Georgia O'Keeffe - Inspired Watercolor Paintings with Children
Georgia O'Keeffe-Inspired Watercolor Paintings with Children
I want to share a memory I have - one of the many art projects I did with my art students during the art camps I taught through my old small business called The Drawing Board Art Instruction. I ran that business between 2006 and 2012.
This was during one of the first art camps I held back in 2009(?) or was it 2008? - can't quite remember right now.
This is probably my most favorite art project I ever did with my students, although there were many great projects. When I think back on the several years I taught art classes - this project always comes to mind.
Some Info About the Project
Since Georgia O'Keeffe is one of my most favorite artists, I decided to do an art project based on some of her work - with my art students. I rented the "Mammal Kit" from the Burke Museum (located on the campus of the University of Washington). They have many educational kits that can be rented by educational organizations. You have to reserve them in advance though - because they are in pretty high demand. But, if you are anywhere in the Seattle area - it is a great resource to know about. The kits were about $30-40 per kit per week back then. They may be a little higher now, but they are well worth it! I rented their Mammal kit and their Insect Kit many times. I think I may have rented their Bird kit too.
(The photo above shows my daughter at one of the camps - drawing a picture of one of the skulls that I rented often.)
The Mammal Kit consists of several (many!) mammal skulls (bear, cougar, deer, bobcat, coyote(?), beaver, raccoon (I think?), opossum, and several others I can't quite remember), some info about how to identify mammals, and some other things that I didn't really use. My main reason for renting the kit was the skulls. I used the skulls as subjects for the students to draw/paint from. And since the children didn't come in contact with skulls like that on a regular basis, they were usually very interested. Sometime grossed out - but generally fascinated.
For the Georgia O'Keeffe project I used some of her paintings she did of cow skulls floating in the sky with landscapes in the background and flowers around the skulls - you know - these ones...
Thankfully I still have most of my photos from this art camp & this project in particular. I had my laptop stolen out of my car a couple years ago, and lost all of my photos unless I had them uploaded to Facebook - and thankfully I had put these ones on Facebook (yay!)
Here are some of the photos of the students working on their paintings:
These two girls (above) shared those antlers. The antlers are being propped up by a conch shell - because that's what I had available.
The students all shared a skull with the person sitting next to them - so two artists drew from the same skull - but they all turned out unique!
And, here are some of the finished paintings (I love how they turned out!) I had a wide range of ages & talent level.
The paintings were done in watercolor. The students drew the skulls, drew their landscapes (however they wanted) & drew flowers, painted their sky - however they wanted, and painted in the skulls and the landscapes & flowers - pretty much in that order. This was all AFTER they all learned color theory and how to mix their own colors. They were instructed to "draw what the saw" and look closely at the skulls to look for colors & shading present on the skulls - because they aren't just white. We used very large watercolor paper. The students worked on these paintings for 1-2 hours each day - for a week, with other art projects during the rest of the day. This was the long, ongoing project. It took a lot of table space, and basically made those tables unavailable during the other project times because the paintings were taped onto the tables.
I hope these paintings bring you joy and inspiration - they do for me! And, I think Georgia O'Keeffe would be really impressed with these!
I plan on writing/sharing about more of my experiences teaching art in the future. Stay tuned...
Good work. Love the art. Love birds.
Thank you!
Nice drawing. Thank you for shearing
Yes- the young artists did a really good job!
Amazing art talent!