O'Keefe's Autumn Leaves

Monday 21 October 2013

We're doing  lots of art work for the past few days as we've been busy with school events (no time to brainstorm for other subjects).  This work is inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe's Autumn Leaves.
Georgia O'Keeffe is an American artist.  She is known for her paintings of flowers, leaves, trees and other natural forms.  Her work features enlarged objects from nature and painted as if viewed through a magnifying glass.  
So what we did first, was to splash some colors into the art paper using watercolors. Once dry I cut them into different leaf shapes.
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We identified the autumn colors and used oil pastels to add textures on the leaves.
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This is how it turned out.
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Son loved the texturing!  He would explain why he used certain color combinations on one leaf and a different one from the other :) 
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And finally, I added black paint for the veins and the outline. They turned out lovely and we compared it to the work of O'Keeffe.  He asked if we could do the shell as well, but told him we'll do that in the summer or try other objects around the house as well.  These leaves are so colorful that I'll be putting them in his window.
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It would have been nice if it didn't rain for the past days as I plan that we do a nature expedition at first, observing natural objects using a magnifying before we do this activity.  But unfortunately, mother nature did not cooperate.  So if you're on the side of the world where the weather is good, I suggest you this activity first before starting the painting activity.
Happy Monday to all!
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5 comments:

  1. I love the your leaves,they look beautiful.I have just spotted that you left a comment in one of my posts, asking where I buy my materials from. I usually buy them from ebay stores from UK or Germany. x

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  2. Beautiful! Love that you mixed watercolors and pastels together. All of our kids would love this!

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  3. The black really covered up the watercolor/pastel mix. I would leave that off.

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  4. Love the leaves art work....I also enjoy Georgia O'Keefe's work as well. I look forward to trying this with my kids. Thanks for sharing!

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  5. I love this art project and can't wait to try with my kids. I am also a Georgia O'Keefe fan.

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