Rachel Burch, Head of Art at Burton Hathow Preparatory School and her pupils explore simple drawing, collaging and painting techniques to create beautiful artworks inspired by a summer meadow.
Textured flowers: collaborative project
Working on the textures we painted these flowers with the 6th grade students. We practiced lots of different textures, using tempera painting with different tools, as small, large, flat and round paintbrushes, and toothpicks, chopsticks or cotton buds. Every student painted a quarter of a flower, so at the end we can compose all the paintings together in a big mural with colorful flowers.
To realize this painting we need first to draw the quarter of flower. The size of the square sheet and the ray of the biggest circle have to be the same for every students, in order to compose the drawing together. In my sample the drawing sheet is 24x24cm and the main circle’s ray is 15 cm. Subsequently we add two internal curved lines with the compass (without measuring), and three petals.
After that we paint every area with different solid colors. When the painting is perfectly dry we paint the textures with various tools. Eventually we draw the outlines of the flower with a black permanent marker. The activity takes around three hours. We need:
- a square drawing sheet
- pencil and rubber
- a compass
- tempera or acrylic paintings
- different paintbrushes (flat, round, small, large), toothpicks, chopsticks or cotton buds
- a permanent black marker
Setting the Scene
In February 2020, a group of primary school teachers explored the oil painting Flowers in a Glass Vase, by the Dutch painter Jan Davidsz de Heem, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge with the museum’s education officer, Kate Noble, the museum’s Senior Research Scientist, Paola Ricciardi, and Sheila Ceccarelli from AccessArt.
We hope that the resource below will inspire open-ended, creative responses to the painting, from a distance. The ideas are suitable for exploration by all ages and abilities and on the kitchen table or anywhere.
Still Life
Flowers in a Glass Vase is a Dutch Still Life painting that was painted in the 1660s ‘when there was a growing interest in the natural world’*. You can read more about it here*.
Exercise 1: Pointing and Looking
Look at the close-ups of Flowers in a Glass Vase below and choose one to work from.
With one eye squinted, point, with your index finger at a flower – you might feel silly, but this is a really good way to slow down your looking and concentrate on what you are seeing. Slowly move your index finger around the contours of the flower and, with your open eye, follow your index finger’s journey around the rest of the painting. What do you see?
Exercise 2: Contour Drawing
On a piece of paper or sketchbook and with a pencil or drawing tool of your choice, continue your exploration around the painting. Try not looking at your drawing but continue your search for details in the painting. What do you see?
Exercise 3: Drawing the ‘Negative’ – or – Spaces ‘In-between’
After having explored and considered the contours of the flowers you will have discovered many details.
Now we are going to construct a drawing using a different approach. Instead of drawing around the flowers, we’re going to draw the shapes in-between them. This can be tricky but use the strong contrasts in the painting and the dark background to look at the shapes between the flowers and build your drawing by looking at, and drawing these spaces. What do you see?
Painting Flowers
You Will Need:
- Flowers – Either cut flowers or flowers growing in the garden or your surrounding area;
- Primary Colours (Primary Yellow, Primary Red or Primary Blue) in:
- Powder paint, or
- Watercolour paint, or,
- Gouache paint, or,
- Acrylic paint, or,
- Watercolor pencils.
Exercise 1 – Colour Matching
Choose a flower and choose your painting medium.
Exercise 2 – Colour and Form
As you start to gain confidence and pleasure in exploring colour, you might want to start to experiment with form. Remember your drawing exercises and how to look and see what’s in front of you and enjoy experimenting with mark making with liquid paint. If you want to add line, you might want to experiment with water-soluble graphite and watercolour pencils too. Enjoy!
Many thanks to the teachers who participated in this CPD training session for sharing their processes with AccessArt and The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Many thanks to the museum’s education officer, Kate Noble, the museum’s Senior Research Scientist, Paola Ricciardi. Many thanks to Lynda Clark, Image Library Manager at the museum, for providing AccessArt with images of Flowers in a Glass Vase. This post was written by Sheila Ceccarelli for AccessArt with photos by Sheila Ceccarelli and Rachel Thompson.
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way” ~Georgia O’Keefe
Georgia O’Keeffe was an artist and painter who was born on November 15, 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She was given art lessons (which was uncommon for girls at this time) and began creating art at a young age. She then went on to study at the Art Institute of Chicago in the early 1900’s. She is well known for her striking flower paintings where her interesting vantage points depicted her subjects as simple, but strong. O’Keeffe was one of the greatest American artists of the twentieth century.
The student will be able to use vantage point and scale to create flowers in the style of artist Georgia O’Keeffe.
Anchor Standard #1
-Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.
Anchor Standard #2
-Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.
Step 1:
Discuss “Vantage Point”. A vantage point is where you think the artist seems to have been standing when they were creating the art. The students will be looking down at the flower and drawing what they see from THEIR vantage point. Also discuss scale- O’Keeffe used a large scale to draw her flowers in order to make them look much bigger than they were. Explain to students that they will be drawing the flower as if they were zooming in on it. Have them think BIG! Georgia O’Keeffe painted her flowers large so even a delicate subject came across as strong and powerful.
Students can use many different varieties of flowers, it isn’t the type of flower that is important, but more so the scale and vantage point of the drawing. Have them start in the center of the flower by drawing a circle and then work their way out to create petals. Lightly in pencil, begin to draw the outline of the flower.
Instruct that the students MUST touch all sides of the paper with their object, and part of the petals will look like they fell off the page. Encourage them to use organic shapes and curved lines to make the flowers look more natural. Discuss how petals of flowers OVERLAP each other and how the student should not be afraid to draw their petals overlapping. Finally, encourage students to add details, like lines and ridges on the petals and pollen in the center to show a flower’s natural texture.
Step 2:
Once the student is happy with their Georgia O’Keeffe Paintings outline, have them trace over the outline in marker. If they want the edges of the petals to stay crisp and defined, use a permanent marker (ex: Sharpie). If they want the edges of the petals to blend more, they can use a non-permanent washable marker. The water will make the washable marker run and blend with the paint colors, so it is best to use a colored marker (not black) if taking this approach.
Step 3:
With watercolors, begin painting the petals in the desired colors. Again, have the students start in the center of the flower and paint out from there. Encourage students to use analogous colors on their flowers and petals so that the paint doesn’t blend together and create brown. For best results, have students use either only warm (red, orange, yellow, hot pink) or only cool (blue, green, purple) analogous colors for the flower. Allow students to blend the colors together to create a natural effect.
Step 4:
Once the flower and petals are dry, have students paint the background of the flower. Make sure to paint a bright contrasting color in the background so that the whole page is filled with color. Remind students to use CONTRAST and paint the background a color that is different from the color of the flowers. If students used warm colors to paint the flower, have them use cool colors for the background and vice versa for best results.
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
