Atmospheric Cityscape

Atmospheric perspective refers to how the atmosphere affects how we see objects as they recede (fade) in to the distance. As an object gets farther away from us it loses clarity (how sharp an image is) and saturation (amount of color). This is easy to see in landscapes and cityscapes. Since we’ve made a landscape recently, we’re going to make a cityscape. Here we go!

MATERIALS:
+ background paper (I used green painted cardboard from another project)
+ several monochromatic papers in the same color family (mine are shades of blue)
+ pencil
+ scissors
+ glue

Draw some connected buildings on each of your monochromatic papers. Each set of buildings is a little different- spacing, shapes, types of buildings, height of buildings, etc. Cut these out so that they are still connected as one long piece.

I glued the lightest paper to my background. Next I took my medium layer and glued little pieces of scrap cardboard around so that it would layer above the light color piece. I followed the same step for the final, and darkest, piece of my city. I made sure that as I was working each layer was a little lower than the one before. If you end up with too much background showing then you can always cut it off. Luckily, I didn’t have to do that here.

If you’d like to add more detail you could create windows from a contrasting color paper. This would look different with solid color papers, with windows, with even more types of buildings. There’s no one way to complete this project and that’s so exciting! Happy making!