Whimsical Landscapes (Justin Vining artist study)

I love this lesson!  I teach about contemporary artist Justin Vining and the kids explore the qualities of watercolor pencils to create their own whimsical landscapes.

You can see artwork from another year at this blog post.

You can read my interview with Justin Vining here.

I even got this lesson published in a magazine!

Here are some of my 4th/5th grade students’ artworks from the end of last year.

When teaching this lesson, I show the students some YouTube videos of him painting and talking about his artwork.  We look at examples of his whimsical landscapes.  He also has many realistic landscape paintings as well.  Then, they draw their own landscape, incorporating their own creative ideas to make it whimsical.  We used Maped Watercolor Pencils as well as a bunch of other random brands thrown in.

I did a review of these watercolor pencils HERE.

I also made a video blog post showing how I like to doodle with watercolor pencils HERE.

Outlining with black Sharpie helps give contrast against the colors.

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