Northern Lights Landscapes

There is snow outside and has been all week, which is not the norm here in Portland, OR.  It’s making me admire, even more, these snowy, northern lights landscapes made by our Mini Makers a few weeks ago.

In planning this project, I was inspired by two blog posts — Mrs. Knight’s Smartest Artists and Projects with Kids. First we talked about the Northern Lights aka Aurora Borealis, and looked at some pictures of them in a book I picked up from the library —> Auroras: Behind the Northern and Southern Lights. 

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After that, we got to work.  First we drew two snowy hills and some trees using black permanent markers. We talked about how objects appear bigger when they are closer, and smaller when they are further away. I also had a handout with different kinds of trees, which I got from Art with Mrs. E, to show them there are so many fun ways to draw trees. 

Next, we got out some liquid watercolors and, with the Northern Lights in mind, created colorful winter skies. I taught them that the colors mixed together really well if you first painted plain water on the paper, and then added in the watercolor. The technique is called wet-on-wet watercolor painting. For that reason, I chose to tape the watercolor paper down onto piece of cardboard, otherwise the wet paper wants to curl.  We also sprinkled on salt to create some interesting texture in the sky.  (When the paper is dry you brush it off))

Finally, we used watercolor crayons to add some footprints.  They are bigger on the first hill, and get smaller as they travel further away.  

After this step, a lot of the kids were inspired to add more details to their winter landscapes, such as snowmen and bunnies.  Such sweet and cozy artworks!