Age Range: 8+

Time to Complete: 15-20 minutes.

Supplies Needed

• Paper

• Scissors

• Black sharpie pen

• Colored markers

• A sheet of tinfoil (another sheet of paper will work as well)

Gather your materials for the project. We used foil as a mask for this project, but cardstock or construction paper for this will be fine.

1. Create a foil mask. Masks are used to block materials, or protect the surface, from materials. Dots take a long time and can be tiring your first time. We suggest deciding on a specific and smaller area for this technique.

To create a circle, fold your foil in half and draw a half circle to the folded edge. Create any shape in this step, we suggest a simple one like square or triangle.

2. Cut out the shape and unfold your foil. You should end up with a whole sheet with a shape cut out of the middle. Tape down your drawing paper on the top and bottom, and your mask on the top and bottom to keep them in place as you draw.

3. Draw a shape in silhouette. For this project, we chose a tree. The tree trunk is drawn in outline and the leaves are represented by dots. The outline of the tree was drawn in first, then it was filled in with black.

4. Draw dots to represent the leaves. The dots can be of different sizes. For our example, we used orange, yellow, and red markers.

5. Create another layer of dots underneath the top “leaf” layer of your tree. I suggest blue and purple dots to create a sky. This layer should be 1-2 inches in width.

6. Continue past your layer of sky to the ground, adding dots of green and then brown in assorted sizes until you feel satisfied.

7. Remove the foil mask.

8. Don’t forget to sign your completed artwork!

Once you’ve finished, admire your hard work.

Share your finished artwork with us on social media, tag us @thebmoa on Facebook and Instagram.

About the artist

John “Nelson” Richardson (1947-2005)

Born in Santa Monica, CA, Nelson Richardson was a Humbolt State University graduate and Vietnam war veteran. He began teaching part time at Bakersfield Colle gain 1086 and full time 11 years later as a professor of computer graphics. A passionate painter, Richardson employed optical illusions and abstract approaches into scenes that heightened one’s sensitivity to familiar landscapes. His experimentation with texture and depth perception infiltrates the visual sensory, bringing a new focus to our ocular experience.