Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Chinese Scroll Painting



As a knod to Chinese New Year, I brought in some long scroll paintings that I had purchased in China in the 1990s. I was inspired by the beautiful flower plum trees, so also brought in a vase of plum branches.

I folded long white contruction paper in half so the kids had the tall canvas. Trying to emphasize the distorted perspective that is common in these paintings, I had the kids use their watercolors to make mountains and a river that stretched down from the top.  If they wanted they could add some trees and houses or boats, but the main objective was the tall skinny landscape.

Then in the foreground they were to draw a tree with their black marker (the paper was still wet, so this mad ea nice wet-on-wet technique too.) For flowers they got pink tissue paper and made little balls to
glue onto the branches.

A finishing touch was a red square with their initials to mimic the "signature" stamp.



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