Art Curriculum- Week 21- Evening Sky in Pastels

Week 21- Evening Sky in Pastels

Movement: Realism

This project is more time consuming, probably because of the attention to detail and the step by step process that takes place. Not the best project for really young or impatient ones, but we made it work, so I definitely encourage you to try! :)

What you will need:

-blue construction paper (doesn't have to be pale, I thought that it resembled a blue I've in summer sunsets)
-white, orange, red, dark blue, and yellow chalk pastels (chalk, not oil, because oil doesn't blend as nicely in this sort of project) Tip: Regular white school chalk also works as white in place of a white pastel.

For prep I drew a basic outline of clouds and added a crescent moon. I labeled each cloud with a letter or a symbol, it proved to be very helpful when directing the kids. I also looked up pictures of sunset clouds to show them that there are 3 parts to a cloud when shading: Light/Medium/Dark. And emphasized repeatedly that that was what we were going to do with our clouds.

I couldn't get the picture clear enough so I went in and used symbols on my keypad to mimic the drawing.

Below are a couple step by step diagrams I made to try and show the process of the shading.

• White (Lots of it, layer it on. Try and get the kids to practice rubbing the chalk pastels on their sides vs trying to "color in" the spaces.)
• Add orange, not quite to the edge. Blend using small circular motions with the finger until you can't see a hard edge between white and orange anymore.
• Red. Not quite to the edge of the orange and blend. Add more red to deepen the color if necessary.
• A hint of dark blue for shadow. It might look purple but that's ok, it'll still provide an extra layer of 3D quality to your picture. Blend!
• Yellow! Use bright, beautiful yellow to accent all of the edges of the clouds. Like the light is behind and creating almost a silhouette effect.
• For the moon color it white.
• Shade the side closest to the clouds blue.
• Shade the side facing away from the clouds with yellow.

Overall: A success! It's quite a lovely addition to our art collection and the kids did really well. Keep in mind it might stretch your patience.

I'm especially proud of this project because I created it myself from scratch. Everything from mapping out the colors to creating the symbol guide in the clouds.

Observe our pretties below!

Related blog posts:

-1 Point Perspective in Watercolors
-Van Gogh's Fields

(logging 2 hours for prep and execution)