Georgia O'Keeffe

The Artist Who Loved New Mexico’s Landscape: 

Georgia O’Keeffe 

Georgia O’Keeffe is a very famous American artist who loved to paint nature such as flowers and desert landscapes.  She simplified the shape of flowers and landscapes in unique ways.  She would paint close-ups of different flowers.  She filled a big canvas with one flower painting.  She often said that she wanted to capture the beauty of a flower, color, and form on canvas.  Georgia first visited New Mexico in 1916.  She loved New Mexico’s desert landscape, so she decided to permanently move to New Mexico and continued her work.  She said, “As soon as I saw it, that was my country.  I’d never seen anything like it before, but it fitted to me exactly.  There is something that’s in the air, it’s just different.  The sky is different the starts are different, the wind is different”.   

This video explains more about Georgia O’Keeffe’s life story and artwork.  Enjoy! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djkXEYLkB08  

These are Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of flowers and the landscapes of New Mexico.  

     

Art Activity: Drawing and coloring a flower or tree leaf like Georgia O’Keeffe 

Materials: white paper, crayons or colored pencils, pencils, erasers 

Find and pick a flower or tree leaf that you found inside or out in your backyard.  Draw a large close-up of the flower or leaf.  Then color your drawing. Think about different colors and forms.  Try to express the beauty of the flower or leaf like Georgia! 

Teacher Example: 

Have fun creating.

  

Painting unrealistic things: Salvador Dali 

by Soo Song

Salvador Dali was a Spanish artist. He painted dreams, fantasies, and random objects

such as clocks, clouds, or elephants in unnatural ways.

In his paintings, a clock is melting, clouds look like faces,

or elephants have long legs like a giraffe.

He combined things and created new places and creatures that cannot exist in the real world.

People called this kind of painting style “surrealism”.

Surrealism was an art movement where an artist drew unreal things in real-life settings.

Salvador Dali’s paintings offered inspiration to many other artists. 

This video explains the meaning of surrealism and introduces other surrealistic artists. Enjoy!

 The artist Salvador Dali

These are Dali’s surrealistic artworks!

 

Art Activity 

Let’s create an unrealistic animal creature like Dali. 

Materials: a piece of white paper, pencils, an eraser, crayons, or colored pencils. 

Instruction: 

1. Think of three different animals.
2. Fold the paper evenly into three sections.
3. Unfold the paper and place it vertically (hot dog style).
4. Draw the head of one of the animals you chose in the top section of the paper.
5. Draw the body of the second animal you chose in the middle section of the paper.
6. Draw the third animal’s feet in the bottom section of the paper.
7. Color! 

This is the instruction video. Watch it and have a fun time drawing! 

Make a Surreal Animal

 

Picasso Bouquet of Peace for Mother's Day

This above artwork was created by Pablo Picasso in 1958. It is called "Bouquet of Peace".

In the artwork, it looks like one person may be handing another a bouquet or a bunch of flowers.

There are many different types of LINES in this artwork. There are horizontal lines, verticle lines, diagonal lines, thick lines, and thin lines. All of these lines come together to make a beautiful picture.

We are going to trace a line around our hand to make a picture like Picasso's.

Picasso believed in promoting harmony among all people, which is what the two hands holding the flowers symbolize. Picasso painted chunky hands that grip the flowers tightly. Various interpretations come from this painting of two people holding a bouquet of flowers. One person may be passing it to the other or two individuals may just be holding the bouquet symbolically. Whichever the case, the Hands with Flowers represent sharing, love, and friendship. Flowers have always had a positive feeling attached to them. They are used to show gratitude, love, and joy, among other sentiments. By drawing the painting for the peace movement in Sweden, Picasso was encouraging people to stay good to one another even with the turmoil going on at the time. The two hands signify unity while the flowers evoke cheerful emotions. The white background allows the bold colors of the flower petals to jump out of the painting.

Supplies you will need: 

A marker or pen to trace around your hand

Colored or patterned papers

Please watch this short video from Mrs. Buck to see how to make your own painted paper for this project, MAKE YOUR OWN PAINTED PAPER

You can also use magazine pages for pretty colored papers or patterned papers you like

Scissors

A green marker or crayon for the flower stems

Glue

Video on how to make the handheld flower bouquet

https://youtu.be/Ly5ioO8CTiI

You will begin by tracing around your hand while it rests on the paper.

Next, you will draw the stems that look like they are in the hand.

Gather your patterned or painted paper.

Cut out flower shapes from the papers.

Glue the flowers cut-outs to the tops of the stems.

If you would like to, write "Happy Mother's Day" on your artwork.

Don't forget to sign your name. The artist must always sign their artwork.

I hope you had fun creating this work of art using lines and the collage method of art. 

You can always email me a picture of what you are working on.

Keep creating and have a great day.