2nd Graders! Let's finish up our crazy Dr. Seuss landscapes!

Time to put it all together! Let's combine our knowledge of landscapes with our Dr. Seuss inspired practice drawings to create a wonderful and fantastical scene!

Check out this scene from the Lorax. What do you notice about the trees in the foreground? How are they different from the trees in the middleground? Can you describe how the trees look in the background? Let's review these parts of a landscape.

Parts of a landscape

Previously this year we explored landscapes for our superheroes. During that unit, we looked at the the 3 main parts of a landscape. Do you remember all of them?

Foreground is the area at the bottom of the page that is closest to the viewer with the largest, most detailed items. The background is near the top of the page and is the furthest away, which means objects here have little detail. The middleground is any the space in between those two.

Lets create these parts of a landscape on our own paper. Start on a clean sheet of paper, you can have it in either direction, horizontal or vertical. Begin by lightly breaking your paper up with 3 lines to create the ground for the foreground, middleground, and background, with room for the sky at the top. Your lines can be straight, curvy, jagged, it's up to you! Just make sure they start on the left side of the paper and go all the way across to the right. Your top line for your background will also be your horizon line!

Getting Started

The first thing we have to do is break our paper up into the different sections we will need. Before we get started don't forget to draw light until you're done! I did a lot of erasing while I was working on mine and you might too! You can start with your paper in either direction, horizontal or vertical. You will need 3 lines that go all way from the left side of your paper to the right. This will create land to draw object in your foreground, middleground, and background. Check out my video below for how to get started!!

The biggest thing to remember as you work is how things change between the foreground, middleground, and background. We want things to look closer and far away

In the background for object to look far away don't add detail! Leave anything you draw as an outline, just showing the outside edge of the object. For the middleground, start to add shapes to your objects as well. These object should be a little bigger than the background but don't get too crazy! The foreground is where you go all out! Draw anything and everything you can think of and because these objects are the largest it should make adding detail to them pretty easy!

Feel free to add to the sky if you want. I kept mine pretty simple with just some clouds and balloons but you can do whatever you want including just leaving it empty. I'm so excited for you to get started! Once you have everything the way you want you can outline it if you'd like. Don't use a fat sharpie, but a thin one or a felt tip pen works great!

Check out my example!

I had so much fun with this! I do

need to admit that I spent a looong time working on it. I just loved looking at all

of the Dr. Seuss books I had and adding

some fun animals and characters into

the foreground. Notice how my trees get smaller as you move up and back in the drawing. Putting everything on the lines for the background and middleground

left me a lot of room to draw the foreground which I think is the most fun to work on since you add everything in! I hope you have as much fun working on yours as I did with mine!

Don't forget, you don't have to outline it if you don't have anything to do that with. You can always just go back over it with your pencil and make the lines darker if you want!

Adding color

This is where your project really comes to life! Looking at the illustrations of Dr. Seuss his colors are pretty solid and bold so markers would work well if you have some thin ones available. Sometimes markers can limit your color choices so colored pencil would work well too and if your details aren't too small you could always use crayon. It's really up you based off of your drawing and what you have available at your house. I didn't have any thin markers with a lot of color choices so I used colored pencils to finish mine.

For the background try not to go too dark. Try a lighter color, even if its just for the ground, if you have a good one to use. Things further away in a landscape are typically lighter because of the sun and distance from the viewer's eyes.

As you move forward and start to work on the middleground and then foreground you can use more colors to fill in the details! Check out my example below and have fun with it! I can't wait to see your pieces. Feel free to share them! Hope you enjoy this project!