Flower Painting for Preschool and Kindergarten
Artist Georgia O’Keeffe was a master at seeing more. She said, “When you take a flower in your hand... it’s your world for a moment.” I love to use her paintings to train my students to use their eyes to look more deeply. Her example encourages children to look more closely and to find there truly is — more than meets the eye — if we use all of our senses in the experience. Painting flowers the O’Keeffe way is a great way to expand the learning for young children.
Training Students to Look More Deeply
Display a few vases of flowers in front of the students. What do you see? Students will immediately see flowers, but let’s expand that learning beyond the obvious. We want them to see so much more!
Take one of the flowers and place it under a document camera or on an overhead projector. Guide your students as you look at the shapes that it is composed of. Draw emphasis to lines, shapes, squiggles, etc. Guide them to see the textures, the layers, and the multiplicity of colors. After studying a flower or two, pass the flowers around and allow the students to feel, smell, and closely examine each of them. Remind students to handle the beautiful flowers with care.
Using a large chart paper, pluck one of the flowers from the vase. As you closely examine it, talk aloud about the details you see. Place the flower in front of you, examine it closely with a magnifying glass, and begin to draw as you talk through the process; drawing the lines, shapes, layers, and textures of the flower, stopping occasionally to smell and touch the flower —- appreciating it’s beauty.
Pass each student a large sheet of art paper, a pencil for drawing, a magnifying glass, and a flower from the vase. Guide the activity. Together, let’s draw our stem. Walking around, make sure that each stem fills at least 2/3 of the page. Great! Now you will begin drawing the flower to fill your page.
From this point on, allow students to draw their flower, constantly encouraging lines, shapes, textures, and layering as they proceed to draw. And encouraging use of the magnifying glass to look closely at their flower.
After the flower is drawn with pencil, allow students to trace their lines with oil pastels or a sharpie and then use watercolors or tempura to paint their work of art. (You will want to demonstrate how to trace the pencil lines with pastels or sharpies and complete with paint).
Young children will love their masterpieces as the world is opened to the multi- layers of nature.
Extend the project by taking an art notebook with you on a walk to a garden, park, farm, etc. Encourage students to work beyond flowers to trees, bushes, rocks, mountains, and even into their own back yard. Giving students the gift of looking beyond to see more, will bring joy to all elements of their life.
