is a sound understanding of how different shapes can be drawn in perspective, and how to use the diminishing perspective lines to assist this. We spent about two lessons making sure students really understood these skills before letting them go to create their own buildings.
The first thing we established was horizon line and vanishing point, most students understood the phenomenon of looking so far into the distance that things disappeared.
The next thing we established was the fact that things get smaller the further away they are. A good way to visually explore this is by having students stand near and far in the classroom and see who is smaller. To assist us with this, we use diminishing perspective lines.
From this, we had to establish that most shapes have two sides that we see at any given time. A side that is facing the audience (1), and a side that is facing away from the audience (2). The side that faces the audience will not be distorted, the side that faces away will follow the diminishing perspective lines.
I found the best way to do this was in small, guided steps. To facilitate this, I went through these steps several times on the board with students following the steps as we went along. I also provided step by step sheets so that students would not get lost. These help students who need a challenge to move ahead, and so students who need support do not get lost and can follow at their own pace.
Once students had drawn a few shapes correctly, they were allowed to get creative, turning these shapes into cool buildings that they would like in their cities.
Start making Art!
Get students motivated by telling them their cities can be as crazy as they like, provided they are in perspective. Kids especially love designing their dream house!
Once students are confident in drawing shapes from different perspectives, they will be on a roll! Most of my students were very excited to challenge themselves with tricky shapes so that they could make cool buildings. To keep the work neat, we used rulers for outlining straight lines.
The next step for us is to finish off the artwork. There are many ways you may wish to finish these artworks off with your students - painting, watercolours or pastels. The Year 4 curriculum asks for students to learn lines of different weights, so that was the direction I went in.
To start, we looked at different weights of pens - a variety of fine liner pens to thicker permanent markers.
Then, we explored as a class what looks best- thick lines work well for outlining and for things we want to stand out, and thin lines work well for adding little details or patterning like cross hatching. A good way to explore this is by applying them to 'drafts' and seeing how using a thick line on small details can muddy the details.
We chose not to add colours to the artworks so that we could focus on adding decoration with pens instead.
When it came time to finish off and tidy up, we erased the pen. It is very important that you spend some time explaining that the planning lines are planning lines and should definitely not be outlined!!
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