We were inspired by the colourful images in Robert Neubecker‘s Wow! City! and this blog post on the blog Splish Splash Splatter to create some gorgeous cityscapes – with a focus on form, colour and wonder.

What we loved about the book Wow! City! was the sense of height in the buildings and that with some quite simple lines, many details could be highlighted.

After we read the book, we talked about building shapes and the shapes and lines found in roof tops, windows, doors and building details. Students then drew a layered city scape using white crayon on black paper.

We then painted white glue over all of our white lines – a definite exercise in patience! We didn’t have enough glue containers of the right size to have students just squeeze glue onto the page so we used brushes and cups of white glue. Also some of our little creative artists get a little too creative when given a whole glue bottle . . . .

When some people finished adding glue to all of their lines, they happily helped others and we had cooperative glue stations going all over the room! Lovely thick glue lines created perfect borders for colours to stand out.

Adding colour was the fun part. Students chose vibrant chalk pastel combinations and happily filled in their buildings. In this photo, it is easy to see the dried glue lines.

I love the oranges and yellows – we had these colours in buildings and in sky lines!

Many students worked together in different areas of the room, inspired by each other’s work. Look at the gorgeous yellow sky!

These two little artists realized they could create some amazing effects by blending their pastels right on the page.

Some final versions:

Red skies at night . . .

Beautiful blending . . .

Oh that gorgeous yellow sky!