Silhouetted Day and Night Tree

I enjoyed the slightly unexpected and non-traditional methods and mediums used in the Silhouetted Deer with Aurora project (see the blog post here) so much that I did with my bigger kids, that I wanted to do something similar with my younger class. Like the deer project, this project is also inspired the youtube artist Art Arena. A tutorial for his 'Day and Night Scenery', can be found here.

Since I was working with a young group (7-9 year olds), and since oil pastels and soft graphite can be very messy, I took a few different approaches to the project than did the original artist, in order to ensure a clean and neat finish.

Teacher Sample

Process:

Borders: To begin, we taped down our borders with artist or washi tape. We love the crisp clean border it reveals when done.

Colors: Since my students are right handed, we worked on the day half first, which is on the left side of the paper. This will prevent them from dragging their hands across their paper and smudging their work. Students picked 3-4 warm oil pastel colors, starting with yellow and going to orange. We made sure to clean our oil pastels on scrap paper before applying it to our drawing paper, to prevent unwanted color smudges.

Taping off the two halves: We eye-balled the middle of our paper, drew a faint line down the middle top to bottom. This separates our day half from our night half. To keep out night half clean and free of warm color, I had the students place a piece of washi tape along the outside of this line, on the night side of their paper. This will prevent colors from crossing over into the other side. A small trick that keeps both our sides super neat. We did this same thing also when coloring the night side (so washi tape was applied along the center line on the inside of the day half.)

Coloring: Students began with the yellow and lightly colored the bottom third or quarter with their lightest color (yellow). Then the middle color (darker yellow or lighter orange), and lastly, the darkest color (darker orange). We applied the color lightly because this way, it is much easier to blend and won't result in thick, sticky blobs of pastel which are difficult to blend out.

Blending: Taking a sturdy tissue paper that we folded as many times as we could into triangles, we careful blended our colors, starting at the bottom with our lightest color and working our way up to our darkest color. This is tough on the arms, but working in a circular motion did the job efficiently.

Then we moved on to the blue, or the night, half in the same approach (after switching our centered line tape over to the day half first).

Moon and sun: Before drawing our tree, I had the students draw in their moon and sun. I did this because I knew if I saved this step for last, their tree branches might reach all the way into the top corners of the paper, making it impossible to fit in the moon and sun later.
We used a white glass marking pencil for the sun, repeatedly drawing with it in a circular motion until we had a soft white sun. The half moon was drawn with a white paint pen (we used Posca).

Drawing: Once both sides were colored and blended we began with our super dark 9B graphite pencil. The youtube artist uses a 10B graphite, but I could not find these anywhere. (9B does the job, and I think an 8B would likely work as well).

Coloring the ground

Tree: We drew in a thin line at the bottom of our paper (the ground) and then drew in the tree trunk right on the middle line, curving in and up from both sides. My students had a hard time getting the tree branches right, even after many demonstrations and simple drawing visuals, which surprised me. Their branches were thick and short, with little variety. Some looked like palm trees, others like stumps with sticks sticking out. They had to be encouraged to draw long branches that start thick and gradually become thinner, to a very fine point. They were encouraged to draw branches in all directions, and overlapping, and in a variety of lengths and widths. I reminded them that the truck is the thickest, and branches fan out from their into thinner branches, which in turn fan out into thin twigs.

Progress Day 1

Swing: Using a ruler we drew two parallel ('like a train track') lines for the swing rope and a board for the swing. Students had to establish how long their swing could be, mindful that they had to fit a figure on the swing board, and leave space at the bottom of the swing for the legs. I did a demo and we did some quick practice drawings of figure silhouettes on scrap paper. Some students asked to draw cats or birds, in some cases because they did not have space for a figure (problem-solving!). We then drew in our figures.

Finished touches: As a final touch, we added a few birds to our day half (graphite) and stars (white paint pen) to our night half.

Lastly, we wiped down our hands with baby wipes before removing the tape from our borders.

Fun project with bold results!
This project took roughly one and a half 90-minute classes.

 * Student top right missed the first class, so she made 'half' a drawing.

7-9 year olds

Silhouetted Deer and Trees with Aurora

After many watercolor projects behind us, I was looking for a quick project to do with my kids in a dry technique that would give reliable and bold results. We had not done any oil pastel projects in ages, so I though I'd start there. I discovered this amazing artist on youtube: Art Arena. He creates stunning, bright oil pastel landscapes using a blending technique, and incorporates silhouetted images with soft graphite for a powerful effect. This project is directly inspired by his 'Aurora Night Drawing' piece. I loved the mixed media aspect and the process, and since my kids love drawing in graphite, I thought I'd give this one a go.

In the video, the artist draws the deer out by hand. This is a difficult task for any aged student. I wanted the deer to be spot on for a strong and graphic effect, so I opted for a trace-and-transfer technique, and created a stencil to trace on their paper, which would allow my kids to incorporate a perfect deer of their choice .... and learning a trace-and-tranfer technique plus making a stencil are added benefit, AND fun processes. In prep for this stage, I printed out many different deer in silhouette (google search 'deer silhouette') and sized them to be able to fit nicely on our A4 (8x12 inches) sized paper (so the deer are roughly 6x8cm or 2.5x3 inches without antlers).

The artist uses a super soft and dark B10 graphite pencil.  I could not find these anywhere, so purchased B9 pencils which did the job. In a pinch, I'm sure a B8 would also work, but the darker and softer the better. He also uses a 'glass marking pencil' for the aurora.... which I also purchased cheaply in a 10 pack from Amazon. A white colored pencil will not substitute for this, since it won't mark over top of oil pastel.
For the pine trees I also printed out several different silhouetted styles of pine trees, to give the kids some individual options on how to draw them.

To begin:

Borders: Students taped down the borders of their paper with painters tape or washi tape. We love how this gives our work a crisp white border when done.

Coloring background: Students choose 4 oil pastel colors plus black - light, medium and dark green, and dark blue. These colors were laid down with light pressure from bottom to top of paper, from lightest to darkest. The top of the sky was colored black.

Lightly applied oil pastel

*Use oil pastels lightly when coloring. We discovered that they blend much better when not applied too thickly. Thickly applied oil pastel blends difficultly, and leaves blobs of unblended pastel. No good.

*Since oil pastels smear easily, we did the bottom strip (the ground) in black LAST, to prevent it from dirtying our light green. A graphite pencil was used to draw a clean line of black between the black and the light green, to cover up any remaining white of the paper, and to add some bumps here and there to recreate an uneven, earthy ground.

Blending: Using a tissue paper that we folded as many times as we could into a triangle, we blended out colors, starting with the lighter color first (light green) and working out way up to the top. This required serious arm muscles. Working in a circular motion on lightly applied oil pastel is key.

Stencil: Students chose a deer silhouette they like. Deers were traced with tracing paper. Tracing paper was flipped over onto cardstock and the lines were retraced through the back, which transfers our deer onto our cardstock. Deers were carefully cut out.

Tracing the deer

* We chose NOT to trace the antlers because cutting them out would be nearly impossible. Instead, we free-hand drew them on our deer once our deer was traced onto our paper.

Trace and transfer. Making a stencil

Tracing our stencil: Students placed their deer stencil in the middle of their paper, with feet firmly planted on the ground (no flouting deer, please!) and they traced the deer stencil. They then free-hand drew their antlers. Deer were colored in graphite pencil AFTER drawing the trees, to prevent smudging the soft graphite.

Trees: Students drew 5-7 vertical lines on either side of their deer. Trees are longer towards the outer edge of their paper and getting increasingly short as they get closer to the deer. This give the illusion of depth. Trees were colored in with graphite pencil. I demo'd some ways to do this on the white board, and students had pine tree silhouette visuals to look at too. Important is that trees are dark, super pointy at the top and slightly wider as they go down, and that they get increasing short towards the deer. After trees were drawn in darkly, the deer was colored in darkly with graphite.

Aurora: Using a white glass marking pencil, students created flowing aurora across their sky. Students were encouraged to think of their aurora as flowing waves, or like pouring milk, NOT streaks of white scratchy lines. This requires using our white pencil lightly in a careful back-and-forth motion until we achieve the clean shape and creamy white.

Stars: With a white paint pen (we used Posca) students created stars. For added depth, we included small and larger stars. Small stars are further away and closer together, while large stars are closer to us and appear wider apart.

Hands were wiped down with baby wipes (this is a messy project) and then the taped borders were carefully removed to reveal a crisp white border.

This is a fun project with lots of techniques, and gives bright, strong, boldly contrasting results.

Ages 8-11

Ages 9-11

Adult class 

Adult class

Examples of aurora

Blending with a tissue

Creating the aurora