Georgia O'Keeffe Inspired Flowers

These Chalk Pastel Batik Flowers are easy and fun!

Every student can feel successful in their final product.

I did this project with my 3rd and 4th grade students. We started by looking at real and fake flowers, both work fine. Each student created their own viewfinder (cut a small rectangle 1/2" x 1" out of the center of a sheet of printer paper). The students then looked through the viewfinder holding it at arm's length away. This helped them to zoom in on small areas of the flowers like Georgia O'Keeffe did in her paintings. I told the students when you look through the viewfinder what you see is what you should draw on your paper. If you can not see it through the viewfinder you should not draw it. If the student still drew too much of the flower I made them choose an area and draw a rectangle around it. Then I had then enlarge that area to become their final abstract flower.

After getting the final image I had them transfer their drawing to a large black piece of paper.

The next step is to trace all of the pencil lines with a bottle of glue. It is important to keep the tip of the glue bottle on the paper and pull the glue bottle away from your line of glue keeping a nice steady flow of glue.

The next class when the glue has dried the students added color with the chalk pastels. The glue line acts as a barrier creating a batik look!