Fourth Grade Art Lesson 30

Studying Flowers, Part 3 Completing Our Flower Drawings

Objective:

The students will complete the oil pastel drawing of a flower by filling in an interesting background. The student will evaluate their work and add any finishing touches that may be needed.

Materials:

flower drawing from last lesson, oil pastels, newspaper to cover the tables, scrap paper for practice blending

Procedure:

To complete our drawing we need to plan a background. Look at the examples to help you get ideas. You may want to do some quick sketches on scrap paper to help you plan. If your flower takes up most of the paper, a simple background will work well. If, however, your flower does not take up most of the paper you will need to come up with something that has a design or pattern. It would be wise to make a plan in several different color schemes to chose the one that will compliment you flower. Once you have completed coloring in your background design go back into your work with the darker colors, (i.e. black, purple, dark blue, etc.) and add those where needed. Before you call your work finished be sure that you have a range of values in your flower and that your entire paper is covered over with oil pastel. If you colored lightly you may need to go back into it and either color more solidly or blend colors to make sure your paper is colored over.

Conclusion:

Mount your work on a poster board backing and hang it for everyone to view. Examine your finished work and ask yourself the following questions: What do I like best about the work? What do I like least about it? How would I do it differently if I were to do another work similar to this one? How did my original study of flowers help to make this work successful? What does that tell me about creating art?

Artwork and Examples used in this lesson

“Two Jimson Weeds with Green Leaves and Sky”, by Georgia O’Keefe,

Student Artwork

Student Artwork