O'keefe Flowers

I cannot help my shout from the rooftops about how much I LOVED all of these value projects inspired by the beautiful paintings of Georgia O'Keefe. Every student nailed it, and created stunning art while mastering the identification of light, dark and medium values. 

The K-1 classes created 3-d tissue paper poppies, inspired by O'Keefe's painting entitled "Oriental Poppies."

Our youngest students followed close directions, and cut clean and precise lines, with an end result of these gorgeous flowers!

Ancel and Ruth know how to get things done!

So many poppies!

 These were beautiful, and produced such a wonderful response from our kiddo's that I wanted to give a basic tutorial on how these can be done at home!

All you need is some tissue paper, a few coffee filters, scissors, glue, and VIOLA! First, glue 2-3 coffee filters on a piece of paper. This gives the flower it's gravity defying volume.

Next, we took 2 sheets of tissue paper (about 8inX8in) and folded it into quarters. Then, with the open edges facing away from the body, we cut a rounded edge. Once unfolded, this became our first layer of petals. We did this process again with another color of tissue paper and added 2 more layers!

Finally, we took some small square pieces of black tissue paper and after placing the eraser of a pencil in the center, wrapped the edges up around the pencil, and after putting glue on the end, pressed them into the center of our flower.

We went with the same poppy inspiration for grades 2-3, but with a different approach.

We created sunlight catchers with tissue paper and glue. 

It's going to be hard to take these down!

Finally, our 4th and 5th graders used chalk pastels to flawlessly blend values together in these close-up flower drawings. Glue mixed with india ink was used to paint these sleek black outlines.

Trinity, Alex, and Damian became blending masters in mere minutes!

And I love the cool colors used by Waylon and Nick!

Mayra is always accompanied by a positive attitude in Art!

Are these amazing, or are these amazing? I am totally not biased. Maybe it's the winter, but this splash of color was just what we needed! 

 This month is SVLA's turn to decorate at the district office, and I don't think I will be able to help but show these off! Great work SVLA elementary students!