Sunflower Paintings

Some real sunflowers to observe!

Mrs. Janock, Ms. Johnson, and Mrs. Nigro’s students leapt right into a painting project this week.  I saw sunflowers for sale at the grocery store and couldn’t resist!

 

We looked very carefully at the sunflowers and paid special attention to the center of the sunflower.  We then looked at Georgia O’Keeffe’s sunflower painting.  We noticed how Georgia O’Keeffe cropped in on the flower and showed it up close to the viewer.

 

Students chose to use either a cool palette or a warm palette for their painting.  For these flowers, we will focus on realistic textures and details, but imaginary colors.  We started by painting one circle for the center of the sunflower and adding concentric circles around it to form the florets.  We then chose a color for the petals and painted all the way to the edge of the paper.  Next week we will go in with oil pastels to add texture and details.

Pumpkins

Kendall’s pumpkin painting

The Coffin School garden has been growing some spectacular pumpkins this fall!  I picked two from the back garden and brought them into the art room for students to observe.  We carefully examined the shape of the pumpkins and noticed that while they were mostly oval, they were a little irregular — one had a taller side and one had a flatter bottom.  We also noticed the directions the ridges curve in, the way the stem looks bumpy, and the dirt from where the pumpkin was resting on its side as it grew.

 

After drawing the pumpkins in pencil, students had a choice to either outline them in Sharpie or black tempera paint.  Next week we will use chalk pastel to color our pumpkins and review warm and cool color relationships.