Masterpiece: Poppies Artist: Georgia O Keeffe Concept: Nature Lesson: Close-Up Flower Painting Objectives: Students expand their drawing skills to include drawing enlargements. Young artists paint a close-up of a flower just like Georgia O Keeffe. Vocabulary: Enlargement, Close-up, Positive Space, Color, Shape, Blossom. Materials: (one per student unless otherwise noted) 8 x11 sheet of watercolor or heavy weight paper scrap paper for practice watercolor paints or pencils paintbrushes water cups or larger containers to share for water paper towels for cleaning brushes pencils fresh or silk flowers 9x12 bright colored construction paper for mounting Process: 1. Look at Georgia O Keeffe s flower paintings. Notice how the flowers fill the canvas, with the blossom edges disappearing right off the edges. 2. Set up work areas with paints, brushes, water trays for thinning paints and rinsing brushes. Paper towels will help with drying brushes between colors. 3. Set out real or artificial flowers. 4. Ask students to choose a particular flower and look closely at it. Lightly sketch an enlarged version of the flower onto the paper covering as much of the paper as possible. The edges of the flower should touch or go off the edges. (If students prefer, they can quickly draw a practice flower on the scrap paper). 5. Paint the drawings with watercolors. Use the watercolors in diluted form, first using pale colors then darker colors. Leave areas of white showing around the petals.
6. Create details in the flower with the watercolors. Try mixing colors on the paper to create soft edges. *Avoid outlining with dark, thick lines of paint. Try using color to create edges instead of outlining the shapes A yelloworange portion of a petal overlapping a light yellow portion of another petal will create that edge without the use of an outline. 7. Let dry. These look great mounted on bright colored construction paper!!
5th GRADE--PROJECT #6 Artist: Georgia O Keefe Masterpiece: Poppies Lesson: Close-Up Flower Painting Project Samples:
Art Masterpiece Georgia O Keeffe (1887-1986) Georgia O Keeffe was an American abstract artist. She was wellknown for her flower paintings that were larger-than-life. She usually painted them close-up and only showed part of the flower. O Keeffe once said that since we often ignore them in life, she decided to make her flowers too big to be ignored. O Keeffe died at the age of 98 in Santa Fe, New Mexico and produced more than 900 paintings. Today the students used watercolors to paint their own flower picture. Art Masterpiece Georgia O Keeffe (1887-1986) Georgia O Keeffe was an American abstract artist. She was wellknown for her flower paintings that were larger-than-life. She usually painted them close-up and only showed part of the flower. O Keeffe once said that since we often ignore them in life, she decided to make her flowers too big to be ignored. O Keeffe died at the age of 98 in Santa Fe, New Mexico and produced more than 900 paintings. Today the students used watercolors to paint their own flower picture. Art Masterpiece Georgia O Keeffe (1887-1986) Georgia O Keeffe was an American abstract artist. She was wellknown for her flower paintings that were larger-than-life. She usually painted them close-up and only showed part of the flower. O Keeffe once said that since we often ignore them in life, she decided to make her flowers too big to be ignored. O Keeffe died at the age of 98 in Santa Fe, New Mexico and produced more than 900 paintings. Today the students used watercolors to paint their own flower picture.
GEORGIA O KEEFFE (1887-1986) Georgia Totto O Keeffe, second of seven children, was born in 1887 on a farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She was named after her mother s father, George Totto. As a child she was very observant and very independent. When she was ten years old, she and her sisters took painting lessons. By the time she was thirteen, she knew in her heart that she wanted to be an artist. O Keeffe had many art lessons throughout high school but she had several critical teachers who discouraged her. They wanted her to paint what they saw, rather than what she saw. She was disappointed with this instruction but she worked hard and stuck to what she believed was right for her. She did not like to draw what others had drawn. Her vision of art was original and imaginative. At eighteen, O Keeffe studied at The Art Institute of Chicago and then later at the Art Students League in New York. She wanted to continue her studies in New York City, but because of financial difficulties, she had to return to Chicago to live with her relatives. While O Keeffe was there, she got the measles (which weakened her eyesight temporarily). Then she left to join her family who were now living in Virginia. At the University of Virginia, O Keeffe studied painting under Alon Bemont and for the first time, she felt secure under someone else s teaching. Bemont greatly influenced O Keeffe. He felt it was a painter s most important duty to fill space in a beautiful way. O Keeffe agreed with this thinking. O Keeffe very much wanted to study under Arthur Wesley Dow, Alon Bemont s former teacher, in New York City. But in order to study with him and take his classes, O Keeffe had to save her money. So she worked for two years in Amarillo, Texas, as the supervisor of art for the public schools. She enjoyed the landscapes of Texas very much, and the plains, ocean, and sunsets there would later play an important part in her painting. In 1914, O Keeffe returned to New York City to study with Dow, and she gained new insight and inspiration for her work. In 1915, she went to South Carolina to teach, and while there, she sent several of her drawings to her old school friend for comments. O Keeffe s friend sent her drawings, without her knowledge, to a very important and well-known photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, who owned an art gallery called 291. Alfred Stieglitz was a powerful figure in the New York City art world and he liked O Keeffe s drawing right away, soon displaying them in his gallery.
Thus began a very close relationship between Stieglitz and O Keeffe. As artists, they supported each other s work and drew from each other much inspiration. In 1924, Stieglitz and O Keeffe were married. Stieglitz took many beautiful and unusual photographs of O Keeffe during their long relationship. Almost from her very first exhibition, O Keeffe had success as a painter. During the period from 1916-1919, her work was very abstract. As her own personal vision of art became more defined, her paintings turned more toward reality, and she produced many still lifes, landscapes, and flower paintings in the Cubist-Realist style. She portrayed the world simply as she saw it and her vision had many unusual perspectives. Flowers were her favorite subjects and she would sometimes paint flowers very close-up or very far away, or sometimes she would only show us a part of her subject on the canvas. She gave us this new perspective because she wanted to make us look at the beauty of flowers in a new light. O Keeffe painted very popular and monumental paintings of Oriental poppies, calla lilies, larkspurs, hollyhocks, petunias, and morning glories. In over nine hundred paintings, watercolors, and drawings, she created art that was innovative and influential in a style that was clearly powerful and sensual. In 1929, O Keeffe first visited New Mexico and loved the new landscapes that greeted her. She traveled to New Mexico almost every summer to work and was inspired by the natural imagery of the Southwest, painting stories of feathers, bones and the desert. After Stieglitz died in 1946, O Keeffe settled in Taos, New Mexico, permanently, living in the desert and painting there until she was almost blind. Georgia O Keeffe was still working at her art until her death at age ninety eight.
Masterpiece: Poppies - Georgia O Keeffe Meet The Artist: Born in 1887 on a Wisconsin farm, Georgia was one of seven children. She and her sisters were given art lessons, which was uncommon for girls at that time. (She was born about the same time the telephone and light bulb were invented). By age 13, Georgia knew she wanted to be an artist. She was very independent and didn t like to do things other children did. She liked to be different and rebelled against being like anybody else. She spent much of her time alone and said she used her imagination for company. As a young woman, she moved first to Chicago and then to New York to study art. In New York, she met photographer and gallery owner, Alfred Stieglitz. They were married in 1924 and he encouraged her to paint fulltime. Her work from this period included many oversized paintings of flowers. O'Keeffe once said that since we often ignore them in life, she decided to make her flowers too large to be ignored. In these paintings, she reduced nature to its simplest, abstract form by using a very close-up view. Beginning in her 40s, she was drawn to New Mexico, which inspired her later paintings. These often included landscapes of desert and animal bones bleached by the sun. Georgia painted over 900 paintings in her life time. She retired in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and painted until her eye sight failed. She died in 1986 at 98 years old.
Georgia O Keeffe Questions you can ask: (and Answers) What do you see in the painting? Why does this look different from other pictures of flowers? What is the artist s vantage point? (The vantage point is where you think the artist seems to have been standing when the art was created. Bee s eye view) Does this flower look delicate or strong? (O'Keeffe often made her paintings simple but strong. The size of the flower makes it seem more powerful.) The subject is so large that the entire painting is just one flower. Does it looked balanced to you? Is the picture symmetrical or asymmetrical? (Symmetrical-one side of the centerline is almost identical to the other) How many different colors did O Keeffe use to create this flower? (Note how smoothly the colors are blended into one another.) Do these colors make you feel a certain way? Did she choose these colors on purpose? Why do you think the artist used dark colors towards the center of each flower? (The shading shadowing, causes the flower to appear three-dimensional and gives it depth.) What's missing? No signature, Georgia O'Keeffe chose not to sign her paintings she felt that the painting itself was a personal signature.
Cow s Skull With Calico Roses Georgia O Keeffe
Musk Ox
Longhorn Steer
Common Steer
Buffalo
Sheep Ram
Sheep - Ewe
Common Cow