This can be to practice blue and yellow colour mixing, or to show that things in the distance appear lighter in colour. If you do it on light blue paper there is no need to paint a sky. It is always best to have a horizon starting either on the top third of a picture or on the bottom third of a picture, not midway. The one here starts on the top third.
- Paint a yellow hill-like stripe starting higher on the left than the right.
- Add a tiny bit of blue, then paint a stripe starting high on the right and going down to the left.
- Keep doing this, gradually adding more blue all the time, until you get to near blue in the foreground.
With older children you can let it dry and then let them put on objects such as houses, trees, people, paths, animals and rivers, trying to show a sense of scale by making them the right size for each part of the landscape.
You can also do this with red and yellow to make a desert type picture.You can also put something silhouetted in the foreground.
Pastels also work well, or a collage of torn paper strips in different shades.
