James Rizzi Art Lesson-Silly Cityscapes That Your Students Will Love.

February 28, 2025 by Jenn

Table of Contents

Your Students will get a kick out of this James Rizzi Art Lesson when they create a crayon resist cityscape. Rizzi’s cartoon-like buildings are colorful, silly and quite expressive.

Supplies:

Handout with James Rizzi inspired ideas (building shapes, facial expressions, other details)
Sketch paper/pencil
Rulers
12 X 18 drawing paper
Crayons
Watercolors, water cups, brushes, paper towels

I typically gear this James Rizzi Art Lesson towards my younger students (K-2). We start out by viewing and discussing Rizzi’s artwork. We talk about what overlapping is and how we can tell that some buildings are closer while others are further away. Feel free to add an architecture related story into the mix.

I give the students a quick demo on how to add two layers of buildings(one row for Kinders). Building shapes can be traditional or made up. I remind them to include silly facial expressions, various window shapes and some fun background details. It’s not uncommon to see UFOs, stars, day/night combinations and birds in Rizzi’s paintings. They are certainly not limited to these ideas and should add details that they personally find funny and interesting.

My students receive a packet with steps and ideas for building shapes, faces, windows, background details etc. At this point the kiddos will complete a practice sketch on a small piece of manilla paper. If there is time they may begin a final sketch on 12×18 drawing paper. If there is time to begin the final drawing, I give reminders for steps and what good craftsmanship looks like. Rulers are available to kids who would like them.

Beginning sketch of a cityscape and the colorful crayon outlines of each of the buildings.

Second Session: We chat about what a crayon resist is. This is a good time to show them how thick crayon lines will push away or resist the paint. Drawing with white crayon and then painting over it is practically a magic trick. I love, love, love my document camera and am always jumping on my computer to project the steps for my students. I used to have students gather around a table for demos. I found that using the document camera frees up more time and enables me to reteach any steps if the need arises.

Here are the student steps for the second session:

Students refer to their sketch and finish their final drawing, if need be.
Pressing hard, outline each building with a different color.
Continue to press hard and color in all of the windows, faces, background details (sun, clouds, UFO’s, etc.)
Remember to not color in the buildings or the sky. These portions will be painted in.
Cleanup

Cityscape inspired by James Rizzi. Details are colored in crayons and then painted with watercolors.

Third Session of James Rizzi Art Lesson:

Watercolor demo-reminders on how the watercolors should not look shiny or be applied too thickly. Tempera cakes will also work if enough water is used.
Students will neatly paint the background, followed by the buildings. For each of the buildings, I like to try to have the kids match the watercolor with the crayon outline from the previous class. They should also try to use a different color for the background versus the buildings to make them pop.
Cleanup
James Rizzi-esque coloring pages for early finishers.
You may also have time to have a few kids talk about their work or complete a gallery walk.