Poppy Fields for Remembrance Day

This week, Grade 3 painted these poppy landscapes in honour of Remembrance Day. They were inspired by a lesson I saw on Artsonia here.

Students began with a tempera wash for the sky, then began adding poppies, starting at the bottom of the page going from large size to small size (little red dots). (I reviewed the concept of foreground, middle ground, and background at this point.) Black dots were then painted in the flowers and oil pastel was used for the grass, additional flowers, and clouds.

O'Keefe-Inspired Glue Line Flowers

Magnification is one of the image development strategies that I need to cover in my Grade 6 art curriculum. Georgia O'Keefe's flowers are, of course, great for teaching this concept, but I was getting bored of all of the variations on the close-up flower lesson.

For this lesson, students chose a flower photograph or a silk flower to study and then made a simple close-up drawing of it in their sketchbook. Using Elmer's Gel Glue (my new favourite glue!) they drew their flower on a large piece of watercolour paper. (I demonstrated how to draw a smooth glue line, with the tip of the bottle just slightly brushing the paper.) After the glue was dry (next week's class), students took a Sharpie fineliner and traced around both sides of their glue lines. Then they added colour using semi-moist watercolour paints.

There was way more success with this project than when I did the close-up flowers with acrylic on canvas last year. Both the boys and the girls in my class were happy with their results.