@The Arts Unit Creative Classes – The Wild West

@The Arts Unit Creative Classes

The Wild West – Let's create!

Explore the Wild West through artwork

Student visual arts resource developed by The Arts Unit

Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 visual arts

What will I learn?

You will:

explore the colours and shapes of a sunset
create an artwork representing a Wild West landscape.

Before you begin

Are you ready to get creative?

You'll need:

- paper towel or old newspaper to protect the table
- a large sheet of paper (could be white, yellow or blue)
- paint, a paintbrush and a cup of water
- black paper or black paint for the cactus
- safety scissors and glue
- a paint smock or old shirt to protect your clothes.

Cactus

Explore

Here are 9 pictures of sunsets.

What can you describe?

What colours you can see?
What shapes are dark?
What shapes are light?
What does the sky look like?

2. Create

Create a desert landscape artwork

Cowboys and cowgirls often live in the desert where it is hot and dry.

Cacti grow well in the desert because they love the hot weather and don't need much water. The Saguaro cactus can grow as tall as a house!

You will be creating a desert sunset with hills and cacti.

Tall, spiky cactus in a desert.

A very tall Saguaro cactus in the desert.

Painted silhouette of cacti behind a sunset.

Today we are creating a sunset desert landscape using paint and paper.

The artist has collected their materials: two pieces of paper (yellow and black), paint, water and a paintbrush.

Step 1

Cover your table with newspaper or paper towel.

Set up your paper, paints and brushes.

The artist is using their paintbrush to make long strokes across the page to make the sky horizon. The artist is using red and orange paint on yellow paper.

Step 2

Paint lines across the paper to make the sunset.

You can use red, orange and yellow or any colours you like!

Mix colours and see what new ones you can make.

The artist shows a fully painted sunset background with horizontal paint strokes..

Step 3

Cover the whole page in sunset colours.

Cut-out of a cactus shape on black paper. The cactus has three prongs. The cactus can be any size.

Ride off into the sunset - Let's create! Cactus template.pdf

Step 4

Using black paper, cut out a big cactus and a small cactus.

If you don't have black paper, you can paint or colour your cactus in black.

You can print and trace this cactus template.

Cut-out of two hills, joined together. The artist has used black paper. It is a long and wavy hill that takes up the length of the page.

Step 5

Using the black paper, cut out the desert land that will cover the bottom of the page.

These are the hills of the desert.

Your hills can be flat, curved or pointy.

Artist shows their dark hill cut out and glued onto the painted background.

The artist has added their cut-out cacti to their artwork. They have glued their cacti on top of the hill.

Step 6

Glue your desert hills on top of the paint, at the bottom of page.

Next, glue on your big cactus and little cactus on top of the desert hills.

3. Share

Great job on creating a beautiful artwork of a desert sunset!

Share your artwork with your teacher and display for all to see.

Cowboy and cowgirl

Well done cowboys and cowgirls!

Thank you for being creative with us today!

Head on back to the Wild West home page

Third-party content attribution

Desert sunset artwork tutorial images, 2020, created by Catherine Gilholme.

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Teacher notes and syllabus outcomes

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