Night Skyline Painting Project

City Night Skyline Art Project

This fabulous lesson is from Create Art with Me

Materials needed:

Paper to paint on
Skyline silhouettes to use as stencils (file folders work nicely)
Pencil or pen (for writing your name and using the stencil)
Paint - red, yellow, blue, white, black and green.
Paint brushes - 2 per student
Q-tips for making water reflections, windows, stars and the moon
Paper plates to use as palettes
Paper towels for clean-up
Newspaper for table-tops

Vocabulary
horizontal - as in horizon
vertical
brush strokes
palette

What you need to know!

Your hands will get paint on them - that is OK. Artists get paint on their hands. We will wash AT THE END OF THE ACTIVITY.

Use the paper towels to wipe your hands off, if you need to. DO NOT WIPE YOUR HANDS ON YOUR CLOTHES!

You must listen to the directions on how to paint this picture. There are steps that I will do and you will repeat them. You must do each step after I show it to you. Do not go ahead and start painting something else. This is NOT a paint-whatever-you-want activity.

If you follow directions, you will have a picture that looks close to the finished one. It won't look exactly like it - it isn't supposed to - every artist has his or her own artistic style.

You have to be able to WAIT. There will be times of WAITING. We will WAIT for people to all do the step. We will WAIT to get a clean brush. We will WAIT for paint to dry. You will WAIT while the teachers trace your skyline. You have to be able to WAIT by sitting quietly at your desk and doing NOTHING.

Here are the steps!

Clear your desk of EVERYTHING

Put newspaper down on your desk.

Get your: palette, 2 paint brushes, pen or pencil and paper.

Write your name on the SHINY, SMOOTH side of the paper

Draw a HORIZONTAL line on your paper somewhere near the middle.

WAIT to Get some BLUE paint on your palette.

Paint the lower half of your paper blue.
Do NOT put a lot of paint on your brush - just put paint on the tip.
Use long horizontal strokes and work quickly.

Put a little bit of YELLOW paint on your brush and paint above the blue. Use long horizontal strokes and work quickly. You do not need to go all the way to the top.

Mix a little red and yellow to make orange. Make it a light orange by adding more yellow than red.

Apply the orange paint you just mixed to your paper as shown. REMEMBER to use LONG BRUSH STROKES! Work quickly and DO NOT overload your brush or your paper with paint!
Again, you do not need to go all the way to the top of the paper.

Make a DARKER ORANGE by ADDING more RED to your ORANGE.
Paint to the top of your paper.
Use LONG, HORIZONTAL strokes and work QUICKLY!
Make Just a FEW STREAKS of dark orange across your yellow.

Place your SKYLINE STENCIL at the center of your page and trace very lightly around. Some students might benefit from having the teacher do this part.

Now FLIP your SKYLINE stencil and mark VERY LIGHTLY in the blue.
Now you have BUILDINGS in the yellow and orange sky and their REFLECTIONS in the blue water.

Get some BLACK paint.

Paint the buildings solid black. Do your best to stay in the lines.
Paint the reflections with just a bit of black - do not fill them in.

Now you need some WHITE PAINT & a Q-TIP. We will use the Q-TIP instead of a brush because we want to make some very small marks.
Continue to watch the demonstration carefully and do as I do!

Use the Q-tip and WHITE paint to make the windows, stars and the moon.
Put a few dots of white in the reflection. Do not go overboard with the windows or the stars or the streaks - sometimes LESS is MORE!
Use your Q-Tip to make some streaks in the water. Use just a little bit of paint - YELLOW, ORANGE and WHITE.

Mix some BLUE with YELLOW to make GREEN.
Add some WHITE to make it LIGHTER.

USe your FOAM brush and go across the middle of the page to make some green plants. Do not use Strokes - DAB and TAP the brush along the middle to make the plants.
After - use the Q-tip with some white to add some WHITE to the plants.

We will put all our wet paintings somewhere to dry. I will collect them and mount them on foam board. We will create a display somewhere in the building when we are done and take a picture of it to add to this website tutorial.

Please answer these questions about this ART PROJECT!

Are you pleased with how your painting turned out?
Did you follow all the directions carefully?
Did you find it easy to follow along?
Did my demonstration help you to understand what to do?
Did you enjoy this art project?
What else would be fun to try to paint?

The results: Our Wonderful Masterpieces!

How Awesome is That!

City Night Skyline Art Project

What you need to know!

Your hands will get paint on them - that is OK. Artists get paint on their hands. We will wash AT THE END OF THE ACTIVITY.

Use the paper towels to wipe your hands off, if you need to. DO NOT WIPE YOUR HANDS ON YOUR CLOTHES!

You must listen to the directions on how to paint this picture. There are steps that I will do and you will repeat them. You must do each step after I show it to you. Do not go ahead and start painting something else. This is NOT a paint-whatever-you-want activity.

If you follow directions, you will have a picture that looks close to the finished one. It won't look exactly like it - it isn't supposed to - every artist has his or her own artistic style.

Here are the steps!

Clear your desk of EVERYTHING

Put newspaper down on your desk.Get your: palette, 2 paint brushes, pen or pencil and paper.

Write your name on the SHINY, SMOOTH side of the paper

Draw a HORIZONTAL line on your paper somewhere near the middle.

WAIT to Get some BLUE paint on your palette.

Paint the lower half of your paper blue. Do NOT put a lot of paint on your brush - just put paint on the tip. Use long horizontal strokes and work quickly.

Put a little bit of YELLOW paint on your brush and paint above the blue. Use long horizontal strokes and work quickly. You do not need to go all the way to the top.

Mix a little red and yellow to make orange. Make it a light orange by adding more yellow than red.

Apply the orange paint you just mixed to your paper as shown. REMEMBER to use LONG BRUSH STROKES! Work quickly and DO NOT overload your brush or your paper with paint! Again, you do not need to go all the way to the top of the paper.

Make a DARKER ORANGE by ADDING more RED to your ORANGE.Paint to the top of your paper. Use LONG, HORIZONTAL strokes and work QUICKLY! Make Just a FEW STREAKS of dark orange across your yellow.

Place your SKYLINE STENCIL at the center of your page and trace very lightly around. Some students might benefit from having the teacher do this part.

Now FLIP your SKYLINE stencil and mark VERY LIGHTLY in the blue.Now you have BUILDINGS in the yellow and orange sky and their REFLECTIONS in the blue water.

Get some BLACK paint.

Paint the buildings solid black. Do your best to stay in the lines. Paint the reflections with just a bit of black - do not fill them in.

Now you need some WHITE PAINT & a Q-TIP. We will use the Q-TIP instead of a brush because we want to make some very small marks. Continue to watch the demonstration carefully and do as I do!

Mix some BLUE with YELLOW to make GREEN. Add some WHITE to make it LIGHTER.

USe your FOAM brush and go across the middle of the page to make some green plants. Do not use Strokes - DAB and TAP the brush along the middle to make the plants. After - use the Q-tip with some white to add some WHITE to the plants.

The results: Our Wonderful Masterpieces!

How Awesome is That!

Put newspaper down on your desk.

Get your: palette, 2 paint brushes, pen or pencil and paper.

Paint the lower half of your paper blue.
Do NOT put a lot of paint on your brush - just put paint on the tip.
Use long horizontal strokes and work quickly.

Apply the orange paint you just mixed to your paper as shown. REMEMBER to use LONG BRUSH STROKES! Work quickly and DO NOT overload your brush or your paper with paint!
Again, you do not need to go all the way to the top of the paper.

Make a DARKER ORANGE by ADDING more RED to your ORANGE.
Paint to the top of your paper.
Use LONG, HORIZONTAL strokes and work QUICKLY!
Make Just a FEW STREAKS of dark orange across your yellow.

Now FLIP your SKYLINE stencil and mark VERY LIGHTLY in the blue.
Now you have BUILDINGS in the yellow and orange sky and their REFLECTIONS in the blue water.

Paint the buildings solid black. Do your best to stay in the lines.
Paint the reflections with just a bit of black - do not fill them in.

Now you need some WHITE PAINT & a Q-TIP. We will use the Q-TIP instead of a brush because we want to make some very small marks.
Continue to watch the demonstration carefully and do as I do!

Mix some BLUE with YELLOW to make GREEN.
Add some WHITE to make it LIGHTER.

USe your FOAM brush and go across the middle of the page to make some green plants. Do not use Strokes - DAB and TAP the brush along the middle to make the plants.
After - use the Q-tip with some white to add some WHITE to the plants.