Salty Snow Silhouette

Design a stark winter landscape with long shadows. Show silhouettes of trees, snowboarders, sleighs, or other winter scenes. Add a sprinkle of salt and you're set!

• 1.

  Find examples of snow scenes and silhouettes that have a great impact. Search fine art examples (Monet's <i>Haystacks in the Snow</i>), as well as children's literature (<i>The Snowy Day</i>), advertising, packaging, and other uses. How are snow effects achieved by artists?

• 2.

  Experiment with ways to achieve snowy silhouettes, such as the technique outlined here. Cover your work area with newspaper. To create the sky for your snowstorm wet watercolor paper with a sponge.

• 3.

  Fill a Crayola® Watercolor Brush with one color of Crayola Watercolor Paint. Brush the wet color over the wet paper. Rinse your brush and add a second color, blending the colors together on the paper. Cover the entire page to resemble sky colors during a snowstorm.

• 4.

  While the paint is still wet, sprinkle kosher salt on the painting. Watch the salt absorb the watercolors to make a crystal or snowy pattern. Dry.

• 5.

  On dark construction paper, sketch silhouettes of winter images with a white Crayola Colored Pencil. You might make skiers or snowboarders, trees, sleighs, skylines, or other wintry scenes. Use Crayola Scissors to cut out silhouettes. Attach them to your

Benefits

• Students research outstanding artwork, from fine art to advertising, that is created with snow scenes silhouettes.
• Students experiment with how to depict various weather conditions, such as snow, when creating a painting.
• Students paint a snow scene with watercolors and then add silhouettes to enhance the landscape.

Adaptations

• Try various Crayola products to create winter scenes. For example, build a landscape using white Model Magic, spatter white tempera paint, or draw with white colored pencils or glitter glue to resemble a snowy setting. There are so many possibilities!
• Carefully trace the silhouettes of your classmates on dark construction paper, cut them out, and glue them onto light construction paper. Experiment with how shadows are made.
• Create an all black and white scene of penguins in a snowstorm. Find out where penguins live, study their markings, and design an authentic scene.