Art: Landscape Watercolor: Lesson Description

Students paint a section of the Pajaro Valley High School's surrounding landscape in watercolors. Students will examine aspects of native plants to develop and create a landscape painting. Their paintings will be composed of close-up, near close-up and landscape views of their chosen native plant specimen(s). From nature center visits and selected school campus natural settings, students will draw multidimensional views (a complete aspect) to compose a basis for their watercolor paintings. Professional plant specialists, illustrated plant study guides and selected potted plant specimens will support students in developing an accurate representation of native flora. Through this experience, student swill have an opportunity to develop accurate drawing and painting skills and to explore native flora as they produce a watercolor portrait of a natural landscape surrounding their school campus. Subject Area(s): Visual Art Grade Level(s): 9 – 12th grades Lesson Duration/Instructional Sequence: 4 class periods Instructor may choose either four days throughout the semester (for one season), or a set of four 4-day exercises to create a yearlong project of seasonal landscape changes. This project may be done early in the year (late August), and then repeated in early November, mid-February, and late April to create a progressive four-season project. These four paintings can be mounted together to show the seasonal changes across the same section of landscape, which also demonstrates how the students ' painting and drawing skills have progressed over the course of one academic year