O'Keefe flowers!

Hello there!!

This post features a lesson I taught last year in the spring time, and will definitely try again this year with my third grade artists! We first talk about a few of Georgia O'Keefe's artworks - I show a progression where her flowers become closer and cropped to the point where they become abstract. (We are lucky enough to have a school garden at one of the schools where I teach, and it is so wonderful that students can go out and really see flowers and leaves close up and hands-on after our artist talk.) We talk about learning to "crop" and create an aesthetically pleasing composition on our 12"x 12"paper (avoiding placing our flowers in the exact middle of the page). 

 We also talk about all the colors O'Keefe used in her paintings - for example, its not simply a red flower, there are pinks, yellows, oranges and browns all wrapped up to create one image. They name all of the colors they see in their chosen flower before they begin drawing with oil pastel.

This lesson is also great in the fact that they learn how to work with and control oil pastels - messy and fun! We then use watercolor on the background - keeping in mind complementary colors!

The results are bright and beautiful!

Thank you for stopping by! Please come by again!