Skip to Main Content

Bright, Bold Botany

Explore the floral world of Georgia O'Keeffe.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Paper

Steps

  • Step 1

    Georgia O'Keeffe was a painter known as the "mother of American modernism." She was known for her large-scale close-up paintings of flowers. Discuss her life and her work in class and display images of some of her floral paintings such as "Red Poppy," "Jimson Weed," and "Canna Red and Orange." Notice how some flowers look more realistic while her extreme close-up paintings look almost abstract.

  • Step 2

    In many of O'Keeffe's floral works you can see individual elements of the flower. Talk about the parts of a flower - stamen, petal, column, sepal. etc. - and their functions.

  • Step 3

    Have students select a flower they'd like to draw in the style of O'Keeffe. They draw the outline and the flower's details in crayon and then fill the flower and the background with watercolors.

Standards

ARTS: Speculate about processes an artist uses to create a work of art.

SCI: Ask questions about the features of phenomena observed and conclusions drawn from investigations or models.

SCI: Design pictorial or graphic representations/models that are useful in communicating ideas.

Adaptations

Have students explore the floral artwork and learn about the lives of other artists such as Hiroshige ("Hibiscus"), Claude Monet ("Water Lilies" series), Vincent van Gogh ("Sunflowers" series), or Roy Lichtenstein ("Flowers").

Encourage students to plant a seed or seeds in a jar of soil at home and watch as it grows.

Extend students' experience with the crayon-watercolor resist art technique by having them experiment with different amounts of pressure when they sketch with crayon to see how much wax is needed to cause the watercolor to resist.