We began with a horizon line, in this case, the street. All the structures must be tied into the horizon line in a cityscape (unless you want the buildings to look like they're floating in the air!) We cut out a street from black construction paper and glued it to our blue construction paper background. That created the horizon line.
Next, the kids used any colors they wanted to to cut out tall buildings using simple geometric shapes of different sizes. The one I pictured was done by my 4 year-old with very little help from me. That's the beauty of cityscapes - their straight lines make things very simple!
Finally, we added details. A black marker was used to add windows and doors to the buildings, yellow chalk made perfect dashes on the street, and white clouds were created with white chalk.
Older kids could add cut-outs of people, cars, fire hydrants, or anything else they'd like to.
Additional layers:
- Discuss the idea of organic versus geometric shapes.
- Imagine back to the time before your city (or a nearby city) was there. If it were all just the natural land and you were creating a landscape picture, what colors would you use? Now compare that with the colors you would use if you made a picture of the city as it looks today.
- Make a replica of your cityscape art on another day or another time. Create the same scene, except in the wintertime or make a picture of what it looks like at night.



