This week in both the adult class and the kids class the subject was egrets/herons combined with perspective. I had no intention of giving the kids perspective but then I couldn't resist. I'm not sure the kids got it but for some reason they seemed to be in such rapt attention as I demonstrated and explained this, that I wondered what I was missing that they were seeing!

Also see my notecards of bird watercolor paintings. 

Update: Lesson on bird sumi-e painting

These are some of my demonstration drawings showing the birds from a couple different viewpoints. In one the viewer is seeing the birds from their line of vision. Each head is on the line of vision, the horizon. In the next, the viewer is a little below the the birds' heads. The viewer's line of vision is the horizon line but the birds' heads are a bit above that. And finally, the birds heads are below the horizon, the viewer's line of vision.

To figure out how big the birds in the distance would appear in relation to the closest bird, draw vanishing lines from the head and feet of the closest (largest appearing) bird to a vanishing point on the horizon. I put it roughly in the center, but in this case it doesn't really matter where it is. Can you imagine now if that were a fence stretching to the horizon? Or, a line of birds? You then can see how big each one should look depending how far back along the fence they stand. From there, any bird that sits in the same plane (parallel to the horizon) as an imaginary bird on the fence, would appear the same size as its match on the fence.

In the kids' work below some tracing was allowed as a way of practicing. Most of them were done freehand though. They were to write "tracing" on their paper if they'd traced.