Last week we read The Magical Garden of Claude Monet by Laurence Anholt. Â While on a visit to Giverny, the main character, Julie, befriends Claude Monet and explores his beautiful gardens.
We began our project by drawing the Japanese bridge made famous by Monet’s paintings. Â We used oil pastels to draw the bridge and create our own magical garden. Â Students used their imaginations to create their garden. Â We talked about the basic parts of a landscape, foreground, middle ground, and background, and also about how objects appear smaller as they recede in space. Â We added water lilies to our ponds to show how drawing objects of the same size getting smaller as you move toward the horizon line creates a sense of space.
After the gardens were drawn, we used liquid watercolor to paint them. Â My goal for this project was for students to learn how to layer watercolor to achieve rich colors and depth.
