Draw on That—Day Four Pencils and Mountains

Speaking of perspective, for our older kids today, we tried some new things too. Like my younger class today, we had some fun time exploring some simple ways to create a sense of depth in a picture or "perspective". Together we did the meatball drawings to allow us to discuss use of overlapping and size to create depth.

After the meatballs drawn with markers, I brought out something new—pencils... and not just boring HB pencils, but a full array of 2H, HB, 2B, 4B and 6B. These pencils vary in hardness therefore different pencils help to make lighter or darker values. Hard pencils, 2H and HB = light lines. Soft pencils, 2B, 4B and 6B = darker lines (the higher the number, the softer the pencil).

With such an array of pencils, one can use this variety of values to create "atmostpheric" perspective showing how in a landscape, items in the distance and close to the horizon line are lighter than items closer to you and further from the horizon, such as seen in a landscape of mountains.

So, this was our challenge, a mountain range using different values and taking advantage of all of our different pencils. Everyone had a bit of a different style. Have a look!—