Third Grade Georgia O'Keeffe Flowers

One of the last projects of the year for third grade was inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe.  We read a book about her life and journey as an artist and we discussed how she used her surroundings to create her art.  We talked about how her some of her art is abstracted, larger than real life or slightly altered.  We then began creating our very own flowers.  First, students created a stencil to use for their flower's petals.  The stencil could be whatever shape they wanted, just as long as it was fairly large.  Then, students were instructed to overlap the stencil and trace it around an already pre-cut flower center stencil.  This created their basic flower outline. 

     Once the flower was on paper, students filled the interior with multiple colors of watercolor.  We referenced Georgia's works and how she really looked and identified/amplified the colors within her subjects.  The students then selected a color to fill the background space that was showing.  The petals were outlined with oil pastel to help them stand out.  Third grade really enjoyed working on this project, the freedom they had with the shapes and the design really allowed them to take ownership of their creativity.