Grandma Moses Snowscape Art Lesson

 

I have always enjoyed the happy paintings done by Grandma Moses and it seemed like the perfect January art lesson.

I did add our bigger mountains and lake to make it more personal to where we live.

Grandma Moses' Art is a great way to introduce or reinforce Perspective and showing depth in art.

I used this video and also several images of her snowscapes to inspire my students.  We discussed what Folk Art is and also how amazing it is that she didn't start painting until later in life and became such a success.

We discussed the quote above and started with the sky, then the mountains, hills, houses etc...

I talked to them about how to make things looks closer or farther away, perspective.

They each had two pieces of paper, one for their final drawing and one to practice on.

There were a few key items I asked them to include:

Mountains or hills

Buildings

Fences

People

Trees 

They started drawing their background, mountains the then hills etc.. on their final paper.

We practiced drawing houses, small, medium and large, and where to put them in the snowscape.

The background, middle ground or foreground.

We tried different window shapes, different door shapes etc... on the practice paper.

Then they added buildings to their final drawing.

Then we did the same with trees, trees with leaves or evergreens and changing their size based on where they are in the snowscape.

We did a little practicing of drawing people and animals so they aren't stick figures on the practice paper.

Talked about what they wanted to put in their drawings - skaters, snowmen, skiers, farmers, horses, etc...

Then they added those to their final drawing.

At this point they were on their own to finish their snowscapes however they wanted.

We also discussed how to depict snow with soft lines and blue colored pencil on the white paper. 

I made sure to mention not to color the roofs of their buildings as they would be covered with snow.

Then I gave them the colored pencils to finish their drawings.

They came up with such charming and lively snowscapes!

I love them!